Cold Calling Sucks :(

Cold calling can and does work but often the expectation is higher than people are capable of doing but also its how you approach it (I have my own call center in the Philippines). For example if your just filtering out numbers randomly then hitting them for a service its going to be a lot harder to even reach the right person than if you opened up a website with "want more information? We will call you back!". They then leave their details and you have the right person and you know they are already interested!

You have to remember your in the internet business so focusing them on what your good at (Getting ranked, starts with your own site!). Adding to that you can then use your site as a relevant point of sale saying how well its doing etc. etc. Then its up to you if you do the sales closures yourself or get someone else in with an agent. For me its viable to use agents as they generally cost $4+ for a trained agent, because if your busy already your own cost is much higher.

Not pitching my agents here by the way just wanted to give the perspective of someone who is in the industry. You have to remember also that a telesales agent will cold call up to 800 people a day! They only need 1% on average for a happy client.

Infofree has a free week trial if you search for it. I haven't tried the New Business leads yet but it is on my list of things to try. My one week trial ran out. I tried to filter for smaller size businesses with the chance of getting the business owner directly. I really didn't have any luck with the couple of niches we tried. Their interface to filter by location, type of biz, size, etc...is nice.

From their site:
"Our Weekly Hot Sales Leads such as New Businesses, New Homeowners, New Parents and Newlyweds - come from public sources like county and state licensed files and coverage will vary greatly by geography. We are only as good as our suppliers and have no control over them, average accuracy is 80%."

We are still struggling with cold calling. I hired someone from the Phils to do the cold calling 4 hours a day, where their objective of the call is to setup an appointment for me. For a couple of weeks I was averaging 3 appointments a day, then it just dried up a couple of weeks ago. Not everyone is always available for the appointment or really wanted SEO services, but that was OK because if you talk to enough people you will close some. We always tell them we can get them more sales and would like to show them how with a full Website Competitive Analysis report which will show why their competitors are outranking them. We always get their email, so now we are also building a list. Also I think it is good to mention, if your able, that the call will only take 15 minutes as these folks are generally very busy. I always respect their time. If I have to call them back 3 times because I always catch them when their busy, that's OK because they didn't say no. I can usually tell if they have a genuine interest or not and sometimes I might not call them back if I think they are just stringing me along. The followups are so important, the more thorough you followup the sales you will get.

We had to switch niche's we were calling because we ran out of those scraped leads, and now we are finding it hard to talk to the business owner to get an appointment. We are going to try changing the calling time and see if that helps. My cold caller only works 4 hours a day, so I need to try a different time slot to see if that helps. My cold caller doesn't have much success, if any, getting past the gatekeeper. If we could get past the gatekeeper once in awhile, that would make a big difference.

I am searching for another niche and time slot to get my flow of appointments back up.

Has anyone had any luck with blasting out emails with an offer like a free Website Competitive Analysis report?

Jholla006
Infofree has a free week trial if you search for it. I haven't tried the New Business leads yet but it is on my list of things to try. My one week trial ran out. I tried to filter for smaller size businesses with the chance of getting the business owner directly. I really didn't have any luck with the couple of niches we tried. Their interface to filter by location, type of biz, size, etc...is nice.

From their site:
"Our Weekly Hot Sales Leads such as New Businesses, New Homeowners, New Parents and Newlyweds ? come from public sources like county and state licensed files and coverage will vary greatly by geography. We are only as good as our suppliers and have no control over them, average accuracy is 80%."

We are still struggling with cold calling. I hired someone from the Phils to do the cold calling 4 hours a day, where their objective of the call is to setup an appointment for me. For a couple of weeks I was averaging 3 appointments a day, then it just dried up a couple of weeks ago. Not everyone is always available for the appointment or really wanted SEO services, but that was OK because if you talk to enough people you will close some. We always tell them we can get them more sales and would like to show them how with a full Website Competitive Analysis report which will show why their competitors are outranking them. We always get their email, so now we are also building a list. Also I think it is good to mention, if your able, that the call will only take 15 minutes as these folks are generally very busy. I always respect their time. If I have to call them back 3 times because I always catch them when their busy, that's OK because they didn't say no. I can usually tell if they have a genuine interest or not and sometimes I might not call them back if I think they are just stringing me along. The followups are so important, the more thorough you followup the more sales you will get.

We had to switch niche's we were calling because we ran out of those scraped leads, and now we are finding it hard to talk to the business owner to get an appointment. We are going to try changing the calling time and see if that helps. My cold caller only works 4 hours a day, so I need to try a different time slot to see if that helps. My cold caller doesn't have much success, if any, getting past the gatekeeper. If we could get past the gatekeeper once in awhile, that would make a big difference.

I am searching for another niche and time slot to get my flow of appointments back up.

Has anyone had any luck with blasting out emails with an offer like a free Website Competitive Analysis report?