{"id":13613,"date":"2015-07-21T09:12:55","date_gmt":"2015-07-21T13:12:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/?p=13613"},"modified":"2015-07-21T09:34:23","modified_gmt":"2015-07-21T13:34:23","slug":"10-tips-for-cold-calling-in-the-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/the-week-in-imaging-twii\/sales-and-service\/2015\/07\/10-tips-for-cold-calling-in-the-field\/","title":{"rendered":"10+ Tips for Cold Calling in the Field"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"door_to_door_salesman-300x226\"\u201cGood afternoon Art. Had a quick question for you, one of my new reps asked what information I could give him some cold calling tips for his review. He is looking for help in running a better cold call in the field. Any tips?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Thanks for the reply.\u00a0 I thought I would turn this into a blog for your newbie rep and I’m sure other P4P’ers will chime in.<\/p>\n

There was a time when I would knock on every door.\u00a0Back in the eighties that was thing to do because everyone was in the market for a plain-paper copier.\u00a0Can you believe that’s how we used to refer to them?<\/p>\n

The knocking on every door bit changed when Canon developed their first “PC” plain-paper copiers, they were cheap to buy, expensive to run, but the demand was there for those that did not want to pay thousands of dollars for a copy machine.<\/p>\n

Today, I still do walk-in cold calls, maybe not as many as I should, but I still do them.\u00a0Here are some rules that I follow for cold calling in the field:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. 75 percent of my cold calls are planned, meaning I schedule them into my calendar.\u00a0The accounts that I schedule are the ones that I can’t make any headway with phone calls, e-mails, mailers, or Linkedin<\/li>\n
  2. My main focus of the cold call is to get the decision maker\u2019s name and the receptionist\u2019s name.<\/li>\n
  3. Once in the office, I will scout around to see any existing equipment.<\/li>\n
  4. I avoid companies that are not paper intensive or low volume.\u00a0 Dentists (unless it’s a Dental Group), law offices that only have one attorney, doctors (unless it’s a Medical Group), insurance agents (single), and there might be a few more, but I can’t think of them right now.<\/li>\n
  5. I will pass up any building or company that has only a few cars in the parking lot (except architects, engineers, contractors).<\/li>\n
  6. I will cold call every company that is paper intensive, usually larger law firms, medical groups, architects, engineers, contractors, and or any company that has many cars parked in their lot.<\/li>\n
  7. I introduce myself first and then ask for the name of the person that makes the decision for IT or imaging equipment.<\/li>\n
  8. I try to make every cold call fun. I will comment on the weather, maybe a recent bit of news or even state, “This is the first time I’ve every stopped in a was curious if you could help me?”<\/li>\n
  9. I will honor no soliciting signs. As much as I hate them, I will find a way to contact them other than cold calling.<\/li>\n
  10. If the receptionist offers up the opportunity to speak with the decision maker right then, I will accept.<\/li>\n
  11. I keep every brochure and marketing information in my car, just in case it’s needed.<\/li>\n
  12. When leaving an appointment, I will scout around to see if any other businesses are worth visiting. I will mention that I just had an appointment at that location and what we were offering that prospect or existing client.<\/li>\n
  13. I will name drop every chance I get when cold calling. I just did this a few days ago when I cold called an account. I made them aware that I do business with so and so.\u00a0What this means is that if I cold call an architect, I will tell them that we also support these architects.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I try to\u00a0do 25 a week although most times I don’t hit that number.\u00a0 But as we know, we can never stop prospecting. Just the other day while I was driving home from a late appointment I saw a new custom home builder that I never noticed before. I stopped in and sure enough they were new to the area and they were in the market for two systems.\u00a0When I was walking out I thought, what\u00a0if I was the lazy type, I would have never found that opportunity.<\/p>\n

    Here’s something cool also, one of our new reps was out cold calling and got a pretty big deal by stopping in a place I would have passed up. Just goes to show you, that anything can happen once you’re out there.\u00a0 Hope all of this helps.<\/p>\n

    Good selling!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \u201cGood afternoon Art. Had a quick question for you, one of my new reps asked what information I could give him some cold calling tips for his review. He is looking for help in running a better cold call in the field. Any tips?\u201d Thanks for the reply.\u00a0 I thought I would turn this into a blog for your newbie rep and I’m sure other P4P’ers will chime in. There was a time when I would knock on every door.\u00a0Back in the eighties that was thing to do because everyone was in the market for a plain-paper copier.\u00a0Can you believe that’s how we used to refer to them? The knocking on every door bit changed when Canon developed their first “PC” plain-paper copiers, they were cheap to buy, expensive to run, but the demand was there for those that did not want to pay thousands of dollars for a copy machine. Today, I still do walk-in cold calls, maybe not as many as I should, but I still do them.\u00a0Here are some rules that I follow for cold calling in the field: 75 percent of my cold calls are planned, meaning I schedule them into my calendar.\u00a0The accounts that I schedule are the ones that I can’t make any headway with phone calls, e-mails, mailers, or Linkedin My main focus of the cold call is to get the decision maker\u2019s name and the receptionist\u2019s name. Once in the office, I will scout around to see any existing equipment. I avoid companies that are not paper intensive or low volume.\u00a0 Dentists (unless it’s a Dental Group), law offices that only have one attorney, doctors (unless it’s a Medical Group), insurance agents (single), and there might be a few more, but I can’t think of them right now. I will pass up any building or company that has only a few cars in the parking lot (except architects, engineers, contractors). I will cold call every company that is paper intensive, usually larger law firms, medical groups, architects, engineers, contractors, and or any company that has many cars parked in their lot. I introduce myself first and then ask for the name of the person that makes the decision for IT or imaging equipment. I try to make every cold call fun. I will comment on the weather, maybe a recent bit of news or even state, “This is the first time I’ve every stopped in a was curious if you could help me?” I will honor no soliciting signs. As much as I hate them, I will find a way to contact them other than cold calling. If the receptionist offers up the opportunity to speak with the decision maker right then, I will accept. I keep every brochure and marketing information in my car, just in case it’s needed. When leaving an appointment, I will scout around to see if any other businesses are worth visiting. I will mention that I just had an appointment at that location and what we were offering that prospect or existing client. I will name drop every chance I get when cold calling. I just did this a few days ago when I cold called an account. I made them aware that I do business with so and so.\u00a0What this means is that if I cold call an architect, I will tell them that we also support these architects. I try to\u00a0do 25 a week although most times I don’t hit that number.\u00a0 But as we know, we can never stop prospecting. Just the other day while I was driving home from a late appointment I saw a new custom home builder that I never noticed before. I stopped in and sure enough they were new to the area and they were in the market for two systems.\u00a0When I was walking out I thought, what\u00a0if I was the lazy type, I would have never found that opportunity. Here’s something cool also, one of our new reps was out cold calling and got a pretty big deal by stopping in a place I would have passed up. Just goes to show you, that anything can happen once you’re out there.\u00a0 Hope all of this helps. Good selling!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[87,1638],"tags":[106,151],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13613"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13613"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13618,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13613\/revisions\/13618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.enxmag.com\/twii\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}