Cold-calling - any tips?

[puredot]

Thing's stressful and ungrateful. Do you have any tips on how to do it effectively?

Mine are:
1. Speak slowly and loudly.
2. Try to speak in the similar manner to the person.

 

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[woken]

Try to speak in the similar manner to the person.

So what do you do about a bad attitude? Has that worked out for you?

 

[puredot]

So what do you do about a bad attitude? Has that worked out for you?

Do you ask me if I act rudely if the person is rude? Of course not. I was talking more about speed and pitch of voice. I try to but right now I am more about trying to sound cool and not too robotic.

Did I understand you correctly?

 

[Kevin88660]

Thing's stressful and ungrateful. Do you have any tips on how to do it effectively?

Mine are:
1. Speak slowly and loudly.
2. Try to speak in the similar manner to the person.

More information would be helpful. Target audience. Service provided. And your pitch over the phone.

 

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[puredot]

More information would be helpful. Target audience. Service provided. And your pitch over the phone.

Absolutely.

Target audience:
-people with bad/old/not relevant to their service/broken websites and good reviews on google maps,
-people with no websites and good reviews on google maps (and they look like they might have a use of brand new website).

Service provided:
-web design (effective websites in terms of sales)

My pitch over the phone:
-I started 2 days ago, so my experience isn't much, but in my opinion it sounds almost all the time like a salesman. Even when a person was like totally cool and open, I had that terrible pitch.

 

[Kevin88660]

Absolutely.

Target audience:
-people with bad/old/not relevant to their service/broken websites and good reviews on google maps,
-people with no websites and good reviews on google maps (and they look like they might have a use of brand new website).

Service provided:
-web design (effective websites in terms of sales)

My pitch over the phone:
-I started 2 days ago, so my experience isn't much, but in my opinion it sounds almost all the time like a salesman. Even when a person was like totally cool and open, I had that terrible pitch.

I was thinking like if you could share what you have been saying to them over the phone, and how the response has been. What is your objective? To Book an appointment to discuss more?

Speaking as a layperson who doesn't have the knowledge of web design and its impact on sales, assume if I take the role of the potential client these are the questions I will have.

1) How does a good website helps me capture the lead?
2) How do I measure the result? Like a lead text me how would I know it is because of my website or other existing marketing channels doing the work?
3) How much does it cost? Biggest Hurdle for sales has always been certain cost for uncertain result. Do you have a portfolio to show or something? How was the result?

In short I can summaries as why web design? How do I know if it works for me? Why do I choose you?

I believe that you have already did your qualification of leads, through google review and existing website analysis if they have any, most likely you would like to have appointments with all the numbers that you have targeted on. And it probably takes an interview to answer all the above questions.

Next is what would you speak over the phone to entice them for the appointment/consultation?

 

[puredot]

I was thinking like if you could share what you have been saying to them over the phone, and how the response has been. What is your objective? To Book an appointment to discuss more?

Speaking as a layperson who doesn't have the knowledge of web design and its impact on sales, assume if I take the role of the potential client these are the questions I will have.

1) How does a good website helps me capture the lead?
2) How do I measure the result? Like a lead text me how would I know it is because of my website or other existing marketing channels doing the work?
3) How much does it cost? Biggest Hurdle for sales has always been certain cost for uncertain result. Do you have a portfolio to show or something? How was the result?

In short I can summaries as why web design? How do I know if it works for me? Why do I choose you?

I believe that you have already did your qualification of leads, through google review and existing website analysis if they have any, most likely you would like to have appointments with all the numbers that you have targeted on. And it probably takes an interview to answer all the above questions.

Next is what would you speak over the phone to entice them for the appointment/consultation?

The things I was saying to them over the phone were like:
"Good morning, I'm [full name] (optionally I would add that I am from [name of my company]) am I talking with [name of the owner of the company]?
Great. I am calling in connection with the e-mail I recently sent you. Did you read it?"

Now it varies - if they say yes then they are like (it was 2 of such people): "Yes, but I didn't have a time [because of some reasonable reason]" and they scheduled the call for later (one person don't handle website stuff - his kid does; the other one wasn't sure because lots of personal things happen; both of these postponed the call but for a very soon date).

