Are you selling a commodity or your expertise?

by 31 replies
40
I wanted to share a personal opinion. As it is personal opinion, you can take it for what it's worth. We're all entitled to them. :-)

I enjoy reading this forum, but cold calling truly is the worst approach to building a business.

If you're selling a commodity, then by all means, cold call away.

If you're an expert and want to move into another orbit where you're doing five and six-figure deals versus one, two, and three figure deals, cold calling should be your last resort.

There are so many talented folks here who can move beyond the pursuit game and focus on the attraction game...That's where the real money is made.

When you create attraction, your phone rings - not theirs. The trick is making sure your line is open to accept calls. :-) You can't furiously be calling everyone in the yellow pages.

And while cold calling might work for a while, it's a long dreary road creating a career out of little jobs here and there.
#offline marketing #commodity #expertise #selling
  • {golf clap}

    Agreed.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Actually, you can sell fairly complex programs cold calling (I assume you mean by phone). In fact, when you are starting out...it is the single most profitable approach.

      And you could cold call at a high level, for the rest of your life, and make a great living. We know this...because It's been done already. So it isn't opinion, it's a fact.

      Now for the flip side of cold calling by phone. Every call starts at Zero. If you continue to cold call for years, every day you need to beat the bushes, looking for new people. And it never gets more efficient (except for technology).

      So, referrals (if done intelligently) are far easier to sell, take less time, and stick as clients longer. That's also a fact.

      And I've said this before... Yes, getting them to call you is the best way to sell, for a multitude of reasons. But, you can't forget to mention the enormous amount of work and expense you have to go though to get the phone to ring. With cold calling, you don't have to wait for them to call.
      I don't know about you, but I have lots of lead magnets. I've written a few book, I do speeches, I have dozens of websites attracting calls. And I do get calls. Do you get six hours of calls to you a day? I sure don't.
      And if you do, I want that program.

      And, while you are building that pipeline of lead magnets...you can also be paying your bills with cold calling.

      See? Cold calling isn't evil. It isn't even inefficient. But there are more comfortable ways to get sales, after you have built the necessary infrastructure.

      And I mean this in the nicest way....virtually every person that says cold calling doesn't work, isn't doing it, and never figured out how to make it work.

      No successful cold caller ever said "You know, I'm really good at this, but darn it...it's the worst way to get new clients".

      And I'm not a cold calling guru. I only cold call trade associations for speaking gigs. But I know a winning strategy when I see it.

      I am a legend in my own mind.:rolleyes:
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
  • Really have to disagree. Of course you should have multiple means of promoting your business. But whatever method of calling you've been using, Noah...you haven't been doing it the way I teach.

    There's no "pursuit" or chasing. You don't waste your time calling totally unqualified prospects, ie. the yellow pages. And the dollar figures are irrelevant as well--I've gotten five figure projects from calling. It's not what you sell, it's how you sell.

    Also, it's FAST. If you know how to sort, you can get to great prospects you can turn into great clients, quickly.

    Funny how these huge companies are doing it...and doing it badly...and still making tons of money. It's simply a skill you haven't developed.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Disagreements are good! Like I said, it's my opinion. I think it's a terrible way to build a business that will allow you to grow and succeed over the long-term.

      And quite frankly, who wants to be calling people for the next 10-20-30 years? Why not build a business and have them call you?
      • [2] replies
  • In any business you want it to be scalable.

    Attraction marketing can work. Many of the Guru's use it even as they preach other methods.

    But when it comes to scalability it is hard to beat something like cold calling. It is the reason that large companies use call centers.

    The question comes down to this. Do you want to be the product or do you want to own a business?

    You can make great money per hour when you are selling your brand. You can see this from people like Tim Ferriss to Tony Robbins.

    But they pale in comparision to what a man like Bill Gates or Sam Walton could make. The difference? They build businesses and the business was the brand.

    So if you want to be the brand feel free. But stop and realize that by doing that you are just building yourself a very high paying job. And you have built nothing for yours kids. Where if you build a business you can truly one day decide to step back and be just an owner. And that is how the "1%" live.

    Remember Sam Walton's kids are among the richest people in the world and they never have to work a day in their life. Because they own a business not a personal brand.

    NOTE: Apple is a weird case that is almost a combination of both. I believe it is more of a business but one that was ran by a man who became a brand associated with it.
  • I cold called my first year of business.

    After that I lived on referrals and my expert status. It is a way to get into business. But in services, if you aren't elevating your expert status and associated brand, you're never building your reputation past those calls.

    I think that's the real point of the post - and an issue that John and I debate around and around about. There's nothing wrong with cold calling... and truthfully, from time-to-time, I will pick up the phone and call someone. But it's really, really nice to have a solid reputation and more referrals.

    Sam Walton's kids own a brand. They're not out going door-to-door.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Take a big brand like Coca Cola.

      They have a team that gets their product into stores via calling on retailers and then supporting them through point of sales material.

      At the very beginning, somebody walked into those shops cold to get distribution.

