Practical Tips

When is a cold call not a cold call? Answer: When it’s hot, of course.

Now this may sound quite silly, so let me set the stage.

The vast majority of people I come across, who need to prospect for new clients, hate cold calling. After all, how many of you like receiving unsolicited calls?

Don’t your hackles rise when the latest Telecom provider calls from India and drones on. How about the Time Share people - “How would you like a free holiday?”, maybe even a Charity?

Let’s face it. Unless you’re directly in the market for what these people are proposing, they’re interrupting your day.

So it’s probably no wonder that when it comes to your turn to make calls, you hesitate and that phone handset (made of plastic) becomes as heavy as lead!

Assuming you get past lifting the receiver and dialling the number, you hope against hope that the person you’re trying to reach is only on voicemail and you can get away with leaving a message, hoping they’ll call back if they’re interested.

And should the unthinkable happen and they actually pick up the phone, you end up stammering something or the other, don’t get your message across and feel you’ve stuffed it up.

Now it doesn’t have to be that way, and it’s not your fault that this is happening. You’ve been lied to by most sales training methodologies that teach cold calling. There is a better way!

Coming back to my first statement, a cold call is not a cold call when your prospect is expecting a call and even if they’re not, they already know about you and are happy to talk.

Here’s a recent example:

A large number of you ordered the “Skinning the Marketing Cat - 24 Strategies for growing your business” report. (BTW, if you haven’t got it, you can download it here)

As part of my somewhat belated follow up, (I know, I know, I should practice what I preach), I’ve been ringing people who ordered the report.

The results have been nothing short of astounding.

It’s been so heartening to get all the positive feedback for the report, and even in cases where they haven’t for various reasons read the report, still told me how much you’ve enjoyed this newsletter.

A consistent comment was, “you give so much value and free information”. Many people religiously print it out and read it etc.

People actually rang me back to say, while they hadn’t read the report yet, they wanted to tell me that they really enjoyed the newsletters and so took the trouble to return my calls.

So what’s the lesson?

People want to form a relationship with you before doing business with you. Remember the sequence, “Know you, Like you, Trust you”.

Marketing is all about having them get to know you, like you and ultimately trust you - before making the sale. And yes, you do have to deliver and do so with integrity.

The Free Report strategy is but one of our successful methods of contacting people and making them into warm calls when you follow up.

<Quick Aside>

If you’re in the financial services industry in Australia, you’re no longer allowed to make cold prospecting calls - by law! Talk about regulation gone mad. So this Free Report strategy and other forms of advertising where your prospects come to you is even more important. Call me for details on how we can implement it for you.

<End Aside>

The strategy works because your prospect has requested information from you and you have every right to follow up. You’re no longer interrupting their day. THEY WANTED THE INFORMATION!

And of course, once they’ve ordered the report, you have to keep following up - for years if necessary! Remember, “No” doesn’t mean forever. It just means “not now”.

The key is to keep communicating with your prospects and clients on an ongoing basis. By contacting your clients and prospects at least once every 90 days, when they’re ready to do business, you’re right there!

And for those of you wondering if this works for us or am I just gabbing on… yes, we got a number of new clients using this strategy - we do walk our talk.

So if you’d like to have more clients coming in the door on a consistent basis, give me a call and ask about our new CARP methodology.

Don’t know what CARP. is? Stay tuned for more details.

Happy marketing!

Rashid.

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