by Lon Lindsey

Does the idea of cold calling scare the heck out of you? It did me and it still does to a certain extent. What is "cold calling?" Cold calling is calling people you do not know, whether it is to try to sell them something or simply wanting to give them information . . . information they did not ask for.

I would like to divide cold calling into two areas: (1) cold calling; (2) frigid calling. An example of frigid calling would be going to your local telephone book and randomly calling people. Cold calling would be calling people from a specific list . . . any list that you, at least, know what the list of names refers to.

WHY WOULD YOU?

Why would anyone want to put themselves through a "hell" of 98% rejection? Who would want to call people they don't know to tell them about something they could probably care less about? The answer is, it is inexpensive to do if you are calling locally . . . assuming you don't put value on your time. Well, it doesn't have to be that bad and perhaps there is a place for cold calling, even frigid calling in your prospecting and recruiting strategies, and I will show you how you can gain some benefits of cold calling even without your making a single cold call. Additionally, this article will tell you how to be more effective and have more positive results from cold calling.

A MAJOR MISTAKE MADE BY MOST NETWORK MARKETERS

I'm going to change terms here and rather than talking about networkers who make cold call, let's just call them telemarketers because that is actually what they are when the call people they don't know. Most inexperienced telemarketing networkers make a very common mistake. It has everything to do with the initial reason for the call. Successful telemarketers ONLY give! They do not sell! The art of telemarketing is not selling what you are selling or promoting. For the networker, it is NOT selling the business opportunity or the product. It's something much more general than that and it must come in the form of providing something of value, but only to those who really want it. Thus the call becomes the art of sharing, but in such a way that you share with only those people who really want what you have.

Part of the process of telemarketing is filtering or screening to find only those people who will be open to what you will EVENTUALLY want to sell them.

So . . .a successful networking telemarketer does not even mention the specific company in the initial call . . . thus the purpose of the initial call being to find only those people who would be open to getting more information about what you have . . . network marketing as a means to building a home-based business. You see, not everyone will have the same vision that you have. Most people are quite happy complaining about their day to day situation and not doing anything about it. Some people are just lazy, yet others don't even have a vision of the real entrepreneur spirit or home-based business arena. That's fine because we don't want to waist much time on them anyway.

Let me give you an example. If I'm looking for people who have a vision or interest in having their own home-based business, then I must find those people and do so in such a way that I can share something of common interest with them, yet not scare them away. The answer to this is starting from a very general approach and gradually moving to something specific.

Here is a possible script that would accomplish the goal of finding people who have a home-based business interest.

"Hello, my name is Jim Jones and I am owner of Jim Jones Associates here in Jonesville. I'm looking for people who are interested in having more time and more money for themselves by having their own home-based business and would love to send you some incredible information on how that can be done in a relatively short period of time. Do you have such an interest?"

In less than 20 seconds, you have said all there is to be said, initially. All you are trying to do is find people who are interested in making money via a home-based business and that is exactly what is asked. If they say "yes", you ask for their name and address and you copy their phone number down. If they ask the name of your specific home-based business, tell them there are many possibilities and you will be including that information in what you are sending them. This is key! It has nothing to do with being ashamed of your business. It has everything to do with the initial purpose of your call . . to get leads only. You CAN NOT effectively sell a cold lead the idea of your specific business on the first call, therefore there is no reason to even mention your business. Why? Because we want people to make decisions based on facts, not on ignorance. Whether they may have heard of the company or not makes no difference. You don't want to give them a chance to prejudge based on a name of something they may know very little about.

The same thing goes if you are telemarketing for products. You are not trying to sell them on specific products with the initial call. You are only trying to find out who MAY have an interest in what you have. So, a possible script for screening to eventually find customers would be:

Hello! My name is Jim Jones. I am owner of Jim Jones Associates here in Jonesville. I'm looking for local people who would be interested in specialty foods, personal care items, nutritional supplementation or quality household products at a discount. I've got some good news of such that I would like to mail to you if this interests you.

As you can see, you start out from a general standpoint and gradually lead them to your specific company.

WHAT TO SEND

When you get your leads, you then send them general information. Part of what you are doing is attempting to gradually build a new relationship with a person. This is done through what I call "Event" sponsoring or "Event" selling. You must lead a person from one event to the next. In this case, you are leading people from the event of listening to your initial phone message to receiving something from you in the mail.

My suggestion, with regards to the business opportunity approach is to send them information about network marketing in general . . .you know . . about how network marketing works, how networking marketing can create a large business and income through the principle of many people doing a little rather than a few doing a lot.

With trying to make customers out of them for your products, the material can be more direct showing exactly what it is you have and how it is beneficial for them to be a customer.

