When marketing to new customers and trying to decide if you should cold call all the people on your list or limit that list, take my advice and shoot first and ask questions later and you will be glad you did. Once I was in Tennessee setting up a franchise in Memphis for the son of a well-known doctor. Our franchise company sets up fleet washing franchised businesses to help large corporations keep their vehicles clean. Anyway we were going thru the phone book and listing all the possible accounts. Then we noticed a really large trucking company had a depot there but it was not listed at all, only their sales office. It was a company which already washed their own trucks in some yards and would not be interested as we had learned many times in many cities before. So, we saw this advertisement for; Drivers Wanted and I said; What the hell and added the company to the list anyway and the next day we had some 400 names of companies to call on and I had completely forgotten about that company name I added and yet at the time, kind of knew that they would not be interested or so I thought? Well it turns out they needed our services at this one office, but at no other offices in the nation, interesting I thought, as I was shocked that a brand new sales person on our Bonzai and Blitz Marketing Team got the appointment to go see them. It was his fifth call even on his very first day even. So, we went in for a meeting a pulled out all the stops at the sales presentation. Sure enough we signed up the account $40,000 per month and we exceeded our goals for the Blitz Mission week for the new franchisee and quit early and everyone partied for week on the Marketing Team until we moved to another city to attempt to do the same thing. We could not sell anymore or we would overwhelm the cleaning crews and our new franchisee in his first month. Moral of the story? When cold calling, call everyone and the seven people on the Blitz Team, well they are the seven top reasons why you should. Consider all this in 2006. |
