Small Business Marketing Sucks

In my latest SitePoint blog post, I finally reveal what stapling bacon to your face has to do with cold-calling and I explain how to overcome the single biggest obstacle you’ll face when it comes to actually doing it.

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...

Read the full story at SitePoint.

In my last SitePoint article, I promised to show you if and how cold-calling can generate new clients. In this article, I’ll tell you why it works so well and reveal a deep, dark secret behind it (hint: it stinks).

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.

Get the full story on SitePoint.

After publishing an article on their website, the folks at SitePoint have asked me to be one of their business core bloggers. I’ll be publishing about 6 blog posts a month. Here’s the first:

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.

Full story on SitePoint.

I’d like to think I’m a good boss, but I’m certain that at least a few of the people working for me hate me this week.

That’s because I’ve been subjecting them to some extensive training on setting sales appointments. The first step was to develop an effective script. Everyone worked hard coming up with a good one, and today we completed our final drafts. I gave everyone until Monday to make any last-minute tweaks and to practice, practice, practice before launch day.

But a few of the more rebellious ones decided to start using the new script right away. In the first hour after today’s meeting, 3 people set appointments with their new script; and one person used a portion of his to overcome an objection and book an appointment. Way to go, team!

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing some of our techniques and strategies, successes and failures. Regardless of how you’re marketing, I think you’ll read something to help in your endeavors.

In my last post, I took issue with a particular sales consultant on what I considered to be blanket statements he made regarding the so-called ineffectiveness of cold calling.

In all fairness to his expertise, the author did outline an effective alternative to cold calling:

Once I’ve identified a company to approach about any of my services, I do my homework. I call three or four of the company’s salespeople. My hope is to speak to a salesperson that has been with the company for only a short time, to another who is an old hand with the company, and one who is a top producer.

When I speak to these individuals, I am upfront with the purpose of my call. I let them know who I am, why I’m calling them, what my intentions are regarding calling the company about my services, and request their permission to ask them some questions about the company and their experience with the company.

After asking a series of questions, he gains permission to mention their name. Typically, he says, the individuals not only give permission but will encourage him to call, turning it from a cold call to a warm call to a referral. He goes on to say:

When I do call the company, I use the introductions provided by the salespeople to break the ice and gain credibility. Those introductions turn the call into a conversation about their needs and observations rather than a sales pitch.

This approach works well for him because he is selling a relatively high-dollar service (sales training) to large companies. But what if you are selling a lower-cost item to smaller companies that don’t even have a single sales person, much less three or four, to contact? What works for the author cannot be applied across-the-board to every industry. Having only a hammer doesn’t automatically make every problem a nail.

To illustrate, the company I work for is a small, independent Yellow Page publisher. Our average sale is less than $1,200 and our typical customer is a mom-and-pop shop. Besides selling new business, our sales reps are expected to call on several hundred existing customers to renew their advertising. Our sales cycle is short (about a week-and-a-half from appointment to signed contract). It would be too time-consuming and not cost-effective enough to spend time researching every potential company that we call on. Incorporating the author’s method into our sales process would be sales suicide.

For companies such as ours (and maybe yours), cold-calling and cold-canvassing are the only available options our reps have for prospecting new business. Our short sales cycle doesn’t afford time for networking and relationship building. Even for businesses that can afford to try other methods, cold calling is still an effective tool to include in your marketing arsenal.

In case you didn’t get the memo, it appears that cold calling is offically “dead” – at least according to one expert. In an article entitled No, You Don’t Have to Cold Call – Ever, sales consultant Paul McCord had this to say about cold calling:

In my opinion, there is hardly a more worthless use of time and energy than cold calling.

Cold calling is time consuming for the salesperson and it immediately signifies to the recipient of the call that the person making the call isn’t an expert in their field because most prospects assume that true experts aren’t sitting at a desk pounding the phone.

Really, Paul?

He goes on to suggest that, while cold calling may generate some business, it's not the most effective way to find prospects.

There’s just one problem with his statement: My department generated nearly half-million dollars in revenue last year... strictly by cold calling.

In one particularly good (pre-recession) month, here’s how 3 appointment setters did:

• Decision-makers spoken to: 230
• Appointments set: 86
• Appointments sold: 27, resulting in $43,000 in revenue

That means we set 1 appointment for every 2.7 decision-makers we spoke with, and our sales team closed 31% of those appointments.

Admittedly, that was an above-average month. But on average, my best telemarketer sets 1 appointment for every 33 dials, and he sets over 60 appointments a month. Pretty good results from something that’s such a “worthless use of time and energy,” wouldn’t you say?