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Joe Diaz
New Member
I've found that you get much more business from networking than mass mail or cold calls. You seem to get better returns on the amount of effort you put into it. Join the local Chamber of Commerce (or other groups) and show up to events or simply become involved in your community. Other business owners that do this are in it for similar reasons. One example: I met my real estate agent at a CoC after hours party, he was great when buying my house, and he buys signs from us all the time. He is just one example. We have met a lot of great business owners through networking, and have done business with the majority of them.
anotherdog
New Member
Cold Calling needs to be part of a strategy, you need to hit people a number of times, a number of ways. I loathe the telephone and love to meet people so I would lean harder on touring an area and making notes and even knocking on doors. A Cold call when you know about the company or the state of the sign and even where you can price things up is not a cold call. Definitly have room for direct mail, but combine it with other things. Be persistant and don't take it to heart. It's business and there are a lot of haters out there.
If your postcard works as a leave-behind with a price for a new face on the broken sign or van lettering they are less likely to toss it. You have to appear to know something about their needs before they will respect you enough to take the call.
If your postcard works as a leave-behind with a price for a new face on the broken sign or van lettering they are less likely to toss it. You have to appear to know something about their needs before they will respect you enough to take the call.
CheapVehicleWrap
New Member
Stolen technique but I let you live. Happy ending for all
Re-look at your conversions. 8 people called, you closed 5. 2 out of 18 thanked you for calling. I don't think it would be all that difficult to create pie charts to make those numbers look and sound attractive. Now think what results you could get if you had a heavy lady with a sweet voice who could close better than you sitting on her butt all day making those calls?
Cheer up bud, you're headed in the right direction. And we'll save a spot on the beach for ya.
J
john1
Guest
Stolen technique but I let you live. Happy ending for all
Re-look at your conversions. 8 people called, you closed 5. 2 out of 18 thanked you for calling.
Not really, 1 said "we went out of business", other said "ok bye" lol
I'm not upset or down in the dumps at all, Just making conversation.
TheLairdGuy
New Member
I'll start off with what's worked for myself and some others, and if people like it I can expand on it or create a thread with some useful advice. This will be specifically about cold calling.
Cold Calling 101
What I'm going to do here is give you a brief framework for working your cold calls. It's going to start with some basic mindset adjustments, and then move into some actual calling situations.
First thing First: Where Are You Coming From?
Making a cold call can be tough, and usually the hardest part is the pressure we put on ourselves because we feel like we have to regurgitate our entire value proposition in 10 seconds. While an elevator pitch is a useful tool, you aren't trying to pitch people to buy something over the phone like a telemarketer; you're ideally building a relationship with this person that will last into the future.
This brings up the question: What does a good business relationship look like, and what can you do to lay the groundwork for it early?
I know for myself, a good business relationship with my customers revolves around trust, transparency, and a commitment to follow through on expectations. It might be a little different for everybody, but I'm going to use my requirements for the sake of discussion.
In the sign industry, is every person who needs a sign going to be a good customer for you? No! Bigger sign houses might find that small jobs aren't as worth their time, so their main targets might be big corporate jobs where they can leverage economies of scale to create huge quantities of standardized signs.
A smaller, more local sign shop might be better suited to deal with local mom and pop type shops because they know the area, and their concern isn't really having a massive amount of standard signs. It's creating one sign that's really remarkable so people comment and come into the store because they see it.
Identify where your best customers come from, and target more like that. Be selective and choose to do business with only those that meet whatever criteria you come up with for a good customer.
Pro Tip: When you ask for referrals, don't just ask for as many names as you can get. Try this: Schedule a meeting with your top 10 customers, and say something like "I'm looking to grow my business in this area. One thing I could do is advertise and use direct mail to build my business. But it just doesn't seem economically smart to do that when I have good clients like you who probably know people whom I could help. So I'd like you tell you what kind of client I'm looking for and you tell me if you know anyone who fits that profile. I need to tell you this though, I'm only looking for one or two clients in the next 6 months. I want to grow slowly so that I can continue to service my current clients.
First Contact
After you know what kind of customer you want, go make first contact! I like the phone, and there's a variety of ways you can initiate the conversation. Here's a framework I like to use if I know their name, but it's not a referral and they don't know about me.
"Hello, is Mark available?"
*Puts Mark on the phone*
"Hey Mark, this is TheLairdGuy from Laird Plastics. I know you're busy, do you have a minute?" (If they sound grumpy or say no, just ask when a better time to call back might be)
"You don't know me , I don't believe we've met before, but I work for Laird Plastics and I've done some research on what you do. What I know is this: I've been able to help similar companies lower some of their materials procurement costs, but everybody's situation is a little bit different. I don't know if I can help in your specific case, and I'm curious if you'd be willing have some informal conversation about what we do and whether or not we can help."
You don't have to use the same language, but the key here is intent. You should know that you can help them because you've helped similar customers; that's why you called them. If they aren't open at all, fair enough. You don't want to spend your time talking to people who aren't serious about looking at what you do anyways.
Let me know how things go if you end up trying this?
Cold Calling 101
What I'm going to do here is give you a brief framework for working your cold calls. It's going to start with some basic mindset adjustments, and then move into some actual calling situations.
First thing First: Where Are You Coming From?
Making a cold call can be tough, and usually the hardest part is the pressure we put on ourselves because we feel like we have to regurgitate our entire value proposition in 10 seconds. While an elevator pitch is a useful tool, you aren't trying to pitch people to buy something over the phone like a telemarketer; you're ideally building a relationship with this person that will last into the future.
