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Friday, September 30, 2011
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A marketing strategy that focuses on getting found by customers, where the customers find you through various search engine marketing efforts, social media, or word-of-mouth referrals.
It has all the markings of a lose-lose situation. Quote too high a price and you probably won’t ever hear back from him. But if you under-estimate the cost, you’ll look shady if you actually bid for the job and your proposal comes in higher. So what’s a poor web designer to do? Bite the bullet and throw out a number? Or tell him you can’t quote a price without knowing exactly what he needs? Here are a couple of approaches you can try...
Several years ago, the company I worked for held its international sales meeting, and reps from all over the globe came to our corporate headquarters in Los Angeles. I was asked to stand up in front of the group and make a presentation. Two of the reps from Australia approached afterwards to tell me they thought I’d done a good job. One of them expressed his fear of public speaking with this statement...
In my last post, I promised to show you if and how cold-calling can generate new clients. As I mentioned in that post, the company I work for uses cold-calling and cold-canvassing as its primary means of getting business. That doesn’t mean we ignore other marketing methods. It’s just that we don’t just sit around waiting for people to respond to our mailers. We have a sales force on the street and a telemarketing team on the phones actively looking for new business.
In 2008, Eyes on Sales featured an article entitled, “Why Decision Makers Hate Cold-Calls.” If you want to be convinced that cold-calling doesn’t work, that it’s a colossal waste of time, and that it’s the most “ineffective and costly” way to find prospects, then go ahead and skip what I’m about to say and go directly to that article. (Just be sure to read the numerous comments from people who vehemently disagree with the author.)
On the other hand, if you’d like to explore how cold-calling can be a great way to find new clients, then stick around, because that’s exactly what I’m going to do.