April 4 Update - April 3000 Cold Call Challenge

Today was the second day of the 3000 Cold Call Challenge. 

My target was to try and do 300 calls. 

Two reasons for this. 

1. to get a good head start before the others in the challenge get started - competitive streak kicking in
2. to keep the momentum going for those days when I won't be able to do as many calls, like when I am traveling to speak in Chicago or visiting clients in Atlanta next week. 

Today's session was split into two groups. 

The first group in the morning was event planners I was looking to make 150 calls with a view booking meetings about speaking gigs. The second group in the afternoon was HR professionals where I was looking to make 150 calls to arrange meetings about speaking, online courses, and training.

I was still pretty nervous about pushing the GO button but started bang on time. Made around 127 calls got into eight conversations which was pretty much the same call to conversation rate as yesterday, so I was happy with that. The only challenge was that the prospects I got through to didn't have the same fit with my talk as yesterday, so there was less interest from them. So only got to send out four info pack, and didn't make any meetings. 

Although I did get a request for a meeting for one of the people I spoke with yesterday and sent out an info pack.

Also, I organized an onsite meeting with a company for next week, because when they emailed me about my books being out of stock. Instead of being a weasel and emailing them back, I decided picked up the phone and call - yes not only did I hate cold calls I wasn't overly keen on warm ones either - and they said if I were I the area they would love to talk about how we could work together.

And I got someone who was watching the 3000 Call Challenge who called me about coaching because they wanted to significantly up their game, and saw that maybe I was the perfect person to talk to.

So the cold calling has several beneficial side effects, and I think that's always true when we take massive action, and it doesn't always come directly from the massive, but sometimes indirectly.

The afternoon session where I was looking to call 150 HR VPs didn't go so well and quit after around 20 attempts. The challenge was that I was trying to use the same sales script, big mistake, I'd modified it to add three offering instead of one. This made the call feel clumsy and made me feel uncomfortable. Also, the list had companies like HP, Apple, Dell on the list I was calling, and being honest, I knew my pitch was not going to cut the mustard with these companies, so I decided to step back, work on the script and come at it again tomorrow.

Regarding sending out the information for some reason, I was a bit slow on this and left it to today, but for today's calls, I decided to do it as I went along. Doing the cold call is not the be all and end all it's just the start, and I need to make sure I keep the touches going. I also realized that I didn't have the email addresses for everyone and had to call again to ask for them. Interesting this second call was much easier, or so it felt for both me and the prospect.

Results so far.

Learnings from today:

• Do the follow-up immediately, don't leave it for tomorrow or a later date as things build up and it might not get done.
• Make sure you have the right conversation with the right group. There is no one size fits all sales pitch.
• When you take massive action, things start to happen, either directly or indirectly. 
• When I am, relaxed on the phone, the prospects tend to be relaxed on the phone.