Is cold calling right for my business?

Cold calling or telemarketing is seen, by a lot of business owners as a good way to market and promote their business. It’s one of those marketing methods that many people try some with great success and others with no results at all. When success occurs though, all business owners want to give it a go, thinking that success can occur for their business too.

But, cold calling isn’t for every business. Let’s have a look at why it works for some businesses and not for others.

We do a lot of cold calling for clients in my business and there are some businesses that it works better for. These are businesses where the industry is very specialised i.e. it’s worked very well for an asbestos company and a company providing medication training to care homes. It also works well for industries where the person we’re talking to knows immediately what we’re talking about and can make a “yes, this is for me” or “no, it’s not for me” decision.

When you do some cold calling, you’ve got to appreciate that you’re calling the company ‘cold’ – that is, they’ve never heard of you and they have no previous relationship with your company. Their job is to get you off the phone as quickly as possible. So, bearing that in mind, it’s no surprise that the businesses this technique works well for fit in the above categories is it?

But what if your business doesn’t fit into the above categories? Does that mean cold calling won’t work for you?

No…cold calling could work as a method for you, but I would recommend that you also use other marketing methods at the same time to increase the chances of it working.

But cold calling might not be suitable for your business for other reasons too. For instance:

1. Out of 100 names, only 1 or 2 people are likely to be interested in what you do (that’s the average).
2. You might hate picking up the phone and talking to potential people
3. If you hate it, you could consider hiring someone to do it for you, but this of course is additional expense.
4. And even if you do hire someone else, given the average, you might consider it a waste of time, energy and money.

So, is cold calling right for your business? Well, of course only you can make the decision. If you’re going to give it a go, my advice is to be realistic – don’t expect miracles; use it in conjunction with other marketing methods (more about this in other articles) and if you personally hate doing it, consider using a professional.

Remember, cold calling is just one method of marketing – there are over 100 other marketing ideas you could use and some may be better suited to your business than others.
Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides advice and help to small businesses on their marketing and to people setting up in business.

Panic not!

I'm sorry to bring up the 'R' (recession) word as I think that the press do enough talking about this for all of us, but I've been speaking to many business owners this week who are a little jittery about it - so I just thought I'd share the following with you which is an article I came across this week from Dan Kennedy (an author in the US). He says:

"At this time, everybody is talking about recession in the US and in England; well last night we drove back to London from Brighton and got back at 10 o'clock. Now, we would never know there was a recession by the streets, because you can't move and we see every pub is full, every restaurant is full; and the same thing is true in our country.

The media's portrayal would have you believe that everybody is huddling in caves with no gasoline for their cars, staving. Not only is it not true, it's profoundly untrue and not because we're not suffering or because some people aren't doing well.

For example, I just read an article the other day about a yacht builder. He builds yachts which sell from $90,000 to $1.6 million, and he's had the biggest back log he's had in 25 years of doing business. The private air travel business is booming both for ownership and charter - just as the regular aviation business is not doing well at all.

So, the first thing to understand is that the same amount of money moves around every day, all the time, regardless of whether the stock market is up or down; regardless of real estate prices up or down. Wherever there is a segment that is going through a down cycle, there is a segment going through an up cycle. In the 10 major urban cities in the US, bicycle sales are up 286% in the last 6 months. Independent bike stores are flooded with customers, because people all of a sudden want to ride a bike instead of getting into a car. So whilst over here, this is down - over there, this is up.

The same amount of money is moving - it's just moving differently. There's this attitude that there's no money, but the same amount of money moves every day - you're just going to have to move around to get into a position to receive it. The first thing is really attitudes and awareness of how much money there is."

So, panic not. Our business is booming so far this year and yours can too!

If you keep doing the same thing...

We've probably all heard the saying that "if you keep doing the same thing, you'll always get the same results", but how many of us think it applies to them?

Well, I realised the other day that this saying applies much more frequently in business than we realise. I was speaking to someone the other day who applies for tenders on a regular basis (if you've not come across tenders before, they are notices usually put out by the Government of work that needs to be done and you're invited to apply for the job).

He mentioned a situation with tenders that he's experienced before - namely that the client is never 100% clear on what it is that they wanted and as a result, he finds it difficult to tell them how he could do the job. When we talked further about this, it turns out that this situation happens a lot, meaning one of two things are happening:

Either -
(a) every potential client that puts out a tender is not clear on what they want (possible, but unlikely) or:
(b) that he and his team find it difficult to interpret what the client wants on paper and need to find a way of ascertaining their needs.

Now, is it just possible that the latter situation is true and that this company could do with some training or approaching tenders in a different way to get to grips with what clients want - how much would it help him in the future?

So, back to your business - are there situations that occur frequently - maybe clients are late payers; perhaps you have problem clients or could there be something else? If so, could it be something YOU'RE doing that is creating the situation? What could you change in your business that would improve or help the situation?

Look carefully at your business. You might be surprised.

Partnering with others

I often talk to small businesses who are looking for a partner in their business. It could be because they don't feel their strengths lie in a particular area i.e. marketing or another popular reason for a business partner is that they generally work well with other people and don't fancy the thought of running a business or doing a project on their own.

Whatever the reason, having a business partner is an attractive option - it's someone to bounce ideas off; work together on a business or a project and of course, you don't need to pay them unless the business or the project takes off.

But, a word of caution for all of you who think having a business partner is the perfect option - it's often not all it's cracked up to be. Firstly, you've got the problem of FINDING a business partner - where do you start? If you don't know someone already, it's really difficult to find someone who can fill that role. I often think that someone should start a recruitment agency style business to match business partners - maybe someone wants to take on the idea!

Then, if you find someone, you're going to have to be really careful to make sure the workload is shared and gets done. What tends to happen is that one person is the 'ideas' person and the other is the 'do-er'. While the 'ideas' person tends to be generally very happy with this arrangement, the 'do-er' will become pretty annoyed very quickly if they find that they're the only person doing the work.

Oh yes, and then there's the making sure both of you are satisfied in your roles too and that you're both getting everything you want out of the relationship. Constant communication is a MUST - as is setting clear expectations from the start.

If you want to go down this line, good luck and give it a go. But remember to keep the lines of communication open.

Should you create a newsletter?

One thing that it seems everyone wants to know at the moment is whether they should create a newsletter for their business, so here are my pros and cons:

Pros

• Newsletters are great if you prepare for them. What I mean by that is if you plan to send out one a month (so 12 a year), write enough content for 12 newsletters in advance so that you don't have to think about what to write each month.
• Newsletters are also great if you are clear about what you want from them. Don't expect newsletters to automatically get you new customers - that comes later. Newsletters are best if you want to keep in front of people and build your credibility.
• If you're not sure where to begin - get some help. We work with lots of small business owners setting them up a template and even writing articles for a year's worth of newsletters. We can even send it out too, so there are people around who can help you.

Cons

• Newsletters can take a lot of time to do. I see a lot of small businesses putting their heart and soul into creating one newsletter only to realise that it takes so much time that they haven't got the energy to do another one - preparing in advance (see above) can really help with this.
• Technology can really put people off creating a new newsletter - they think it's far harder than it is. To create your first one, it's best to create it in Word and then copy and paste the whole thing into Outlook (or whatever package you're using to send out your emails). Learn how to set up a distribution list (click on help in your email package) and then send it out. I'll be going through this in more detail shortly so watch this space.
• Newsletters require dedication - if you hate writing and have absolutely no time to dedicate to writing one, it's probably not for you.

If you decide to create a newsletter, great and good luck. But remember it's only with the dedication of writing and sending it out that you will see results from it, so make that commitment too.