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Cold calling for my startup and how I learned to embrace the challenge

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Re: Cold calling for my startup and how I learned to embrace the challenge

#11

Post by maxxxxx »

MatthewRJones wrote: post #10
goatherders wrote: post #3

Cold calling is wildly effective. It just takes making more than 2 calls a week. I tell my team "get 100 on the phone without selling something and I'll give you $100" been doing that for years and have never paid a rep the $100.

Eh... I'm not sure about "wildly effective." A few years ago I started a business and cold called for several hours each day for the first four months. I didn't make a single sale, and I'm told I have an excellent phone presence. What succeeded for me was SEO, direct mail, and email campaigns. I still had to do sales pitches, but I was working off warm leads from people that actually wanted to hear from me. I'm not s…

It probably depends a lot on your type of product.

Re: Cold calling for my startup and how I learned to embrace the challenge

#12

Post by j-c-hewitt »

goatherders wrote: post #3

Cold calling is wildly effective. It just takes making more than 2 calls a week. I tell my team "get 100 on the phone without selling something and I'll give you $100" been doing that for years and have never paid a rep the $100.

Really depends on what your offering is. If everyone else is also cold calling for your service, it's probably not going to work. If very few people are cold calling / cold e-mailing with your very valuable service that solves an urgent need, then it will be highly effective.

Cold outreach with a lot of effort/expense put into it is also a different beast from the typical cold call.

Re: Cold calling for my startup and how I learned to embrace the challenge

#13

Post by gnicholas »

One useful tip I got from a friend in sales: open the call with an offer to set up a call at a more convenient time. It seems strange to immediately ask for another call, but it is really helpful in showing that you're friendly/flexible, and you recognize that the person you're calling is busy.

About 30% of the time, the person was happy to chat in the moment (they had chosen to answer a call from an unknown number, after all). And the rest of the time, you benefit from setting up a time that is more convenient for them. Some of the time you end up never having the later call—but it seems this happens where there wasn't a great fit to begin with, so it actually saves you time talking to an unlikely lead.

Re: Cold calling for my startup and how I learned to embrace the challenge

#14

Post by ftio »

gnicholas wrote: post #13

One useful tip I got from a friend in sales: open the call with an offer to set up a call at a more convenient time. It seems strange to immediately ask for another call, but it is really helpful in showing that you're friendly/flexible, and you recognize that the person you're calling is busy. About 30% of the time, the person was happy to chat in the moment (they had chosen to answer a call from an unknown number,…

This is a great technique.

1. Ask if they have 30 seconds to chat.

2. If they say no, ask for another time that works better. People are polite, so many will not say no. Schedule this time immediately and have them confirm on the calendar right away.

3. If they say yes, immediately start asking them empathetic questions that demonstrate knowledge of their problems, followed by, "Does any of this resonate with you?"

Re: Cold calling for my startup and how I learned to embrace the challenge

#15

Post by oligopoly »

MatthewRJones wrote: post #10
goatherders wrote: post #3

Cold calling is wildly effective. It just takes making more than 2 calls a week. I tell my team "get 100 on the phone without selling something and I'll give you $100" been doing that for years and have never paid a rep the $100.

Eh... I'm not sure about "wildly effective." A few years ago I started a business and cold called for several hours each day for the first four months. I didn't make a single sale, and I'm told I have an excellent phone presence. What succeeded for me was SEO, direct mail, and email campaigns. I still had to do sales pitches, but I was working off warm leads from people that actually wanted to hear from me. I'm not s…

It sounds you tried different scripts, tones, outcome frames, pacing/leading, pausing, emphasising key words, right people on the phone etc..?

Somebody liked the sound of your voice, however the sales numbers suggest something isn't lining up. Read your script out loud and record it with iPhone. You can pretty much sell anything cold calling enough people.

Could be the product you are selling, but sounds like there could more efficient ways to proceed if you ever start cold calling again.

Re: Cold calling for my startup and how I learned to embrace the challenge

#16

Post by plinkplonk »

I hate getting cold calls. So I avoid doing it to other people.

Yes that makes me less of a salesman. So be it.

Tangent: In India you can report unsolicited sales calls to a central (government) authority, where you can sign up to get on a "Do Not Disturb" list, and get any sales caller who ignores this fined, and eventually get his number disconnected etc.

The system isn't perfect, and there are some impressive hacks to bypass it, but the situation now is much better than before these regulations existed. Where one used to get multiple spammers a day, now weeks and months can go by before getting one (who I promptly report). My number must be on some shared "cranky idiot who hates cold callers" list, I almost never get these calls now.

A minister was interrupted in parliament while presenting the annual national budget (iirc) by someone who wanted to sell him a credit card(!), which led to this regulation.

And it is a godsend. Cold callers should all burn in hellfire (imo)

Re: Cold calling for my startup and how I learned to embrace the challenge

#17

Post by oligopoly »

maxxxxx wrote: post #4
goatherders wrote: post #3

Cold calling is wildly effective. It just takes making more than 2 calls a week. I tell my team "get 100 on the phone without selling something and I'll give you $100" been doing that for years and have never paid a rep the $100.

What's your experience with people actually enjoying it or at least not hating it and finding such people? I have done cold calling myself but found it very exhausting to the point that I just couldn't do it anymore.

State management and selling something you find to be beneficiary to client helps.

I Haven't done it for ages but damn making a sale is a great feeling :) Kinda makes me want to google start ups looking for sales people based on commission. Would be fun to experiment stuff I've learned since those days.

Re: Cold calling for my startup and how I learned to embrace the challenge

#18

Post by whataretensors »

Cold calling is not for me. I hate even answering email or inbound communication.

One thing I've realized working on my own is that you can do anything you want. You don't have to do the thing you hate the most to make progress. It will feel draining, feel like more work, and be less productive than focusing on where you are strong.

Re: Cold calling for my startup and how I learned to embrace the challenge

#19

Post by goatherders »

gradys wrote: post #9
goatherders wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone hates cold calling. Everyone. Some people like the challenge and the reward of getting a total stranger to spend money. But no one actually like a cold calling. But there are a lot of things we do professionally that we don't enjoy. Expense reports are a huge time sink and I hate doing them. But I hate not getting reimbursed even more. If you are trying to hire salespeople who can cold call well then I sugge…

> Try to get them to tell you if they have student loans, a mortgage, a family...anything that indicates a greater immediate financial need. Uh... Might not want to do that actually.

I didn't say to ask. I said to try and get them to tell you. Big difference.

Re: Cold calling for my startup and how I learned to embrace the challenge

#20

Post by lefstathiou »

Cold calling is an extremely effective strategy for us. Most important lesson I learned building our SDR program is that nobody natively likes cold calling so to do it well, it needs to be their only job.

When I had account managers that had to do their own cold calling they greatly underperformed. When I had someone whose only job was to cold call and book demos which were then closed by account managers one person was getting more meetings than all my account managers combined.

Some people don’t like getting cold calls, I personally don’t mind and the number of people that don’t mind statistically out number the ones who do. We have tons of data to support this. I highly recommend evaluating this as a strategy in any B2B customer acquisition program.

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