4 ms·

great article. we ran an experiment over the summer with cold calling as well, as many people thought it would be a successful sales strategy for us. being in t

great article. we ran an experiment over the summer with cold calling as well, as many people thought it would be a successful sales strategy for us. being in the payment processing world, we knew business owners were constantly being cold called and most likely did not want another point of contact. however, we wanted some data to show people who made that suggestion in the future. our hypothesis was correct: our conversion rate was nill, even when tinkering with the sales script. i think the variation is due to the fact that the target customers in this article were not as heavily cold called as our target market. so, it made them more open minded. here's a link that shows our data: http://feefighters.com/blog/950-and-1500-calls-tales-in-telemarketing/ http://feefighters.com/blog/950-and-1500-calls-tales-in-tele...

ericabiz 15y ago
I agree with the two posters who've already replied; your strategy didn't work not because cold calling doesn't work in your niche, but because your pitch was mediocre at best. (I also know personally someone who built a big merchant account business from cold calling, so it IS effective in your industry.) Take a look at this book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470567023/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=ericadotbiz-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=0470567023 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470567023/ref=as_li_ss_tl?... -- it's the best book I've ever read on cold calling, and is helping me get over my fears about it (I plan to start a big cold calling push in January.) You'll quickly see the difference between your pitches and the ones outlined in the book. And I also recommend that you do cold-calling yourself instead of outsourcing it. You'll learn a lot more quickly that way. Once you have an effective script, then you can outsource.
veesahni 15y ago
The OP made the call as a founder who deeply cares and is trying to make a connection with the person on the other end of the line. In your experiment, the calls were being made by staff of a third party, which raises concern as to whether the caller is interested, speaks with appropriate animation and can evoke needed interest and emotion by the receiver of the call. Furthermore, I don't think the value proposition of your scripted pitch was significant enough. The OP went out of the way to try to create a valuable win-win scenario without it sounding like a sales pitch. If I were on the receiving end of your script and didn't know of your organization, I'd assume the ebook would be filled a bunch of fluff and a hidden sales pitch for your product. Potential value for information that I couldn't just otherwise find on Google is low.
- startupstella 15y ago
  Those are great points, but the question becomes a matter of the stage of the company. Clearly, the author still benefits from making cold calls, whereas in most cases, this starts out as a reality but becomes less and less as the company grows. Also, we know our ebook is a potent conversion tool. I think it stills comes down to the question of industry marketing practices: we've found inbound marketing to be much more effective because of the saturation in cold calling.
vidarh 15y ago
Those are absolutely horrible pitches. I'm surprised they didn't bomb worse. My first job was to cold call on behalf of a charity for the blind, and I've also done a telesales job for short time, and got training in it. First thing we learned the first day in both jobs was the way of structure a call to get interest. There were of course big differences, but a few very significant common takeaways. Incidentally there's a lot in common with this and being a good conversationalist or even generating attraction: * You need to offer value. That means, you never ask to get anything off the bat. On the contrary, you seek to get them to feel that you're going to offer value. * You set up drama that they want resolved. E.g. you offer insight about some situation that is emotional to the listener. For the charity for the blind, this was of course about creating sympathy. For the telesales, it was about describing some scenario that corresponded to a need the customer felt strongly about, such as spending more time helping their children read (the company sold children's books). * You get the listener invested and hopefully make them contribute details to the scenario from their own background; e.g. explaining the problems with their business, for example, and starting to look for ways you can help them. * You make statements that gets implicit buy-in from the listener unless they object. People don't like to object, and if this is done subtly, people will find themselves accepting your statements even when they initially disagreed with them. * Then you give the customer hope that you can help them make things better. You've established yourself as having high value to them. If you do it right they will ask you what they can do or how they can buy your product. The overall structure is to start on a friendly high note, create drama and tension and bring the emotions down, then resolve the tension and offer up a solution while bringing the emotions up. Think Hollywood tear-jerker. The scripts you quote on that page fails in that they don't set up a conflict or any tension that you can resolve for them. Just some bland statements about "cutting the nonsense". I'd have done something more along the lines of "I'm sure that like lots of other [small,big, type-of business] businesses (implicit buy-in to your statement, putting them in a group they identify with), you've been hit with chargeback fees that were totally bogus [addressing a conflict] and have had to fight with your processor to recover funds and (more similar stuff)... (ask how it's impacted their business, and show them you sympathize). What do you think you can do about it? (listen to their feedback). Well, we have a report that helps you solve some of these problems. (wait for them to ask what it costs) We'll e-mail it you for free." On top of this, voice, intonation and the level of excitement you manage to project makes a massive difference - the biggest problem in the training at both jobs was to go from sounding like you read from a script (because you did) to projecting well enough that you came across as believable. In my own experience, this latter is so much easier when you call yourself, rather than outsource it. (EDIT: fixed formatting)

