Pet peeve number two from drip campaigns – if I engage with you, that’s an invitation to respond!  Positively, negatively, whatever – it deserves a reply.  Otherwise, you’re not building a relationship, you’re spamming.  If you’re only replying to the emails where people are asking for an immediate purchase, that’s not drip marketing, that’s not social marketing – that’s just dumb luck.  It will pay off short term, but won’t help you create what drip marketing is intended to create – relationships and customers where there may not be an immediate opportunity.

At Cold Calls, we believe cold calling is one piece of your sales and marketing strategy – not the only piece.  We’re a cold calling company, and we use other methods, too.  If  you think a direct mail campaign alone will build your business, I think you’re in for a rude awakening.  Don’t believe the hype.  Pair your drip marketing campaigns with outbound calling, social media support and anything else that will get your name out there over and over again.

Talk to me about how you can make your marketing dollars go further and work faster.  Spoiler alert:  cold calling.

Without tipping our cards too much, I’d like to talk a little bit about what led us to this point.

We have an interesting challenge when it comes to CRM strategy.  We work in probably a dozen different CRM systems for our clients, and I’m including Excel and Google Docs in that count.   Without exception, every system we use has some major limitations – even The Big S.  So, everyone comes up with a way to make their system work a little faster and easier for them.

Here at Cold Calls, when we on-board a new client where we’ll be working in their CRM system, the first thing we do is spend some time figuring out how they are (and most often ARE NOT) using their CRM system to support their sales initiatives.   What we’ll usually find is that every sales rep has their own way of doing things – and sometimes that doesn’t even include adding information to the CRM system.  The amount of potential sales revenue a company loses when a sales rep  isn’t required to show his work is pretty hard to measure – but it’s something you should consider.  If your sales reps are only adding their current deals to the pipeline, and not their day-to-day activities, you are asking for all kinds of trouble.  To put it quite frankly, most CRM systems do the opposite of what you want them to.  You buy a solution and you get a problem.

If you have one sales rep, and you’ll only ever have one sales rep, and she won’t ever leave or retire, you probably don’t need to worry about any of this.  If, however, you are a growing company, adding new sales reps all the time, this should be of the utmost interest to you.  Listen up:  with CRM, if you are failing to plan, you are planning to fail.  To get any value out of your CRM investment, you need to ensure that you’re providing your team with guidelines for consistency.  Guidelines that make sense for your business processes, but also guidelines that are going to make your sales reps USE your system.  You want your sales team selling, not entering data for their entire shift. If your sales reps are creating work arounds to get things done faster (not better, just faster) so that they can get back on the phones, your long term numbers are going to take a hit.  Why?  When that rep leaves, their work around tips leave with them.  Will you know that FU6 means follow up in six months?  Or that NN means “not now” and that there is a 6 month follow up scheduled?  Or if they’re not calendaring their follow ups, will you know anything at all about that account?  Nope.  You won’t. So anything that isn’t imminent is lost.

One tip? Here at Cold Calls, we ask our reps to use the same abbreviations for everything.  We have a long list of them, and they are searchable, because we’ve got user defined fields in our systems (ours, and our clients) that are mandatory.   I can search in notes, calls, leads, opportunities, contacts, accounts – all by the same codes to find the same information.  Our potentials are all weighted using the exact same wording and percentages.

If anyone gets hit by a bus on the way to work today, another caller could step right in and know exactly what the state of the union is on any of our campaigns.  Is your CRM helping you or just creating barriers to success?  You might need a new CRM system.  Or just a new system for your CRM.  Give me a call, I love to chat process!

I am thrilled to be able to offer a wider range of sales services. This partnership has allowed me to scale my services incredibly rapidly. I am looking forward to telling you more about it in the very near future!

To learn more about The Eureka Project, please visit www.eurekaproject.ca

Happy Selling!

