Cold calling is a great way to land new clients, while spreading the word about the services that you offer. The main issue with this way of marketing is that you are going to get turned down more times than not. With this in mind, you need to have a good follow-up strategy in place. In other words, one call is not often usually enough to land a gig.
Here are three tips that will make things easier on you when following-up a past cold call:
1. Remind them of who you are. Remember, many business professionals receive hundreds of phone calls per week. On a follow-up cold call you will almost always have to remind the other person who you are, what you offer, and how you propose to assist them.
2. Make sure you have something new to say. Although your main goal is to make contact once again, you need to offer something fresh. In other words, you do not want to have the same conversation as you did in the past.
3. This time, take things a bit further. Rather than get off the phone having made no progress, ask the client for their email address. With this you will have another method of communication to take advantage of. If this doesn’t work for you, maybe you can ask the client if they want to see some of your work. As long as you push forward and take the relationship to the next level, you are closing in on landing a new client.
This is great, Chris — have to say I suck at cold-call followup. If I don’t connect with someone right away, the connection tends to die with me — I move on to other strategies, queries, etc. I’m just getting organized to better track my prospects that don’t bite right away, which is definitely paying off!