I run a web design business and have been doing so for several years now. I've been doing well with word of mouth and referrals, but I want to get to the point this year where me and my freelancers are getting 1 website per week (and 40 a year). One of the things I regret most in my business is not sticking to cold calling more intensely when I first started a long time ago. There's just something about the 1-on-1 sales aspect of it that informs your decisions as you graduate from sales and into marketing and past that, branding. (The way I see it a business goes from primarily being sales-focused, to being marketing-focused, to being branding-focused. You're doing all 3 at once oftentimes, but you won't see a 1-man show hire a large branding agency and you won't see coca cola cold-calling potential customers).
Cold-calling has always made me nervous and I've that's why I've decided to challenge myself for the month of February. If you look at my post history, I had a January challenge that I've successfully completed (almost), but it wasn't related to my business. For February I'll do something similar, but I'll also do a cold-calling challenge.
So every day I'm going to call 1 more person than I did the day before. I'm using a paid directory to find high-quality leads.
The last day of February will be 22 people that I'm going to cold-call. That's definitely doable. I'm going to count calls that don't go through also. They're high-quality leads though. I know it's still a bit of a cheat to count those, but I'm lucky enough that I still do have website projects to work on and a steady base of referrals, so I don't need to go hardcore with the cold-calling.
I thought I'd start early, because what's 1 call going to do? Btw, that's the mentality that gets you to take action. Break down a scary action into the smallest possible task and then build from there. I clearly couldn't do 10 calls a day from 0, but I can definitely do 1. And I suspect that each day is going to feel as easy as the day before, since it's just going to be 1 more (up until a limit where time really becomes an issue).
Day 1:
Called someone with their website down and a simple 'website coming soon' page. They seemed open to the idea but I could hear noise in the background, and they asked if they could call me back. I said sure, knowing that I'll just call them back again next week if they don't call me back.
Cold-calling has always made me nervous and I've that's why I've decided to challenge myself for the month of February. If you look at my post history, I had a January challenge that I've successfully completed (almost), but it wasn't related to my business. For February I'll do something similar, but I'll also do a cold-calling challenge.
So every day I'm going to call 1 more person than I did the day before. I'm using a paid directory to find high-quality leads.
The last day of February will be 22 people that I'm going to cold-call. That's definitely doable. I'm going to count calls that don't go through also. They're high-quality leads though. I know it's still a bit of a cheat to count those, but I'm lucky enough that I still do have website projects to work on and a steady base of referrals, so I don't need to go hardcore with the cold-calling.
I thought I'd start early, because what's 1 call going to do? Btw, that's the mentality that gets you to take action. Break down a scary action into the smallest possible task and then build from there. I clearly couldn't do 10 calls a day from 0, but I can definitely do 1. And I suspect that each day is going to feel as easy as the day before, since it's just going to be 1 more (up until a limit where time really becomes an issue).
Day 1:
Called someone with their website down and a simple 'website coming soon' page. They seemed open to the idea but I could hear noise in the background, and they asked if they could call me back. I said sure, knowing that I'll just call them back again next week if they don't call me back.
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