For the last twelve years, Cold Calls has been an exclusively home-based operation, working with both seasoned lead generators and new talent who also worked from their homes. As of July 1, 2012, Cold Calls has a new office in Toronto and a new Business Development Officer. Please join me in welcoming Rob Szabo to the Cold Calls Lead Generation team. Rob’s background includes extensive sales training experience with a focus on Salesforce.com and other industry specific CRM tools. His area of expertise is niche-industry complex sales and marketing strategy. He specializes in what I would describe as the translation process between engineering and sales — taking the document that says “here’s all the great stuff this does” and creating a document that says “here’s why that matters to you, Mr. Potential Customer Who Doesn’t Have an Engineering Degree!”. Rob will be responsible for finding, planning and testing new campaigns. If you’d like to buy him a beer, which I’m sure he would enjoy, you can email him at sales@coldcalls.ca. You’ll find him in Toronto’s upstart hotspot, Liberty Village.

The bulk of our operations and sales lead generation team remains home-based. We will now have the option of offering dedicated space to talented local callers who may not have home offices, or who just prefer going in to the office every day.

I’d like to take a moment to say “Thank You!” to all my past and current clients for your repeat business, referrals and testimonials. I could not have done this without you, and I appreciate your trust and loyalty.

And a quick plug for new or recurring fall campaigns – if you haven’t yet retained your calling hours for September, just a reminder that we’re getting close to cut-off for fall launch.

If you’re a regular follower of the Cold Calls Lead Generation blog, you can look forward to more lead generation tips, tricks and rants when I return to my desk full time in September. Until then….

Happy Selling!

I’ve posted advertisements in several markets, and had a lot of replies. Sadly, I have not received a lot of replies that I would respond to. This is not a post about cold calling tips, but rather a post aimed at those who are potentially looking to work with us – or in this industry – or anywhere, really.

First, I can’t tell you how many emails I’ve received that I don’t even open because of the senders email address. If your email address is anything other than your first and last name, it’s time to get a new email account. They’re free, you can have as many as you want. Save “rokstarrr69@hotmail.com” for your college buddies or internet dating profile – don’t apply for jobs with it!!!

This is my business, this is how I pay my mortgage and feed my kids. I can’t hire someone who still uses “partymonster@gmail.com” as their primary account. What message is your email address sending?

(I made up those email addresses, apologies if they belong to you!)

This goes for couples who share email addresses as well. Get your own email address for job hunting. Don’t email your resume from your husbands Hotmail account, it makes you appear as if you don’t actually know your way around the internet – maybe not a big deal for some roles, but for a home based role that requires you to use the internet all day every day, it is a factor.

After twenty years of alternating between contracts and actual employment, I can say with certainty that my resume is not one that appeals to recruiters. I change jobs or contracts at least once a year, and I always have. That’s one of the reasons I started this business – I only really like the hunt. That makes it imperative for me to back up my CV with numbers and references. How much business did I generate? How many new clients did that result in? How much actual revenue did I add to the pipeline? Without anything to show that I was effective every year, my CV looks like I just can’t hold a job for very long, whereas in actual reality, there is a finite number of leads for me to work before my services are no longer required. You may not have the same CV issue as I do – but take a look – do you look like an efficient go-getter always looking for the next big challenge? Or do you look like a job-hopper? My recruiter friends always said this was the kiss of death, and now that I review resumes for my company, I understand. Make an argument in your CV for why you are going to be a great asset to a company – even if it’s only for a year!

What else? Cover letters! I don’t have time to read a 2 page cover letter. And I don’t have any interest in reading one that I know is a template. (Sometimes I know that because you forgot to change the company name in the cover letter, or highlighted skills I didn’t ask about, or referenced a job site I’m not advertising on…)One or two paragraphs that indicate you know who we are and what we do and how you can help is sufficient. Please, spell check it. I ask for a cover letter because I want to see what your correspondence looks like. You’ll be sending emails from our clients – I need to know you can compose a thoughtful and attention-getting letter.

