Cold calling
If you’re reading this ‘musing’ you’re probably the owner of a business, involved in running it or responsible for generating sales or enquiries.
You’ll probably have had to do some ‘cold calling’ at some time.
Do you enjoy the challenge or, like me, do you avoid it like the plague? I hate doing things like this. Although my many charms and boyish good looks usually guarantee me a good reception when I speak with people face to face (*ahem*), I have little confidence in the likelihood I’ll get a good reception when I phone people I don’t know.
Well a recent activity has given me more phone confidence.
I’m now a member of the committee of the East Cornwall branch of the FSB and in the process of arranging a ‘new members’ event at Pentillie castle on the Tamar river. The committee is new, although some of the members are old hands at the regional and branch activities. As a committee we agreed to call recent members as a follow up to an e-mailshot we sent out about the event.
Although we had their basic details, each call was essentially ‘cold’. Yes, they were members but some join only for the legal helpline & protection and others for different basic services. The local FSB also sends out quite a few e-mails to members about national & local issues so ‘e-mail fatigue’ is common.
I spent about an hour calling a number of names on my list and, to my surprise, everyone I spoke to was pleasant and happy to talk.
Now I appreciate that if I was calling to ask them to buy a new web site or Google-ranking improvement service from us they probably wouldn’t have been anywhere near as nice. The point is though that I’m much more likely to ‘be up for’ making sales or promotional calls in the future.
A possible additional benefit is that during the interaction with these members I have needed to provide contact details and these contain the company name. If I come across anybody looking for some Internet marketing they’ll already be familiar with someone providing those services.
For any ex-corporate worker or irrepressible optimist out there (C M-P?) that problem or pain, masquerading as an ‘opportunity’ really did produce a positive result.
What started as a chore has provided some unexpected benefits.