This brings up the question: What does a good business relationship look like, and what can you do to lay the groundwork for it early?
I know for myself, a good business relationship with my customers revolves around trust, transparency, and a commitment to follow through on expectations. It might be a little different for everybody, but I'm going to use my requirements for the sake of discussion.
In the sign industry, is every person who needs a sign going to be a good customer for you? No! Bigger sign houses might find that small jobs aren't as worth their time, so their main targets might be big corporate jobs where they can leverage economies of scale to create huge quantities of standardized signs.
A smaller, more local sign shop might be better suited to deal with local mom and pop type shops because they know the area, and their concern isn't really having a massive amount of standard signs. It's creating one sign that's really remarkable so people comment and come into the store because they see it.
Identify where your best customers come from, and target more like that. Be selective and choose to do business with only those that meet whatever criteria you come up with for a good customer.
Pro Tip: When you ask for referrals, don't just ask for as many names as you can get. Try this: Schedule a meeting with your top 10 customers, and say something like "I'm looking to grow my business in this area. One thing I could do is advertise and use direct mail to build my business. But it just doesn't seem economically smart to do that when I have good clients like you who probably know people whom I could help. So I'd like you tell you what kind of client I'm looking for and you tell me if you know anyone who fits that profile. I need to tell you this though, I'm only looking for one or two clients in the next 6 months. I want to grow slowly so that I can continue to service my current clients.
First Contact
After you know what kind of customer you want, go make first contact! I like the phone, and there's a variety of ways you can initiate the conversation. Here's a framework I like to use if I know their name, but it's not a referral and they don't know about me.
"Hello, is Mark available?"
*Puts Mark on the phone*
"Hey Mark, this is TheLairdGuy from Laird Plastics. I know you're busy, do you have a minute?" (If they sound grumpy or say no, just ask when a better time to call back might be)
"You don't know me , I don't believe we've met before, but I work for Laird Plastics and I've done some research on what you do. What I know is this: I've been able to help similar companies lower some of their materials procurement costs, but everybody's situation is a little bit different. I don't know if I can help in your specific case, and I'm curious if you'd be willing have some informal conversation about what we do and whether or not we can help."
You don't have to use the same language, but the key here is intent. You should know that you can help them because you've helped similar customers; that's why you called them. If they aren't open at all, fair enough. You don't want to spend your time talking to people who aren't serious about looking at what you do anyways.
Let me know how things go if you end up trying this?
J
john1
Guest
No comment lol
Been working on a holiday card i am getting printed and sending out to customers. I really just don't want to get back on the phones after that first experience lol
I will get back on the phones next week, I noticed the one call said they didn't receive the mailer yet so hopefully this week gave it time to go around. Thanks for the tips...I'll let you know!
Move In Media
New Member
*in a raspy, Arkansas accent* I feel your pain.
We've done both direct mail and cold calling, and both methods brought us new clients. I think the key in both methods, as others have noted, is to position yourself as useful to their particular business, rather than try to pitch your product. Also, having a sneaky strategy of getting past the switch-witch helps. Best is to ask for the head of whatever department is relevant to you, and sound like you're already doing a job with him/her. Doesn't work on the more experienced receptionists, but I've gotten through on more than one occasion.
The mail-out that we used contains our product description and wholesale pricing on one side, and the other side is an in-store poster, without our contact info, so that our potential sign store customer can use that as a marketing tool to pitch our products. Also working on a counter-card tri-fold that displays products on the outside and one of the panels is a tear-off pricing guide for quick reference.
When our salesman makes cold calls, he first tries to find out if the store even sells similar products. It may sound a bit deceptive, but it helps us filter through our lead list, saving our and other people's time, and this way the person is not immediately turned off by a sales pitch. Then all we do is ask in a short sentence if we can send them an e-mail with our wholesale price list and links to product description. Because the one thing we DID find out is that spam mail does not really work, this way it's more personal and the potential client is more likely to actually read it (at least we hope ).
Then, only if the person starts asking question about our products, does the salesman begin his pitch. So far this has been working pretty well, and there was only one person turned off by the slight deception at the beginning of the call.
We've done both direct mail and cold calling, and both methods brought us new clients. I think the key in both methods, as others have noted, is to position yourself as useful to their particular business, rather than try to pitch your product. Also, having a sneaky strategy of getting past the switch-witch helps. Best is to ask for the head of whatever department is relevant to you, and sound like you're already doing a job with him/her. Doesn't work on the more experienced receptionists, but I've gotten through on more than one occasion.
The mail-out that we used contains our product description and wholesale pricing on one side, and the other side is an in-store poster, without our contact info, so that our potential sign store customer can use that as a marketing tool to pitch our products. Also working on a counter-card tri-fold that displays products on the outside and one of the panels is a tear-off pricing guide for quick reference.
When our salesman makes cold calls, he first tries to find out if the store even sells similar products. It may sound a bit deceptive, but it helps us filter through our lead list, saving our and other people's time, and this way the person is not immediately turned off by a sales pitch. Then all we do is ask in a short sentence if we can send them an e-mail with our wholesale price list and links to product description. Because the one thing we DID find out is that spam mail does not really work, this way it's more personal and the potential client is more likely to actually read it (at least we hope
).Then, only if the person starts asking question about our products, does the salesman begin his pitch. So far this has been working pretty well, and there was only one person turned off by the slight deception at the beginning of the call.
CheapVehicleWrap
New Member
John I regret to inform you that I could only hold your seat on the beach for so long. Someone took it man. On the upside this will give you more time to work.