Final thought. I will hire enthusiasm over experience on many campaigns. If you have experience dealing with the public via telephone and good references, and you’re looking for a home-based role that is flexible and well compensated (starting wage here is $20.00/hour) and you aren’t afraid to pick up the phone, please send us your CV and cover letter. This is a great job for someone who has left the work force to raise a family, a great option for anyone recently retired who isn’t ready to golf all day just yet, a fantastic opportunity for expats abroad or those who just moved with a spouse to another country, or a great way to supplement your own self employment income.

Happy Selling, and Happy New Year!

I liken unsolicited “warm up” emails to spam. And worse than spam, which is just form-lettered out by technology, sales reps spend a lot of time composing these never-to-be-opened notes. Why? Lately, the reasoning sounds like this: “prospects are more likely to take your call if you’ve already tried to connect with them”. False. Prospects are more likely to open your emails if you’ve already called them. And more than once. The cold call is still the most effective way to begin a relationship with a prospect. Here’s the best way I’ve found to create a flow that leads to an initial discussion. I won’t give away all my secrets – I use some pretty precise wording in all my messages – but I’m happy to share my approach.

And may I say this? If you’re trying to penetrate an account at the C-level that you haven’t COMPLETELY qualified, you’re doing nothing but ruining the playing field for all of us. If you’re fact finding, researching, wondering if it might be a fit….do us all a favour and start lower down the chain of command. I like to think about it like online dating. (If you’ve never tried online dating, consider yourself fortunate, it’s a jungle out there!) A woman posts an ad stating she is interested in meeting a man who is, let’s say, 5′10″ or taller, who has dark hair, plays sports and likes cats. Inevitably, the woman will receive 100 inquiries. Four of whom fit her interests, and 96 of whom send her a note saying “I know you said you were looking for x, BUT…”. After ten of these, the woman abandons her online dating account entirely, and never gets around to meeting the four that may have worked out. That’s what calling unqualified accounts at the C level does to cold callers. It leads to C level executives ignoring ALL calls.

I digress. Here’s the details I promised you before the rant.

1. Initial Mapping cold call – do they answer their own phone, do they have an assistant, is there a receptionist? Figure out how many hoops you’re going to have to jump through. You’ll have a different strategy with a gatekeeper. Let’s assume for this discussion, no gatekeeper. Leave a brief “sorry I missed you” voicemail. Company name, your name, your company website and the purpose for your call. Say you’ll call back on X day.

2. Call back one – no answer? Leave a more compelling message. A statement of experience. A reference to a recent successful project. Reference your last call, tell them when to expect your next call, leave them your website address and your phone number.

3. Call back two – no answer? Reference your last phone call. NOW YOU CAN SEND AN EMAIL! Reference the email in your voice mail – tell them what the content of the email is – “pdf copy of an article published in x, case study about project x”, and let them know you are going to suggest a few times that would be convenient for you for a callback. Tell them to look for the subject line. Leave your phone number.

4. Here’s the email – after four phone call attempts referencing you, your company and your goal (a discussion). The email – ideally a template so you’re not wasting any valuable dialing time slogging them out – should recommend two times, two weeks from now, that you are available to speak. Ask them to confirm the time via email, or to send you an invitation with a time that would work better for them. Brief. The subject line of the email should reference your voice mail, and the date you left the voice mail. The email itself should clearly state, right of the bat, that you were sorry you were unable to reach them by phone.

5. Wait a week.

6. Call again, trying to confirm one of the 2 times you have suggested – indicate that you will call at x time on x date (one that was suggested) unless they send you an email suggesting a better time.

7. No response? Call when you said you would.

8. No answer? Send another email, asking politely if it’s bad timing or if you should be focusing your efforts on another person within the organization.

9. No answer? Start going through the organization looking for someone else to pitch.

10. Start the process over again once you’ve found that person.

Always interested in hearing about how other people are approaching their cold calling – if you’ve tried something that works great, share it! If you tried this, and it worked for you – email me and let me know. Success stories make my day.

Happy Selling!

