10 "Smart" ways to Cold Call, bypass gatekeepers and other bottlenecks.

Fixing business meetings has never been that easy as it’s always difficult to digest a tight slap while cold calling (I have received many). We have been spending days and even nights in generating leads and maintaining sales funnel, however adding a little tactics to our efforts could make a huge difference. Presenting below the 10 Best ways to cold call, bypass gatekeepers and opening other bottlenecks.

1. Act like a CEO: The best way to get through gatekeepers is to act like a CEO of your company and not just a Business Development Manager. Tell him that you need to talk to Mr. Henson for 3 mins and for that you want to take an appointment to discuss business. Taking an appointment is the finest way ever to crack through. Ask her what time is he free and you can call him that time. Do not take the first time suggested by EA. Tell her that you are extremely busy at that time and have back to back meetings scheduled on that day. Take the next best time slot from her.

2. Calling Hour: Calling in early hours works better than calling at late hours (assumption based on experience). Do not worry, if you have missed early hours; the next best thing could be calling 5 mins. before every complete hour as that is the time when any prior meeting will come to an end.

3. Reach higher in Hierarchy: The best way to reach a Director IT could be dialing in CIO’s EA and asking for Director IT. Tell that you got transferred to her extension by reception and then ask direct number for Director IT. Once transferred, tell Director that you just got transferred from CIO’s Desk and have been suggested to talk to you. He will greet you, if you do that.

4. Find Direct Numbers Direct numbers are the best when cold calling as it saves you a lot of time when you have to call 100s of these. You would usually not get any direct number from US switch boards. The best way to get a direct number could be calling in UK office when you know that the person you want to located is in US. Here you can ask for direct number to any Director/CIO office.

5. Straight Messaging: Be very straight to your message. Do not ever hide your objective of call while speaking to prospect. Tell the prospect on the face that you want to follow-up regarding services to Oracle which was implemented by Wipro last year and want to know the status of the contract renewal.

6. Circle the Best: Be confident about your product/service. Circle down the best points of your product and impress the purchaser about you being number 1 in your space. Tell him that if he is not listening to you then he is loosing something.

7. No waste of Time: Be precise about the time you want to take in that call. – “I would like to take next 30 Sec. and not even a single sec. more than that”. Assure him that you are not here to waste his time.

8. Avoid Slaps: Ask him his profile or search for his profile on internet just by Googling his name before you make a call. It could be a “One tight Slap” situation if you are pitching wrong proposition to wrong party.

9. The Gyan: Do not try to sell him in the first call. Do not try to give him all “Gyan” (he being the right guy to trap) in one go. Request him for a time; if he is not interested to give you time then it is clear that he doesn’t require any services at this point; move on for new prospect. Give him freedom to select his time. It could be after 2 weeks.

10. Call Closing: Do not close the call before you take a next date to follow-up with client. They are going to need your services some day for sure if not today. It doesn’t matter if your prospect tells to follow-up next year. Immediately mark your calendar wit the same.

- Nishchal

Free style Marketing

How many times have you been to a business conference that guided the world to sell things for free? Well, if you never heard about one, then you need to know about Nokia World 2007 Conference where Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief talks to the world referring to this. The campaign broke all the traditional rules of selling a service product. As per Chris, the new way to sell today has changed focus from the actual product to the complementary product or supporting product that could enhance the selling of original product.

Chris talks about the new selling concept of 0 + 2 = 2 in contrary to the old concept of 1+1 = 2. Now, what the hell does he mean by this Maths..?

Consider Company A that sells both - the products and the services on the same products. As per the traditional earning model Company A earned Rs 1 revenue from selling the product and Rs 1 revenue from the services on the product. The modern way of selling sacrifices the revenue on product to earn revenue on service which is more profitable and perpetual revenue raiser i.e. - selling the product for free with revenue as Rs 0 and earning 2 from servicing that eventually costs very less.

In industries like IT the revenue earned through service and maintenance of a software or an Infrastructure could be 100 times the price of software (which is considered product). For Telecom operators the investment is fixed as they pay for the licensing lease - the huge the number of subscribers, the larger the profits.

Giving a valuable product at a very less (or at no margin) or even free of cost can breakdown the entry barrier and at the same time, developing a model to recover the revenue from value added services and perpetually introducing innovation may lead to deep money mines.

One such industry that has practiced this principle well enough is Telecom. In May 2009, Apple announced that one billion iphone apps have been downloaded in the first nine months. A source identified that Apple is earning more than $70-160$ from iphone applications developed by open source community of around 600,000 developers that paid a membership fee of $99 (excluded revenue). Now it’s worth noting that it took 6 months to hit 500m app downloads, and only three months for the next 500m app downloads, so Apple’s revenue run rate is higher than this. Thought the revenues from software applications today have not gone pass the product revenues but the change is expected soon. It wasn't a miss calculation when Reliance sold Samsung phone sets for Rs. 500 in the year 2002.

I run a Guitar School. Imagine a situation where every home has a Guitar, the music school industry is destined to grow leaps and bounds. The reason why it's not growing today is because a decent guitar costs good amount money. If I shake-hands with a Guitar retailer and partner to provide learning services on such a model, both Product and Services will amplify.

If you go by the Cheese theory, you will analyze that the old cheese might not last longer and the market dynamics might move the cheese soon. The quicker you let go the old cheese the sooner you will find the new cheese. Move with the cheese and enjoy it.

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