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Business Marketing No More Cold Calling

Written by: Jay Hamilton-Roth

Article Overview: How do you market yourself to others? Tired of hearing "no" one too many times?

Business Marketing No More Cold Calling

I recently read a book that made me rethink how I market myself to others and wanted to share it with you: "No More Cold Calling" by Joanne Black. The essence of the book is that the odds of selling something to people you don't know ("cold leads") (either by email, phone, ads, or US Mail) is extremely small and therefore expensive. Ms. Black recommends spending time working on your referral networks.

Identify your ideal customer. Ask people you know if they can give you a referral to one or two people that meets your ideal. You don't just want the names of the people - you want them to contact your referral and have them tell about you themselves. If you're thinking, "This seems like I'm asking a favor for my business" - you're right. It's a favor you're asking because people really want to help and be helped. Be sure to respect that someone has entrusted you with a referral and make the favor be mutual. Another approach is to join one of a number of referral-based organizations.

By spending time pro-actively building your referral network it'll result in a higher "close rate" and better clients as well. You can still do your "cold lead" development to keep your branding going, but referrals, she claims, is where it's at.

Here's who I'm looking for: a small business owner who is ready to change his or her day-to-day business practice to leap in front of their competition.

Who are you looking for?

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Related Forum Posts
Re: How to develop sales contacts? - Everyone has the right idea here. Depending on your business, there are different techniques that you could use. For consultants and sales heavy businesses, there are three tactics that I have found especially useful in my business: 1. Attend Networking Events 2. Cold Calling 3. Referral Program 4. Affiliate Program (most successful) The affiliate program was successful for me, as I hooked up with a franchise consultant, and he gave multiple unit businesses that needed my credit card processing services. I highly suggest you hook up with a sales partner, and give him a cut of the monthly revenue.
Re: Direct Mail Postcards - Post cards would be really expensive to send from Japan...but one way to advertise that is not expensive from overseas is by Cold Calling using cheap VoIP equipment. I know Japan has a really good internet connection, so as long as you are willing to stay up late, it might be an option. I cold call from Thailand far, far away from any city using a CDMA wireless internet connection and have had pretty good results. I find tho, that cold calling works best for business 2 business (b2b), rather than b2c products. --matt
Re: Cold Calling - As long as people are out of jobs, you'll probably have a lot of people who say they want to work for straight commission, but if they don't get paid fairly quickly, they usually move on. We've run into that and went through about 500 people (whose resumes looked really good) until we found about 3 good resellers. People just don't want to work for anything. Or they do a good job getting the business but don't do the follow up necessary to make the sale......so they move on thinking they need money NOW. Our business requires all cold calling as well. It's really tough for people to perfect that but there are a lot of good books out there. On is Cold Calling Techniques, by Stephan Schiffman
Re: Fill in the blank: The best decision I ever made with my bus - Focusing on my Internet Marketing Business
My entry - 1. The Best Business Books Ever: The 100 Most Influential Business Books You'll Never Have Time to Read - this is a fascinating book about the history of Business theory, and I'd recommend it to anybody. 2. The Big Book of Small Business: You Don't Have to Run Your Business by the Seat of Your Pants, by Tom Gegax. Ditto. 3. PADI: The Business of Diving Book Okay, so this book won't be of use to anyone who doesn't want to start a scuba store, but I did, and this book was of course invaluable to me in reaching that goal.


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