10 ways to get over the fear of cold calling & make it work

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10 ways to get over the fear of cold calling & make it work

Does the thought of making cold calls to prospective customers make your blood run cold, your heart race & your palms sweat? Do you avoid it all together because you can’t stand the thought of rejection? Well, you’re far from being alone. One of the most common mistakes I see is avoiding telemarketing all together, either through fear or misconception. Contacting new potential customers by phone remains an extremely important element of a blended lead generation strategy & one of the few that offers you direct control over the results, by scaling up or down, or by changing your approach. Done well, it remains one of the most productive & cost effective channels for your sales & marketing effort. My aim is to remove some of the fear & provide some tools to make it more effective for your business. 1. Getting your mind-set right Don’t mix up B2C (Business to Consumer) with B2B (Business to Business) telemarketing. The call you get from a double-glazing company as you’re sitting down to dinner or unwinding at the end of the day, is B2C telemarketing. B2B telemarketing is different. Two business people are communicating, one offering products/services to the other in order … Continue reading →

SEO is Dead!

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SEO is Dead!

I was searching YouTube for a video the other day and up popped a video ad from a sales & marketing “guru” who claimed that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was dead and that I should listen to him instead of investing anymore effort in my website optimization. Of course he had an axe to grind (he wanted to sell his internet marketing DVD course which was based on running Ad Words campaigns) and was clearly also trying to get attention with a very eye-catching & controversial premise & headline. But, he did have a point – TO AN EXTENT. Because they want to be considered a reliable and accurate source of information and relevantly respond to search queries, Google and all the search engine providers have closed most of the ‘loopholes’ and stopped many of the old ‘tricks’ and short cuts that it was possible to use to artificially raise the position for a website on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). That does not mean that you can’t set up your site to help the search engines understand your focus (keywords/phrases) and help your SERP position. But the most important thing to understand is that Google et al are … Continue reading →

The secret of steady and profitable business growth

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Business owners have a million and one things that compete for their time. They do what they do – probably very well – but it’s only when a big project is completed, or delivery made, a solution completed/installed, they lift their head up, take a deep breath, and realise there’s nothing in the sales pipeline. Panic stations!! It’s then all hands to the pumps to get some more business –ANY business. The pressure is particularly intense when there are employees to pay. So, typically, Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) lurch from feast to famine and back again. This is the result of stop-go sales and marketing, without a planned and continually measured lead generation strategy. Business Growth and Development is the life blood of every firm, but even though we all know this obvious truth, most businesses are busy “working in” their business and have insufficient time or focus to “work on” their business. Even when there is time available, it is not always clear exactly what should be done to take the business forward and where to focus efforts and resources necessary to build a healthy sales pipeline that continually delivers a manageable flow of orders and income. Without that, you can’t … Continue reading →