So . . what you have done so far is (1) find those who want more time and more money through their own home-based business; (2) educate and inform them on how that is possible through network marketing. The next event is your calling them back and asking them if they have had a chance to read the information you sent and ask "do you see how network marketing can create a lucrative home-based business?" It is at this point that you lead them to the next event . . . that of wanting specific information on how you are using a specific company for your home-based business. Now is a perfect time to get them thinking about what a home-based business could do for them . . and that is important as that would identify their "hotspot" of why they want more money. By asking" what are you looking for out of a business?" is an excellent way to get them talking about their needs and wants. Make notes about this for later use. Next, you would simply ask "can you see yourself utilizing network marketing as a way to get . . . .(whatever their hotspot is)?" The next appropriate question is: "would you be open to my sending you some initial information about the home-based business I chose?" At this point, it is very likely that they will ask you for the name of your chosen business and it is at this point you can simply give them the name or you can tell them you want to send them information first and then talk about it. Again, this has nothing to do with being ashamed of your company, but making sure they have necessary information to make a decision based on the facts rather than simply a name.

Your next event will be to call them back and talk about the information you sent them. Find out if they see themselves having your named home-based business to get what it is they said they wanted out of their business. This could lead to a person to person meeting or it could lead to signing them up right over the phone. It could lead to another event . . maybe a three way phone call with your upline sponsor or a company conference call or a local meeting. You see, there has to be several events available for you to lead your prospect from general information to specific information and for some people, it may take two or three events and for others it may take five or six events. The main thing is to list all the events you have and know where you are leading your prospect and doing it an event at a time.

You would do the same with regards to product sales. Lead your potential customer to either placing an order with you or meeting with you to see a catalog of products or a listing of products as well as providing them an order form and directions on how to order products.

So . . . .the whole process is a process of relationship building . . .starting from cold calling(telemarketing) to going to becoming very acquainted with someone.

TARGETED LISTS

For those people who don't like the idea of randomly calling people out of a phone book, there are such things as targeted lists. They do cost money, but they are targeted much like mailing lists . .with names and phone number of people who have a common interest with some lists having other factors built in like income, age, location, etc. What this means is you can eliminate one of the events. It is still a cold call, but not a "frigid" call. For instance, if you purchase a list of names and phone numbers of people who are known to be home-based opportunity seekers, then your approach would be slightly different in that you would simply want to confirm that they are interested in finding a home-based business . . . so you would start at that level, but still progress event to event.

SO YOU DON'T WANT TO TELEMARKET, YOURSELF! THEN DON'T!

There are some people who hate the idea of initially going to people they don't know. They feel comfortable when people come to them. The answer to that is to hire someone to do the initial telemarketing for you. You simply provide a written script and let your hired telemarketer do the initial calling. You simply pay them either by the hour or by the call they make and give them a certain bonus amount for each person who agrees to have information sent to them. It's as simple as getting a mature high school student or college student who is willing to say the same thing over and over again on the phone to people they don't know and writing down the necessary information of those who agree to have something mailed to them. The bonus for each positive response does not have to be much . . maybe fifty cents . . . as their main pay comes from the hourly work, but they do have some incentive if the person says "yes."

My son recently took on a telemarketing job this past summer for a mortgage company. I laughed and said . . "you must really want that car." I couldn't imagine my son doing telemarketing, but apparently he wanted something badly enough he was willing to do it. When I asked him about what he was doing after his first week, he said "it's a piece of cake." He said after his first seven or eight rejections, it became a game to him. He said, it was just a matter of calling and repeating the same thing over until he got a person who said "yes" to the initial event. He became top telemarketer in the company for the summer and it taught me how telemarketing is just an initial step to start people on an "event" trip.

Mike and Linda, a couple in my Watkins business group, moved to Florida to start their new Watkins business. They knew no one. Linda simply opened up the phone book and started calling people telling them that she was the new Watkins representative in her area and wanted to let people know that and would like to share the new Watkins catalog with them. Linda told me that after the seventh rejection, it became easy. I wonder what it is about the seventh rejection as that is what my son told me also. Linda spent two days making cold calls and after two days of calling had set up over 80 appointments with people for the next two weeks. Not only did she collect over $2,000 in orders, she is selling $2,000 - $3,000 in Watkins products to her customers each month. It all started with telemarketing and using an "event" sequence in leading people to where you want them to go.

What I'm saying is telemarketing or cold calling does have a place in prospecting and product sales, and even if you don't personally want to start the process, there are people you can hire who will do that part for you. This would include targeted lists as well. Wow! How things change! What I would not have considred consider a viable recruiting approach is now something any networker might want to think about, even me!