      Big brands get distribution into Walmart by cold calling them to set up meetings.

      That's how big business is done.

      Best,
      Ewen
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
      • [1] reply
  • Not sure my friend John Bowers who made 50 million dollars with cold calling would agree. However, I do agree that if you arent going to start a large call center , and that isnt your goal, then you dont want to personally cold call for the rest of your life.

    Attraction marketing takes marketing and written sales skills, and for a newb, they can learn that faster on the phone than any other way I can think of... however, again, if they arent going to duplicate and hire callers of their own... then eventually they want to graduate to attraction marketing.

    On another note I DID land the biggest modeling agent in America back in the early 2000's by cold calling, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars...and a friend of mine landed an appointment with Walmart buyers, which resulted in over 300 million over the next ten years.

    Yes, attraction marketing is the most advanced way to do it, but you have to be ADVANCED to do it.

    Most folks are going to take years to develop to that level. May as well cold call and make some money in the process.

    Despite what some push, you arent going to become a professional copywriter over night.

    -JD

    Ps. Commodities are easier to duplicate than expertise, if you plan on scaling, but then, Im kind of an Emyth fan. If a person has the talent to write a few million dollar deals per year, there is no need to scale. Just be an expert.

    Most people will ALSO chase bells and whistles for the next year, and never succeed. Its a fact.
  • Very good thinking/discussion going on here.

    Michael Hiles has got it.

    It's about thinking bigger than making 743 calls to sell one $1200 dollar website job. There are posts here everyday saying, "Guys Help...I made 47 calls today - and not one sale." That's because that's not how business is done.

    John,

    You're exactly right.

    Notice in your wal-mart example? He got the appointment. The appointment was the start of the relationship. The sale wasn't made on the phone. We're in the relationship business.

    Big difference.
    • [2] replies
    • Oh, I agree wholeheartedly too. Thats why I teach appointment setting and not one call closing for the most part, unless its some kind of small deal or loss leader you are selling thats low risk.

      Whether you run your appointments face to face or by phone, selling these days is a two step process or more... you can sell someone in two calls... but its a rare day when you close them for more than a few hundred dollars in one call.

      Its like having a mailing list.

      You dont just send people straight from google to a sales page because you will lose 90%. You get them into a funnel and build the relationship, and over time you can sell more like 70% of them at one time or another.
    • But, the appointment was still made by cold calling :p

      Just pulling your leg, but some form of "cold contacting" is almost unavoidable when most people are getting into business.

      Call it what you want: Direct Mail, Emailing, Appointment Setting

      At the end of the day, its all cold calling wrapped in different packaging.
      • [1] reply
  • I think the smart way to do it would be to use cold calling to generate the revenues necessary to sustain and grow your model until the infrastructure for incoming leads is up and running. Then you can systemize cold calling and have that working in conjunction with your SEO, seminars, referrals, and direct mail.

    For instance, lets say you sell app development services. To get the wheel spinning you should cold call until your phone carrier begs for mercy. Do it hard and do it consistently. This SHOULD create fantastic growth. Use the new incoming revenue to fund the building blocks for your "pull marketing infrastructure". (e.i spend $2,000 a month on Adwords/SEO, $10,000 on a ghostwriter to write a book, podcast, blog etc).

    Re-invest your cold calling revenues into other lead gen strategies. Simple...kinda.
    • [ 2 ] Thanks
  • PS: I liked your Mixergy interview.
    • [1] reply
  • I don't call for sales, I call for appointments.
    There are other ways to get appointments, but starting out.....
    Cold calling is the fastest, cheapest, and easiest way to do it.

    Its hard to SEO things like: Small Business Marketing Consultant.
    Guess how many calls I have gotten as a result of SEO???? 0.
    I get more calls from things going to my site, like someone finding a CL ad in the searches.

    So, I do several other forms of lead gen, but cold calling is a way that works.
    No one has ever said to me.... I don't want to do business with you because you cold called me.

    The people I do business with, agree they needed me or someone like me and just weren't sure how to find me. By cold calling, they found me. Or I found them?

    Yes, everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
    I think cold calling is great. Works great.
    But, I only do it when I feel like it. Because I don't need to cold call as much for business anymore.
    However, it took cold calling to get to that point.
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • [1] reply
    • Is it just me noticing this or do clients that come from cold calling end up saying something like "I'm really glad you called me!" or "Thank you for calling me..I really needed a new...."
  • I have to disagree because cold calling works very well for me and I have been getting many new clients each month.
  • Argh, not another one of these threads!

    Being an expert and cold calling are not mutually exclusive.

    It all works. Just do what works.

    These stupid threads cloud out actually taking ACTION -- which is what we all should really talk about.
    • [ 5 ] Thanks
  • Can I ask for a little clarification here? What do you mean by expertise?

    Correct me if I'm wrong but is expertise really exclusive to an individual? What about a bigger company of those individuals? Won't their organization need some means of to promote its employees?
Join the discussion

Next Topics on Trending Feed