 Cold calling is not dead. You heard me. When balanced with other prospecting strategies, cold calling is still an effective way to reach prospects and land new business when it's done right. So stick around and learn what would keep me on the line if you were to prospect my business. It's Leanne and while some may say that cold calling is dead, I have to disagree. Especially now that people are craving more one-on-one interaction and almost moving away from social media and they're taking these social media detoxes and email detoxes. Speaking to them on the phone might be a great way to reconnect with them. However, there are some ways that you can make your cold call more effective so that when they do answer that phone, if you do get someone to answer the phone, they're more inclined to stay on the phone with you. And that's what we're going to talk about today. But before I begin, don't forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel and click on that little bell so that you can be notified of new content each week. Let's launch into our tips for cold calling. Tip number one, introduce yourself at the start of the call. A lot of people when they're cold calling nowadays will start the conversation with, hey, how are you? And in all honesty, if I don't know who is on the other line, I'm not even inclined to give them an honest answer. So it makes me a little leery about who is calling me. But if you start out by introducing yourself and introducing your organization, at least now I have a little bit of context and I can start to personalize my response to you in return. Tip number two, introduce yourself by both your first and your last name. There are a lot of Sarah's, a lot of Jennifer's, a lot of Candace's in our meetings industry. But unless you and I are very close personal friends that I can recognize your voice, I will not know which Sarah, Jennifer or Candace that you are. So please introduce yourself by your full name. And of course for my friends that are Candace's, Sarah's and Jennifer's out there, you don't have to use your last name. But it's because you call me all the time. And now I know who it is on the other line. Tip number three, introduce your company. You don't have to spend a lot of time here. Just let them know where you're calling from. Tip number four, quickly introduce why it is that you're calling and provide some context. This is where you slip in the notion of maybe being referred to by someone else, a mutual friend, a mutual colleague, or that you found some synergies between what it is you do and what it is they do. And you wanted to see if there was some alignment. So give them some context, give them a reason to stay on the line with you. Now before I finish the tips, some of these tips may be sounding a little bit familiar to you. And that's because some of these tips were also aligned with a post I did on about how to leave an effective voice mail. You can always check out that video up here as well. And a link to the blog post is in the description for this video. Moving on to what I feel are the most important tips when placing a cold call. Tip number five, ask them if they have time to talk to you. Respect can go a long way and asking for their permission to chat with them is showing some respect and also giving them the opportunity to potentially schedule a better time to talk, which could be more conducive to better business. So ask them for permission, give them opportunity to either accept your call or maybe reschedule it for a better time in their calendar. Tip number six, if you're given the permission to proceed, make sure you ask intelligent questions, not questions that could have been researched online in advance, but questions that only they know the answer to, and you're trying to dig a little bit deeper into their business. And tip number seven, and I hope you took notes when you were doing tip number six, but now you can tailor your spiel according to their needs and their objectives. So based on what they shared with you when you asked all of those questions, now you can tailor and customize the benefits of your organization for their organization. Tip number eight, and yes, I'm saying it again, ask permission to continue to chat with them. By now in the conversation, you're probably five, six minutes in, you don't know their schedule, see if they still have time to continue the dialogue with them. Hopefully you've given them enough to think about that, yes, they want to proceed or they do want to schedule a follow up call with you. So continue to ask permission throughout the conversation. And finally, tip number nine, don't fear rejection. Rejection is a natural part of the sales process and you're going to run into it. But remember, it's not a rejection of you as a person, nor is it even really rejection of your product or service. But it's a way that the client is saying what you offer is not a good fit for me right now. Take that information, you can now craft potential follow up with that client in six months a year from now when maybe your product or service does become a good fit. So don't look at the word no as being no, but look at as an opportunity to craft a different strategy for that particular prospect. And one final bonus tip for you and this comes from my friend Marco. When you're doing cold calls and maybe a series of them in a day, start with a call that you know is going to go well. It sets you up for a day of success and positivity. So thank you Marco for that bonus tip. Now I'd love to hear from you. Are you still cold calling on potential clients? Do you love it? Do you hate it? Are you indifferent to it? Have you swapped it out for other means of inbound marketing? I would love to hear from you and please just comment below this video. Friends, if cold calling just isn't for you, not to fear. I have lots of tips on other ways to reach out to prospective clients. Hop on over to my website at liankholderwood.com. There I have email writing tips as well as some inbound marketing tools. Remember cold calling should only be a part of your overall marketing strategy. When you mix it with some email marketing, some inbound marketing, even some social media marketing, now you have a really robust marketing strategy and sales strategy for helping people understand what it is that your product or service is about. For more sales inspiration and tips, check out all my sales and service videos that you can find right here. Or head on over again to liankholderwood.com. There you can download the popular How to Get a Meeting Planner's Attention Worksheet. Good luck to you this prospecting season and have a great week everyone. Bye for now.