hackgrowth
Regular Member
- Jul 9, 2019
- 205
- 73
I recently got asked about why cold calling was even necessary, and obviously the person has not much success with cold calling. It eventually became a long message over PM so I thought I'd share it here. The context for this was that they were starting out on building an agency and wanted to approach local business leads to get started. There will be those who agree, and there will be those who disagree, but this is purely a tip for those who care to get started and want to improve cold calling.
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Why is cold calling so hard?
It is hard (very hard) when there is no pain that you are trying to solve. Hard means about 1% success in getting an appointment. It's like a doctor trying to do business with a healthy person. There is no need or urgency on the receiver of the call to care.
In the case of the social media marketing agency or digital agency, you need to shift your perspective and see that your agency is solving a problem that a business has.
Your job is to offer them a solution to their problem: i.e.; get more leads through digital, increase awareness, etc...
Through this mindset, you'll see yourself as a solutions provider that can actually help someone, rather than selling a service. If they don't want your help, you simply move on and try to help someone else.
This shift of perspective gave me the confidence to speak to people in selling my agency services.
That being said, calling a company cold outright without further research will mean you might need to manually comb through business numbers without a strategy in mind. Unless you know specifically that a certain company is in need of some service or help, this method is totally not recommended (and a waste of time).
What might work would be an alternative strategy to get warm leads. Warm leads in my context means that THEY come to you, and you KNOW what they need. Here's a simple breakdown of how to achieve this:
To automate it, you can do this through ads, or social posts. If someone signs up and downloads a checklist to improve website traffic for their business, it probably (duh) means they need to improve website traffic for their business. By collecting their information, you can then call these people and offer a service to (duh) improve their website traffic for their business.
When you call them, you can deep dive into their problems. I will not run through any scripts here, but ideally you want to introduce yourself, thank them for downloading the checklist and see if there is any way you can help them better or do a free audit for them, etc. In this case, you know what problems the prospect might have and you are more relevant to their needs.
Alternatively, if you have given them good value in Step 1, you can put in an extra "filter" and send them an email with a call to action where they can sign up for a free consultation (use Calendly) via the internet (through Zoom, Skype) or even phone.
This eliminates any need for cold calling, and you have prospects call YOU instead.
So, what do you give them during the free consultation?
Give them MORE value in the free consultation.
A fuckload MORE.
I normally run prospects through the WHOLE process of WHAT I do and HOW to solve their problem during the free consultation: which normally sounds tedious and will take a lot of their resources to pull off. They might need to put a whole team to get it done over a long period of time.
Do not put too much time into explaining every single detail, just the gist of the work that is being done (i.e.; you need SEO for your 54 pages which will take approx 3-4 weeks, then there is the optimization for social media which will take 2 weeks and content creation which takes about 3 weeks, etc).
Do an audit of their current state and point out the problems that you can solve for them and what it is costing them every month to overlook this.
Keep this consultation between 45 minutes to 1 hour MAX. 30 minutes is too short to bring any value, and at 45 minutes, they will probably be taking notes and realize it will be too much for them to handle it.
"BUT HEY, we can do this for you, for just $xxxx a month. Why don't you give it a try for the first month, and if it does not work for you, no strings attached."
Once you got them for the first month, build your systems so that they will depend on you/your team to execute for the next upcoming months. Depending on my scope of work, the first month is normally filled with a lot of setting up and giving access to my team - setting up analytics, etc. The arrangement of structures are a bit complicated and we do things a bit different than other standard agencies, so it will NOT be a walk in the park if another agency takes over.
Towards the end of the first month...
"I'll be honest with you, this system will take a minimum of 3-4 months to see actual results. Analytics and SEO takes time. etc etc.. If you decide to go with us for this 3 months, I can give you a discounted price at xx% off our normal monthly fee. If you'd rather do it yourself, no problem, I understand."
Then you'd BETTER deliver, and if its good, you can keep them for the next 6 - 12 months.
---
Additional Notes:
If you want to do this the technical way, the quickest way is to advertise through social media or search ads if you have the budget. Test multiple keywords and messaging until you hit one that gives the highest number of conversions to sales.
