A cold public is one that has never heard of you.
This is the audience you must get used to dealing with. That is where the growth game happens.
First.
You will encounter mistrust. A lot.
The person doesn't know you and probably won't have the slightest interest in what you have to offer.
But even if she has, she will be suspicious.
Then you will deal with suspicious people.
It is like that in the beginning.
Second.
You will find disinterest. A lot.
I would say that 90% of the time you talk to your cold audience, you will find disinterest in the form of silence or in the form of "Okay, send me an email introducing your stuff and I'll take a look and get back to you."
But the initial mistrust and disinterest are small compared to the main obstacle in corporate sales:
To come to be heard and considered.
It is very difficult to penetrate companies with their cold audiences. If you have prospected you know this.
If it were easy, everybody would sell to everybody. The market makes a natural selection of who actually transacts and who stays on the sidelines trying.
I would tell you that the vast majority do not have the tenacity to play the penetration game.
It is a game of numbers and beliefs.
Numbers: If you try to talk to 100 companies, statistically, about 15 will listen (for real) and about 2 to 4 will buy at the end of your sales cycle.
Beliefs:
First: Companies MUST listen to you. Companies MUST answer the phone. Employees are there and do not have the luxury of doing as we individuals do of looking at a number on the display and not answering.
Second: You have a real value to pass on. Your belief should be: Whoever buys from me will benefit tremendously (and that should be a truth). Then your mission is to help those in need.
So we have several components in corporate prospecting: The mistrust of the public, the disinterest, the numbers, and their beliefs.
These components are present in dealing with cold audiences.
- Expect distrust. Be patient and anticipate answers to the main objections.
- Deal with disinterest. Only spend your energy for those who really can and want to benefit from what you have to offer.
- Go high on the numbers: 40 to 80 approaches daily.
- Believe in the value you provide.
In all of this there is a "mimimi" package. I can recite all the objections rolling around in your mind, especially with regard to numbers.
Let's save our time.
A good prospecting call can last 10 minutes. With a few stops, you can do 5 of these in an hour. In three hours, you can have 15 good conversations.
It turns out that to have one good conversation (lasting 10 minutes) you will have 10 innocuous conversations that last 2 minutes.
So you have 10 x 2 minutes = 20 minutes talking to uninterested people or even trying to talk to someone.
In one hour you have 30 innocuous conversations. In three hours you have 90 innocuous conversations.
Adding up the good conversations, you have in 6 hours of prospecting 105 conversations on the phone.
Divide by two. Let's plan 3 hours of prospecting per day. This results in 50 conversations.
Let's assume that I am wrong by 50%. In 3 hours/day we can have 25 conversations. In 20 days it will be 500.
500 conversations/month with your target market. That's the numbers game with cold audiences.
Of course, this number includes the reconnections. On average consider 5 calls per company. There we have 100 companies contacted receiving your value proposition.
How many will you buy? It could be two, four or five.
I can't be precise. It depends on market factors that neither you nor I control, but we will be in the statistical game and the probabilities of the market of cold audiences.
Not to be in that game, is to depend on referrals.
