It just came to me: I hardly ever hear of any young entrepreneurs cold calling for their startups. You know, picking up the phone and calling people who you don’t know in order to solicit their business. Probably one of the best examples of cold calling is what stockbrokers do all day long – make 500+ calls a day to try and convince you to invest in the next best stock of the world.
I’ll be honest, I absolutely hate cold calling and I’m sure that many young entrepreneurs share that same outlook. I know that many businesses need to cold call and it’s the natural way to do business for many sectors, but what about young entrepreneurs?
Maybe I have a biased outlook — okay, I do — because most of the young entrepreneurs I know are running Internet-based ventures and mainly rely on emails and newsletters to communicate with their existing clients and to find new ones.
Cold calling has never sat well with me. I try to put myself in shoes of the person being called and I ask myself: “would I want someone to call me out-of-the-blue without my consent?” No, not really.
I think this new era of young entrepreneurship has ushered in a new way communicating and reaching out to clients and cold calling is out and the Internet / warm calling is in.
Warm calling is what I bet most young entrepreneurs are doing (after emailing). Warm calling is placing a call to someone who is expecting the call – someone that you already know or that knows of your company beforehand.
Let’s figure out how young entrepreneurs are communicating. Post your means of getting new clients and communicating with your existing clients below in our poll:
I don’t just call random people, but i do get a lot of leads that I don’t know, but I will call and say “Hey, so-and-so told me to call you, said you have this problem or issue that I think we can help with” and their reaction at that point is usually similar to one of someone that a do actually know. So i usually am not looked at as a problem, but rather a solution.
Old-school cold calling is a no-no in today’s marketplace. If you haven’t read it already, I recommend you check out the classic Seth Godin book “Permission Marketing.” It’s a real eye opener.
“Dialing for dollars” (whether for sales or exposure) still works. It may not mesh with marketing or sales approaches by the Seth Godin’s of the world, but that certainly does not mean that it’s not effective.
Pete, I agree, I think that it’s still a viable way to conduct business. But for the future… not so sure…
Yup, lots of cold calling. It absolutely works. If you are calling people who hold value in what you have to offer, it is very simple to make cold calls. You get over the self-conscious stage pretty quick. I do B2B calling to people who usually appreciate what I have to say and offer. Never hurts to tell them it is your company that you started. They being business owners can usually relate to that.
Hey Jeff,
Thanks for your input. Glad to see that cold calling is still working out for people. Right on!