Cold Calling

I was creating my strategy the other week for my new companies voicemail strategy, my views of a company, business, life, relationships are that you should be “different” and stand out from the crowd. Now I don’t mean stand out loudly from the crowd, but be quietly different none the less, becuase a good quiet confidence with a strategy that is different really helps you be noticed in all situations.

So I decided to use my voicemail different, what I’ve decided to do is what most business owners would “NEVER” do… And that’s update my voicemail each and “EVERY” day without fail.

What’s the point of spending a few minutes each night updating my voicemail you might ask, well for starters it shows that you’re on the ball and have a fresh message each day, so that is very refreshing for people to hear, especially those who contact you all the time. It also shows that you’re around and that you’re business is bubbling away nicely (sort of like blogging, if you go to a blog post and see the last post was 2 years ago, sort of makes you leave very quickly as there is now life on that blog).

So what I do each night before bed with my voicemail is, call in and state they’ve reached me and my company and the day, date and month, then I give them a different message for leaving a message and finally a unique thought of the day, tip, snippet of knowledge from my business experience, life experience or someone elses business or life, that has inspired me.

This strategy has since gotten me a lot of positive feedback from others who noticed it, and some have even decided to do it themselves…

I hope you take on this strategy also, as it’s one that will certainly see you stand out in your marketplace, and it can be one of your many ways of beginning to be very different to others in a marketplace full of “SHEEP” following eaching other…

If you’re going to be a sheep, be a Black one … BAAAAA LOL!!!

I was talking about cold calling to a colleague of mine the other day who said he was having some trouble with connecting to his prospects when making calls. His issue being that he couldn’t connect with the decision maker and it ended with the decision maker finally blasting him on the phone exclaiming “which part of rejection don’t you understand?”… OUCH!!!

However, what he told me next was very interesting and I thought I would post about it today. He told me that after the manager yelled at him, he quietly said “I’m not calling to sell you anything, just have a chat… So I’m not sure why you would think you’re rejecting me?”…

This made the manager seemingly calmed down after that, replying “You’re not!… Ok, we’ll I guess we’d better meet then”…

I thought this was a very useful dynamic, because in typical sales prospecting approaches, when you’re trying to meet with a decision maker “cold” it can often be mistaken as a cold call.

When my friend actually told the manager that he was there “NOT” to sell anything to him, but to talk about a problem he had picked up from their advertising that he had some ideas on, the manager was all ears…

The ironic thing was, in the course of that natural conversation, the manager asked him about what he specialized in as the ideas he gave him were so unique. However, my friend being as skilled as he is, didn’t talk about what he did directly, he took out a snippet of what Michael Port teaches from the book “Book Yourself Solid”…

He said, “Well you’ve probably heard of how most companies have very big advertising bills that quite often don’t pay for themsleves, haven’t you?” to which the manager replied “Yes, of course!”… “Well I take those problems and teach companies how to turn them around, with a number of “non-traditional” approaches that have been proven to work wonders”…

So just by talking generally and not trying to “Push” the sale, but at the same time, relating the natural conversation around the obvious problem that the manager had, he most likely would have been thinking “Yes, that’s me you’re talking about!” but wasn’t going to admit it.

And that’s all you ever need to do, is plant the seed in peoples minds without being obvious, it’s far better that they ask you to help them then, rather than you asking for that.

You’ll find things come to a natural conclusion and sales will fall into place anyway, becuase, as you discuss ideas, examples and past experiences with other clients, you’re demonstrating your ability first hand but in a completely non-threatening way.

Once you get to this place of openness, you can then ask the prospect if he’s ever known anyone in such a position, he’ll say yes and you can then lean back, smile and gently say “Please tell” and it all comes off as a conversation, which is what it should only ever be.

I hope this has helped you a little more with how to open your prospects up, this example was one of the more tougher scenarios, because you’ll find in the real world, unless you really piss someone off or they’re having an extremely bad day, they won’t react violently like that, they’ll just politely say “no thank you!”…

Have you ever been caught in the cold calling trap of voicemails? You make your calls and more often than not get hit by the brick wall we know as voicemail. I wouldn’t blame you if you just “hung up” and didn’t even bother leaving a message, because you’re more than likely thinkg “it’s no darn use, they’ll never get back to me” right?

Well this could be the case if you’re locked into the old way of thinking about cold calls, and it’s not your fault becuase you’ve been trained by a sales trainer that didn’t know any better either. The sad facts are, we quite often “leave a message anyway” because we feel so relieved that a real person didn’t answer the phone to “shut us down” and abruptly hang up, so it doesn’t hurt to blurt out your sales pitch!

This can be more of a frustration over time than a relief, because what happens when the sales manager does your KPI and you quickly realize that you “weren’t even close” to reaching your goals. You show that you’ve been making lots of calls and playing the numbers, however, you’re Not Getting Any Results!

When you learn a smarter, more open, way of channeling your sales message with more a more conversational, exploratory, yet low-pressure methodology, you’re going to find you “want” to connect with a live person, whether it’s the gatekeeper or prospect themselves. You’re going to find yourself wanting to dig out the receptionist, becuase all of a sudden there is no “sales rejection” and that feels really nice.

You might end up chatting with someone other than the prospect, but instead of trying to “dig out” who they are and bombard your way right over the top of that person, you ask their direction for the right way to go about finding that person. You will ask them questions that will open them up to conversationally telling you exactly where they are no problem at all.

Once you have this intelligence and befriended the receptionist in a low-pressure, to the point and open way, you’ll have a far better chance of getting through when you call back as they requested.

You might have come across the problem solving mindset in marketing and sales training before?  However, when cold calling you never quite knew how to assimilate the problem you solve in quite the right way and end up being shut down with a “No Thank You” before you get to your second sentence.

If you have a natural cold call mindset, you’re going to be met with questions to tell them more, rather than statements ending in “beep beep beep beep”!…

It’s a harsh reality, but if you can’t get rid of the usual initial pressure and tension felt when making your calls, which is inherent with sales pitching and trying to open the call with a “hello, my name is, I’m from and we do” you’re bound for limited success… Very limited success!

So my message to you today is, start your calls with absolutely no intention of getting through to a prospect, no intention of making a sale, no intention of pitching your product, but rather focussing on seeing if you can solve a problem for the person you’re talking to, and being present with whoever that is.

It could be the receptionist, other staff members who aren’t the prospect, the boss even, it doesn’t really matter and I coudln’t care less who you talk to, if you spark up an open ended conversation with no-pressure, then you’re going to be met in a “refreshingly” open way I guarantee you, I’ve done this for over 5 years now and it’s truly beautiful.