Cold Calling…. when is it acceptable?

A new business venture of mine is beginning shortly and I do feel some cold calls would be valuable.. the basis of the call would be no pushing, no hard sale just simply giving our website address or sending them a pdf of information for them to read at their leisure and contact us back if they would like to…

what are your thoughts on this – is it still crossing the line by approaching them cold?

Is it really a good idea for a new company? For every 1 sale, you end up with 99 people who think you’re annoying. Not good PR.

I’d probably tell you to **** off.

What are you selling?

Never acceptable. Bloody PITA 👿

All depends on the product/service, I have successfully worked the Cold Call angle but did my research first so I knew who I was calling and why.

If you are selling specific services as opposed to generic ones then it can work – i.e. a butcher calling a chef, but a butcher call a household doesn’t work.

generate a mailing list and write to named individuals at the companies.

enclose some sort of glossy plus a covering letter.

Give them an option to email and ask to receive no more mail.

But that’s still one more sale than you’ll make if no one knows about you. You do know how spam works? 🙂

BtoB or BtoC ?
It makes a big difference.
If it’s BtoB, yes, it’s vital (and I’m very good at it)
How else do you genreate leads?

Has anybody ever reacted positively to a cold call? I’d say the best you can possibly hope for is for them to be reasonable polite in which word they choose to place before the inevitable ‘….off!”

If its a new business, then contact your local chamber of commerce and find out about their networking events. Sounds **** (actually is quite ****) but its a good way to meet people who are a bit more receptive

What does your customer engagement plan say?

Of course – that’s why they still happen.

Has anybody ever reacted positively to a cold call?

I knew a guy whos job it was to cold call old folks homes and try and sell them professional scale fireworks packages. He didn’t sell many but he sold you more than you’d think 🙂

If you’re making cold calls then you’ll need to use TPS so that people who have opted out of receiving cold calls (by subscribing to TPS) aren’t called.
Im not sure if this applies to all businesses making cold calls or if there is a minimum size of business this applied to. If I was you I’d definetely look into it as the fines can be quite hefty…..

Here’s how it works in my field (main actions in the first list with corresponding pointers in the second):

1. Set up a very good website that covers everything a visitor wants
2. Set up a blog (if appropriate) and invite people to subscribe
3. Buy an accurate data list and target those people ONCE (unless you have a license for more) + point them to your site
4. Have a “call to action” on your site
5. Cold call
6. Use your network
7. Come up with a relevant elevator pitch

1. Do your market research and find out what challenges people are faced with and what they want/need. Address this on your site.
2. Make sure it’s relevant and keep it updated.
3. Due diligence required.
4. i.e. encourage the visitor to contact you, download a freebie, check out a trial, order something, book something, etc
5. If you honestly believe you have a “solution” to a “problem” (or similar) then go for it. People will knock you back but others will give you a chance.
6. E.g. word of mouth, ex-colleagues, friends, LinkedIn etc
7. Get to know your bottom line and don’t be afraid to say it if it really does deliver

binners » Has anybody ever reacted positively to a cold call?

Of course – that’s why they still happen.

Agree with druidh here. If someone calls me and is 1) decent enough to get on with, 2) offers a fix to a problem (or similar), and 3) has a genuinely good website that answers any further questions then I’ll likely check them out.

Thanks Spacemonkey – you made this post well worth it – do you have any previous experience from where is best to buy lists?

Thanks again

where is best to buy lists?

Nigeria?
off a bloke in the pub?

In a B2B it is ALWAYS acceptable.

You need to get your brand, product and service out there.

It’s a real shame that people seem to confuse good quality targeted cold calling with charity fundraising type activities.

Has anybody ever reacted positively to a cold call?

Yes. Millions and millions of pounds generated in B2B sales start with a cold call. How else does a seller contact a prospect otherwise?

Back on topic, from OP’s post, it sounds like you are very much the product/service person. If you’d like some advice/resources etc, feel free to email me on the address on my profile and I’ll be happy to point you in the right direction.

Hmm, buying accurate data can be tricky – and sometimes expensive but not always. I (and no-one I can think of) has had to buy data for years so I can’t recommend anyone as such. Probably best to speak to people like:

- MarketScan[/url]
- DataHQ[/url]
- CorpData[/url]

… and Google the rest or ask around.

Get them to email you as many price breaks (and options) as possible. E.g. name, title, tel number, email, time in role, etc. Don’t be afraid to question them about their accuracy because there are loads of people selling sh1t data. Check out their social profiles, i.e LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook etc to get an idea of how active/genuine they are. Look for real feedback.

Cold calling gets a bad name mainly from hard sellers and annoying little 20 yr olds who can’t stray off script. IMO if I have something I believe may help someone, then that “gives me license” to at least touch base with them once. Hence why having a website with a CTA is important because that person might get you off the phone > pull up your website > get piqued > go back to it later when they’ve nothing else to do > and act on one of your CTAs.

I’m with spacemonky on this.

Cold calling gets a bad name mainly from hard sellers and annoying little 20 yr olds who can’t stray off script. IMO if I have something I believe may help someone, then that “gives me license” to at least touch base with them once. Hence why having a website with a CTA is important because that person might get you off the phone > pull up your website > get piqued > go back to it later when they’ve nothing else to do > and act on one of your CTAs.