If you spend $100 per week on ads and get 8-10 sign ups, resulting in 2 consultations, then you have spent a total of $50/consultation. This method is highly recommended for services that cost above $500.
---
Why is cold calling so hard?
It is hard (very hard) when there is no pain that you are trying to solve. Hard means about 1% success in getting an appointment. It's like a doctor trying to do business with a healthy person. There is no need or urgency on the receiver of the call to care.
In the case of the social media marketing agency or digital agency, you need to shift your perspective and see that your agency is solving a problem that a business has.
Your job is to offer them a solution to their problem: i.e.; get more leads through digital, increase awareness, etc...
Through this mindset, you'll see yourself as a solutions provider that can actually help someone, rather than selling a service. If they don't want your help, you simply move on and try to help someone else.
This shift of perspective gave me the confidence to speak to people in selling my agency services.
That being said, calling a company cold outright without further research will mean you might need to manually comb through business numbers without a strategy in mind. Unless you know specifically that a certain company is in need of some service or help, this method is totally not recommended (and a waste of time).
What might work would be an alternative strategy to get warm leads. Warm leads in my context means that THEY come to you, and you KNOW what they need. Here's a simple breakdown of how to achieve this:
- Offer useful and quality information
- Have them sign up in order to download the information
- Contact them via email to arrange free consultation
- Let them come to you if they have a problem
To automate it, you can do this through ads, or social posts. If someone signs up and downloads a checklist to improve website traffic for their business, it probably (duh) means they need to improve website traffic for their business. By collecting their information, you can then call these people and offer a service to (duh) improve their website traffic for their business.
When you call them, you can deep dive into their problems. I will not run through any scripts here, but ideally you want to introduce yourself, thank them for downloading the checklist and see if there is any way you can help them better or do a free audit for them, etc. In this case, you know what problems the prospect might have and you are more relevant to their needs.
Alternatively, if you have given them good value in Step 1, you can put in an extra "filter" and send them an email with a call to action where they can sign up for a free consultation (use Calendly) via the internet (through Zoom, Skype) or even phone.
This eliminates any need for cold calling, and you have prospects call YOU instead.
So, what do you give them during the free consultation?
Give them MORE value in the free consultation.
A fuckload MORE.
I normally run prospects through the WHOLE process of WHAT I do and HOW to solve their problem during the free consultation: which normally sounds tedious and will take a lot of their resources to pull off. They might need to put a whole team to get it done over a long period of time.
Do not put too much time into explaining every single detail, just the gist of the work that is being done (i.e.; you need SEO for your 54 pages which will take approx 3-4 weeks, then there is the optimization for social media which will take 2 weeks and content creation which takes about 3 weeks, etc).
Do an audit of their current state and point out the problems that you can solve for them and what it is costing them every month to overlook this.
Keep this consultation between 45 minutes to 1 hour MAX. 30 minutes is too short to bring any value, and at 45 minutes, they will probably be taking notes and realize it will be too much for them to handle it.
"BUT HEY, we can do this for you, for just $xxxx a month. Why don't you give it a try for the first month, and if it does not work for you, no strings attached."
Once you got them for the first month, build your systems so that they will depend on you/your team to execute for the next upcoming months. Depending on my scope of work, the first month is normally filled with a lot of setting up and giving access to my team - setting up analytics, etc. The arrangement of structures are a bit complicated and we do things a bit different than other standard agencies, so it will NOT be a walk in the park if another agency takes over.
Towards the end of the first month...
"I'll be honest with you, this system will take a minimum of 3-4 months to see actual results. Analytics and SEO takes time. etc etc.. If you decide to go with us for this 3 months, I can give you a discounted price at xx% off our normal monthly fee. If you'd rather do it yourself, no problem, I understand."
Then you'd BETTER deliver, and if its good, you can keep them for the next 6 - 12 months.
---
Additional Notes:
If you want to do this the technical way, the quickest way is to advertise through social media or search ads if you have the budget. Test multiple keywords and messaging until you hit one that gives the highest number of conversions to sales.
If you spend $100 per week on ads and get 8-10 sign ups, resulting in 2 consultations, then you have spent a total of $50/consultation. This method is highly recommended for services that cost above $500.
