Cold Calling is contacting people with a need to sell them products or services and is not fun. Meeting People can be fun and anybody is a potential prospect for your business. It is important to understand this. You want people for your business who have similar goals and choose to join you on a journey with a common purpose.
You may find people who want to use the products or sell products but it is pointless enrolling people who are not clearly committed or willing to be involved. You don’t want to end up managing or continually motivating people.
So, where do you find prospects once family and friends have been exhausted? To build your business you need to introduce more people to it. This is often referred to as cold calling.
People hate cold calling because of the fear of rejection and failure! That’s a well-known fact – ask anybody. You can also say people generally don’t like to get cold calls. BUT, you don’t have to do any cold calling in this business. Traditionally cold calling is used in the main business world when there is a product or service to sell. Potential customers are defined and then a strategy is created for targeting them.
YOU DON’T NEED TO COLD CALL! You don’t have to sell products and meet someone else’s objective for you. You just need to meet people and enjoy the process of fishing for prospects.
I prefer calling expanding your business Meeting People. You may eventually feel some rejection but not comparable to cold calling. What you need to do is work on your everyday normal people interaction skills. There is no pressure unless you create it.
First of all, you don’t have one product or a range of products because your main goal is to find people interested in joining your business. They may end up buying products, selling products or being not interested. That’s fine as long as you always remember your main goal.
The good news is that everybody is a potential prospect and you don’t need to cold call.
You want to be prepared before you begin to make contact with people. Know your business and products I as much detail as possible. It is much easier to share your enthusiasm when you really understand what this business is all about and you genuinely connect with the business. People relate to enthusiastic people.
Create a one liner that can hook your prospect. Be prepared with a longer version when the opportunity arises and always keep it short. Always remember your goal is to hook potential prospects.
Solid referrals from other people are good and it is okay to phone them if it is your only means of contact. Avoid selling on the phone. Your goal is to get a meeting with them. For example: “Your friend, name xxxxx, suggested I call you because they feel you may be interested in something I am working with at the moment.” When you get that meeting use it as an opportunity to develop the relationship. You are looking for potential people for your business and the people you want are those that reveal themselves to be genuinely interested. If you get hesitation, then you may say for example: “I would prefer to meet with you because your friend said you are an fascinating person but I will only know if you would be interested after meeting you.”
Tips when meeting people:
- Ask questions about them
- Always be honest
- Always answer questions they ask
- If a question is new make sure you are more prepared next time
- Make sure you don’t have prepared scripts that sound flaky
- Do not get involved with comparisons to other companies or opportunities
- Always agree with what someone says because it is true for them – Accept “No”
- Never resort to pressure
- Always be respectful
- Keep your communication short and clear
- Always follow up
- Plan in advance
You will always improve if you continually adapt what you experience. Failure is always an opportunity to learn, so you can’t really fail.
