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Making Warm Calls Out Of Cold Calls

lee-rolodex-0112I like cold calling. People think I’m weird for that, but there you go. Personally I enjoy researching prospects and meeting them for the first time.

I recognize that not everyone feels the same way, and that’s fine, but aspiring salespeople also need to realize that you don’t always have the luxury of staying inside your comfort zone. If you want to make a living you’re going to have to spread your wings a little. After all, if you’re not happy with your results, you need to change your processes.

For salespeople who don’t like to cold call, then you have an alternative: create warm calls. While sometimes warm calls will be handed to you by someone else; a referral or whatever, your best bet is to make them yourself. As fond as I am of cold calling, it’s a lot easier if you find a way of warming up that cold call.

So what is a “warm call”?  Those are sales calls that are pre-qualified to some degree, which means that your prospects know you’re coming and are actually looking forward to it. In order to get warm calls you can get referrals, and can make them yourself.

To do that, find a connection. Turning a Cold Call into a Warm Call isn’t too hard.  When you’re developing your list of leads, dig a little deeper and see if you can make a connection. Think of it as playing “six degrees of separation” for money.  When I first moved here, someone said of Edmonton, Alberta that despite being a city of almost a million people, “it’s a town of 600.” If you look around where you live and work, odds are you can find an “in.”

I’ve told this story for years, but once, while profiling homebuilders, I dug up the name of a project manager and recognized his unusual surname. I connected the dots to a long-time acquaintance of mine who’s a patriarch of his small ethnic community, and my relationship with him was enough to get me a warm welcome at the builder’s office. It worked!

Of course, don’t forget about referrals; they’re crucial to having a successful business. You need to forge connections with people who can send business your way, and you need to do it all the time. So what do you have to do to get the ball rolling?

If you’re any good at what you do many referrals are spontaneous. When I was first hired by the AV integration company I used to work for, my original mandate was to drum up new business. However, my employer had twenty years’ worth of repeat and referral business and, fortunately for us, there was so much low-hanging fruit that needed picking that I didn’t do nearly as much cold calling as I had planned.

That’s great when it happens, but how else can you make referrals happen for you? It’s obvious, but if you want people to recommend your company, you need to be worth recommending. Personally, I refer friends and acquaintances to businesses that I know are going to take care of them, and by extension, make me look good for pointing them in the right direction.

On top of that, ask for a recommendation. If you’re not afraid to ask for the sale, then don’t hesitate to ask your contacts who clearly love you to send business your way. Bear in mind however that you’ll be most successful at getting referrals when you ask at the right time, and in the right way.

I was shown a specific method by one of my old mentors that is simple and straightforward, and yet it works like a charm. The time to ask for referrals is during the follow-up period after you’ve shown your worth, whether it’s a completed project, sale, or follow up. When your contact has acknowledged your ability, then you can say to them “I’m glad that you appreciate what I do. I would like to ask you for one small favor: Let me give you two of my business cards for you to keep in your wallet. If, in your day-to-day, the subject comes up with one of your friends or colleagues, I would be honored if you would think of me and pass one of my cards on to them!” I’ve done that ever since, and it works.

Whether your sales calls are warm calls or cold calls, all calls are good calls. Regardless of whether they come to you, or you generate them yourself, focus on determining the best way to maximize your potential for closing the deal.

Lee Distad is a rAVe columnist and freelance writer covering topics from CE to global business and finance in both print and online. Reach him at lee@ravepubs.com

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