ericabiz 15y ago

I agree with the two posters who've already replied; your strategy didn't work not because cold calling doesn't work in your niche, but because your pitch was mediocre at best. (I also know personally someone who built a big merchant account business from cold calling, so it IS effective in your industry.) Take a look at this book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470567023/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=ericadotbiz-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=0470567023 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0470567023/ref=as_li_ss_tl?... -- it's the best book I've ever read on cold calling, and is helping me get over my fears about it (I plan to start a big cold calling push in January.) You'll quickly see the difference between your pitches and the ones outlined in the book. And I also recommend that you do cold-calling yourself instead of outsourcing it. You'll learn a lot more quickly that way. Once you have an effective script, then you can outsource.

veesahni 15y ago

The OP made the call as a founder who deeply cares and is trying to make a connection with the person on the other end of the line. In your experiment, the calls were being made by staff of a third party, which raises concern as to whether the caller is interested, speaks with appropriate animation and can evoke needed interest and emotion by the receiver of the call. Furthermore, I don't think the value proposition of your scripted pitch was significant enough. The OP went out of the way to try to create a valuable win-win scenario without it sounding like a sales pitch. If I were on the receiving end of your script and didn't know of your organization, I'd assume the ebook would be filled a bunch of fluff and a hidden sales pitch for your product. Potential value for information that I couldn't just otherwise find on Google is low.

startupstella 15y ago
Those are great points, but the question becomes a matter of the stage of the company. Clearly, the author still benefits from making cold calls, whereas in most cases, this starts out as a reality but becomes less and less as the company grows. Also, we know our ebook is a potent conversion tool. I think it stills comes down to the question of industry marketing practices: we've found inbound marketing to be much more effective because of the saturation in cold calling.

vidarh 15y ago

Those are absolutely horrible pitches. I'm surprised they didn't bomb worse. My first job was to cold call on behalf of a charity for the blind, and I've also done a telesales job for short time, and got training in it. First thing we learned the first day in both jobs was the way of structure a call to get interest. There were of course big differences, but a few very significant common takeaways. Incidentally there's a lot in common with this and being a good conversationalist or even generating attraction: * You need to offer value. That means, you never ask to get anything off the bat. On the contrary, you seek to get them to feel that you're going to offer value. * You set up drama that they want resolved. E.g. you offer insight about some situation that is emotional to the listener. For the charity for the blind, this was of course about creating sympathy. For the telesales, it was about describing some scenario that corresponded to a need the customer felt strongly about, such as spending more time helping their children read (the company sold children's books). * You get the listener invested and hopefully make them contribute details to the scenario from their own background; e.g. explaining the problems with their business, for example, and starting to look for ways you can help them. * You make statements that gets implicit buy-in from the listener unless they object. People don't like to object, and if this is done subtly, people will find themselves accepting your statements even when they initially disagreed with them. * Then you give the customer hope that you can help them make things better. You've established yourself as having high value to them. If you do it right they will ask you what they can do or how they can buy your product. The overall structure is to start on a friendly high note, create drama and tension and bring the emotions down, then resolve the tension and offer up a solution while bringing the emotions up. Think Hollywood tear-jerker. The scripts you quote on that page fails in that they don't set up a conflict or any tension that you can resolve for them. Just some bland statements about "cutting the nonsense". I'd have done something more along the lines of "I'm sure that like lots of other [small,big, type-of business] businesses (implicit buy-in to your statement, putting them in a group they identify with), you've been hit with chargeback fees that were totally bogus [addressing a conflict] and have had to fight with your processor to recover funds and (more similar stuff)... (ask how it's impacted their business, and show them you sympathize). What do you think you can do about it? (listen to their feedback). Well, we have a report that helps you solve some of these problems. (wait for them to ask what it costs) We'll e-mail it you for free." On top of this, voice, intonation and the level of excitement you manage to project makes a massive difference - the biggest problem in the training at both jobs was to go from sounding like you read from a script (because you did) to projecting well enough that you came across as believable. In my own experience, this latter is so much easier when you call yourself, rather than outsource it. (EDIT: fixed formatting)