Sharing knowledge and experience online makes us all better. It helps prospective clients make better decisions, and it helps us, as providers, ensure that we’re attracting a client base that we will excel at servicing.

I don’t have competitors, I have peers. I am confident that when I call one of my peers with a problem I can’t solve, they will roll up their sleeves and dig in with me until we find a new way to do things. I am confident that they’re not going to steal my clients. Why? One: you can’t steal happy clients. And, two: if I thought that one of my peers could do a better job than I could, they would already have the contract.

I can’t say this enough times — do what you do best, and get better at it. I have peers who love LOVE to run metrics. They provide daily updates, they expect daily updates from their team, and they do it all in Excel. That would drive me insane. The minute online CRM hit the market I was all over it. I want to work with clients who will log on and pull their own metrics. When a potential client calls me and I hear “daily updates” I know exactly who I’m going to refer them to. And guess what? When he gets a call from someone who works exclusively in Salesforce.com, he calls me. If we considered ourselves competitors, we both would have ended up working contracts we really didn’t enjoy. Instead – same amount of money in our pockets at the end of the day, and we both got the type of client we’re best suited to work with.

This brings me back to collaboration. Put it out there. Let the internet know what you’re looking for, who you work with, what you love to do. Share your best with not only your prospective clients, but with your peers! Thanks to this blog, and some postings on LinkedIn, I have had peers call to offer me contracts that were a poor fit for their firms, but a great fit for my skill set.

The most successful firms in our space right now (if you’re measuring success in dollars) are the ones that are supporting the success of the entire industry. They’re making us all better. We get to learn from their considerable experience while they market to new clients. It’s totally win-win.

Contribute to the industry as a whole, and reap the benefits. Stop competing, and start collaborating. It will pay off.

So what can I create?  Consistency and process.  I can properly build and maintain your pipeline, and teach you how to do the same.  I can fill the funnel.  I can help you deliver the right message to the right person all day, every day.  I can be as enthusiastic on call 100 as you were on call four.  I can support you in getting the deliverables out when you said you would.  I can follow up thoroughly, as promised, on time.  And then I can track it, measure it, and hone it.  And repeat.  Ad infinitum.

Our callers work hard to keep their contracts.  We aren’t a high pressure environment, as we’re not tied to quotas.  We’re committed to professional prospecting and “showing our work”.  Our process is fully transparent to our clients at all times, and that’s really important because lead generation isn’t solely about the appointments secured at the time of the campaign.  What you are paying for is the campaign process.  Not campaign performance.  Some campaigns will hit hard, hit big, and hit often.  We love those campaigns, they make us look like superstars while we just do what we do.  If we’re doing our job, yours should be significantly easier, and you should close more sales.  That’s your performance linked to our process, not the other way around!

Here is why the process is important.  Properly done, lead generation puts your company in front of hundreds of decision makers.  It gets your contact information to them, and their contact information to you.  It cleans the garbage out of your database, and replaces it with accurate, up to date, prospect provided data.  It gives you a snapshot of your entire sales cycle.  It gives you a full pipeline.  It gives you valuable industry insight.  And it ideally gives you sales.  And if you’re not getting sales, this data should be able to tell you why not.  What verticals failed?  What point of entry is too difficult to hit?  What pieces of the puzzle are missing?  Is the price wrong?  Is the message?  If we just handed you an appointment (and some companies still want that), and that appointment didn’t lead to a sale, what would you change?  How would you fix your approach?  What would you do next?

I want people to start understanding the value of beautifully executed lead generation. It isn’t magic.  If you can’t sell it, we can’t sell it.  We help you with developing a process that you should be able to take in-house at any time without any assistance from us at hand off.  If you’re only buying meetings, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to take both your sales process and your sales performance up a notch.

Are you going to try it? Post here about your success, or email me! Spread the word on Twitter, Linkedin or any other social networking sites you belong to. Together, we can make a huge difference!

Have a joyous holiday season, and Happy Selling!