Agreed, although I’m more of a face to face cold caller and never got on with telephone cold calls. If you’ve got a product, you can put it in their hands where it is a lot easier for them to understand it and form an opinion about you.
No idea what a CTA is mind. 🙁

Cold calls via phone get zero response from me, and I’ve only taken up two charity cold calls at the door, because they benefited local charities; Wiltshire Air Ambulance, which saved my brother’s life, and St John’s Ambulance, which is giving first aid training to youngsters in Wiltshire schools.

Don’t waste your money buying data.

Identify your target sectors, regions etc. What job function in the business is your target?

Be confident, be unapologetic. You are trying to help them save money/do better at XXX/be more efficent at what they do. You are helping them by getting in touch.

I think the last lot of data I bought was from CorpData. It was pretty accurate as you’d expect. They have a accuracy guarantee too so you can get money back for every wrong contact.

How you prove the data is inaccurate is another matter!

My best sale came about through cold calling. If it’s B2B do it.

The thing to remember, is that if you have a product someone wants, and can supply it at a price that beats what they are paying, and are reliably, why would someone NOT want to do business with you?

Cold calling in business is acceptable – the secret is speaking to the right companies, and the right person at the right company.

This means doing research before EVERY call. Better to have 1 call which works per day, than 100 which all fail. Find out who makes decisions, whens best to get them, who already supplies them ect.

For example, trying really bih businesses is doomed usually to failure – you don’t know who makes decisions, what their authority is, ect – I occasionally get cold callers at work, I am just 1 of thousands of claims handlers for an insurer, where buying is all centralised – waste of everyones time and money.

Never

alexxxx what are you selling.

Never.

If you call me at tea time you’ll get a blast of the air horn too.

If you want me to never look any further at your company try to solicit some business. Calls, email, or mail is a big turn off. IMHO it should be illegal.

Cold calling gets a bad name mainly from hard sellers and annoying little 20 yr olds who can’t stray off script. IMO if I have something I believe may help someone, then that “gives me license” to at least touch base with them once. Hence why having a website with a CTA is important because that person might get you off the phone > pull up your website > get piqued > go back to it later when they’ve nothing else to do > and act on one of your CTAs.

Touch base, get piqued, ‘gives me licence,

HOUSE!! you’ve won BS bingo

You are Gareth Cheeseman

Thanks Andy and Spacemonkey – great help.

The people saying “never” I agree – if I get a cold call at home or work that is pure spam and some guy reading a script… then I just hang up and I dislike it.. however I’m not proposing calling people at home. I’m on about B2B and offering the information via the website for them to take in at will or disregard.

The problem with cold calling is that there are too many people promising things and really all they want is creditcard details to max out.

I have a good product which WILL benefit a lot of small companies.. and no sorry I won’t divulge the product/site or anything on here sorry.

I worked in a line of business where we got a lot of cold calls, and tbh they were mostly justifiable. As it happened, our office wasn’t generally the right place to be handling them but we didn’t begrudge that. But it’s going to depend on industry and approach.

Bad research will make you look stupid. In a previous job, we ran the BACS service for a major bank. One of our customers who we’d set up to be a BACS user, phoned us up and tried very hard to sell us BACS services. They really didn’t seem to understand why we didn’t want to be sold our own product back at a higher price. That ended up very damaging for them, we stopped recommending them as a vendor as a result.

I would agree with everything that spacemonkey says except imho he is missing the measurement part of it. If all you are doing is pointing people at your website rather than getting them to sign up for something then you need to have analytics on your site set up to measure traffic from the call. If you already have flyers out then direct rather than search engine traffic isn’t enough to differentiate. You may need to go for a slightly different url e.g. http://www.productxxx.com/smb or the such like – so that you can track incoming traffic direct to that url which would only come from calls.

You can of course not bother but then you have no idea if you are wasting your money on the cold calls or not. Tracking stuff takes a bit of work but really pays off in the end if you want to decide where to spend your cash rather than just throw it around everywhere.

Agreed Leffe, thanks for pointing that out – and it is already taken care of 🙂

How are you doing it? (out of curiosity). I find tracking results of calls not particularly easy so always looking for ideas…

Leffe, I was trying to keep things simple hence didn’t mention anything re SEO, tracking etc. The only real references I made were:

2. Set up a blog (if appropriate) and invite people to subscribe

4. Have a “call to action” on your site … i.e. encourage the visitor to contact you, download a freebie, check out a trial, order something, book something, etc

I agree setting up dummy URLs (with re-directs etc) is often worthwhile. But at the same time, the most important thing IMO is to get people to act, especially if it means them giving their details (not that they’ll always be genuine) and ‘subscribing’ to updates etc.

If you’re going to buy data then emailing first (with a follow-up call) is sometimes better. You’ll hit more people more quickly plus it gives you another reason to call. And using the likes of MailChimp will give you decent tracking.

REMEMBER: All of this can count for very little if your market research and sales skills are below par.

Not in action currently but the options are:

via a absolute link like you mentioned IE /offer on a none indexed page
or
via a 301 redirect from 1 url to another ie http://www.callbob.com brings them to http://www.bob.com
or
via a totally separate site with an affiliate style FAQ / Sell page

It still depends on the ease of spelling / ease to remember the master domain we go with.

Using mailchimp already and it will be a 2 step process email then follow up call as its a good door opener I find from past experience.

Sales skills and market research.. I guess I’ll have to see!

last list that where i work bought a list was experian, did you ever wonder what they did with all that credit information…

Before that bought some from emap? magazine subscription lists.

never!