If no (most of people) - I say some gibberish like (I don't have that written down): "it was about your online presence yada yada" or "because you have so many good reviews on google maps yada yada" or "you have very old domain and it is a loss of potential if you don't use it properly yada yada".

Now I see how unprepared it sounds (and is) my offer. And as you said - layperson will not get it anyway because I don't even try to explain it. <- Important observation here.


Yes, my objective is to book and appointment to explain it properly/do the sales call.


Those questions are crucial and I didn't even think about them. Yea, I need to have prepared a strong offer and memorize it by heart and to make it sound natural, is that what you mean?


No idea. Darn it looks like I don't have right mindset?


Basically my idea is this

One method would be recording a custom Loom video that's 5 minutes long and sending it in a cold email to the decision-maker.

--

My process was as follows:

Minute 1: Introduce yourself and say the biz owners first name "Hey Fnesse" + Compliment Website.
Minutes 2-3: State what can be improved: Logo, layout, not responsive, poor SEO. Mention the technicals but most importantly focus on what this is costing them. Most biz owners won't know / care much about how not having a blog can damage SEO, but they will care about their website going to waste and the thousands of potential clients they're missing out on from not having an up to date website.
Minutes 4-5: Quick pitch for my services. Here are the services we provide, here's a case study (If you don't have any previous clients, show a practice website you redesigned), send a reply to this email if you're interested (Create a pitch deck from Canva for this).

With research, recording and writing the cold email, you should be able to average 3-4 Loom videos per hour.

This means 10-20 / day.

100 prospects a week.

Outreach/Meeting Rate might be around 2-4%

You should be able to close at least 1 deal from every 100 of these high quality, personalised cold emails.

100 prospects a week, at least one deal = 1 Client / Week.

--

Hope this helps, good luck mate.

Be a tenacious little f*cker.

So I can follow up to that, if they are not interested I can tell them to at least watch this short video, they can learn some free tips from it, or I don't know. You got me with those questions. I have to think about them for sure.

Thanks Kevin

 

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[Kevin88660]

The things I was saying to them over the phone were like:
"Good morning, I'm [full name] (optionally I would add that I am from [name of my company]) am I talking with [name of the owner of the company]?
Great. I am calling in connection with the e-mail I recently sent you. Did you read it?"

Now it varies - if they say yes then they are like (it was 2 of such people): "Yes, but I didn't have a time [because of some reasonable reason]" and they scheduled the call for later (one person don't handle website stuff - his kid does; the other one wasn't sure because lots of personal things happen; both of these postponed the call but for a very soon date).

If no (most of people) - I say some gibberish like (I don't have that written down): "it was about your online presence yada yada" or "because you have so many good reviews on google maps yada yada" or "you have very old domain and it is a loss of potential if you don't use it properly yada yada".

Now I see how unprepared it sounds (and is) my offer. And as you said - layperson will not get it anyway because I don't even try to explain it. <- Important observation here.


Yes, my objective is to book and appointment to explain it properly/do the sales call.


Those questions are crucial and I didn't even think about them. Yea, I need to have prepared a strong offer and memorize it by heart and to make it sound natural, is that what you mean?


No idea. Darn it looks like I don't have right mindset?


Basically my idea is this

So I can follow up to that, if they are not interested I can tell them to at least watch this short video, they can learn some free tips from it, or I don't know. You got me with those questions. I have to think about them for sure.

Thanks Kevin

It looks good.

Maybe you can edit your email, since it looks like the email is very important, because when you call them you rely on them to remember what is in the email.

Eventually when they pay for your service they have to know why and how a better website will bring in more leads, and how you could show evidence that this will likely happen, and eventually what is your advantage over your competitors. If you propose a very logically sound argument and yet lose a prospect, then rest assured that they are really not interested in that at the moment and you did not do anything wrong to lose that deal. If these answers can be answered clearly in your email pitch and subsequently face to faceappointment, that would be good.

