Cold calling has been a great tool since the telephone was invented. It has many great advantages.
The biggest advantage is that you are likely to find people who are not already in the market for your products and services. So, you beat the competition. You get a head start. You understand their current needs and challenges. You become a consultant. You start to build trust early. That is a huge advantage!
For certain businesses, cold calling is still the most efficient way to win new business. For example, if you are elephant hunting and you know the businesses to call, cold calling will probably bring the best results.
What if you are trying to sell small ticket items? What if you are trying to sell to a large population? Then cold calling may not be the most cost effective way to get new customers.
Here are other ways you can be successful:
Setup opt-in pages on your website. Invite people to subscribe to your blogs, and daily or weekly tips. People love freebies. Offer something free to encourage them to sign up. For example, offer a free healthy habit or offer a healthy recipe if you are catering to health conscious audience.
Do the same in your social media sites.
As people sign up to receive tips related to your products and services, you’re building up a database of contacts. You need to turn this database into a database of relationships. How do you do that? You do it by keeping in touch with them on a regular basis.
If you have thousands of contacts, how do you keep in touch with them on regular basis via multiple channels such as social media, SMS, email and direct mail? You need automation tools that will release you from manually nurturing relationships so you can focus on bigger and better things for your business.