 

[Johnny boy]

buy a list of phone numbers ($250 for an entire state)

enter the list into slybroadcast (ringless voicemail service)

record a voice message that makes it sound like you're leaving a voicemail

send out thousands of messages a day and then only speak to people who call you back, eliminating many time wasters or disinterested people.

0 stress and anxiety and more importantly much less wasted time.

 

[WillHurtDontCare]

enter the list into slybroadcast (ringless voicemail service)

Do services like this record the voicemail message for you to listen to?

I've often wondered if the point of those "your car warranty has expired" calls was to get a transcript of the voicemail, get your name from it, then put it in a database to resell.

 

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[Angler]

Hey man,

I'm in a position similar to yours actually. The first time I cold call was maybe last week or 2 weeks previously. So as things are, these are things that recently worked for me and I'm still working on them. You obviously have the theory and game plan down from what I'm reading.

"Good morning, I'm [full name] (optionally I would add that I am from [name of my company]) am I talking with [name of the owner of the company]?
Great. I am calling in connection with the e-mail I recently sent you. Did you read it?"

You know the value of warming up the cold call before jumping into something with more resistance(book a sales conversation/talking about their logistic). I'm not sure what your current mindset is before you pick up the phone, but I knew my biggest problem was that I was trying to sell. I recently I adjusted my mindset to a person who is "not selling", someone who is genuinely there to help the other side of the phone. Now how do I do it? 1) acknowledge it's a cold call and joke that they probably hate getting them (take away their rebuttal before they even send it at you) 2)be honest and say that you're trying to help people, how you do it, and perhaps seeing who might be a good fit (lower the stake of the conversation, and perhaps you can put a qualifier afterwards like you are only working with 1-2 new clients) 3)ask if it make sense to either talk more about a strategy that may help them(set up the 15-30 minute sales call), or go over a project you did recently(either a follow up email or a sales conversation). If you're new like me, for websites/prospect with HUGE reputation, offer to help them FOR FREE(I find that these clients are the one that really needs help and if I can do free work for them 1)remove all risk from the deal 2)show you're so confident in your skills, even if you don't have a big portfolio, to let them taste success for free. Again these free project, assuming you get them results, as I'm seeing it will let you prospect bigger clients that are paid(that's my theory at least). so what's the point of this whole post?
Share with you the paradigm shifts that helped me greatly with the cold out
1)position yourself as the expert and you're there to potentially help them(the more you try to sell, the more resistant is build up, and the less confident you become because they smell your "salesman" stench and start treating you as a dirty telemarketer)-- think does a doctor have to upsell you on a medicine before prescribing it to you, after a diagnosis? No, he knows what he has will help you. Now if someone is upselling you on a medicine, that's when you should be questioning and putting up your guards.
2)see if the other person is a good fit(the point of the cold outreach isn't to pitch, sell, or convince. It's to layout a set of potential opportunity, a set problems, and see if the other person has them or interested in the opportunity, and then perhaps you two can work together)
Again, no set in stone advice here, just a few things that has been helping me.

 

[Itizn]

#1- don't think of it as cold-calling. You are making calls to see who qualifies for your service. Yes, those are basically the same thing, but if you are in your head about it and get nervous before making calls, that little mindset shift should help.

#2- you will be dealing with gatekeepers all the time. In order to talk to a more qualified individual, while also determining whether your service could actually benefit the business, ask the g.k. a question they can't answer easily. I won't list examples, but things like "are you thinking of upgrading your website", won't aid in providing the results you'd like.

#3- during calls, stand up, look in the mirror, and don't break eye contact with yourself.

 

[Johnny boy]

Do services like this record the voicemail message for you to listen to?

I've often wondered if the point of those "your car warranty has expired" calls was to get a transcript of the voicemail, get your name from it, then put it in a database to resell.

it's not a phone call but a voicemail. So the person doesn't answer it. They just call back if they're interested. Then, you could have them call back at any number. It lets you choose the number is appeared to come from. So you could have it sent to an answering service that screens your calls or even someone that answers for you. Could automate your phone lead gen that way

 

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