Cold calling isn’t a dirty word. It’s an opportunity. It’s something your competition probably isn’t doing or may not be doing well. It’s also a skill that’s easy to master, and when done correctly, will allow you to find opportunities and build relationships that will lead to new sales and increased profits.

Attitude Is Everything

When you pick up telephone to make your first call, how do you feel? Are you motivated to make sale or irritated that this is something you have to do? Do you feel like you’ll be bothering person you’re calling or doing them a favor introducing your offering? Are you hesitant about quality of what you are selling? When you’re cold calling, any inkling of hesitation will come through on telephone and hinder your ability to make sale.

Your attitude will make or break your ability to entice decision makers. You can have best widget on market, but if you think of cold calling as a necessary evil, you’ll be wasting both your time and your prospect’s time… and prospects don’t forget.

Be Prepared

For example, wine proved to be a powerful marketing element for a startup magazine targeting an audience that is personally affluent and controls an enormous amount of money.

BuySide magazine is a publication for institutional investors and money managers. When it was first conceived, it had to overcome what seemed to be a big drawback. Its founder, Gordon Holmes, lived in Sonoma, California, and insisted that magazine be based near his home, far away from both financial and media centers in New York.

In discussions with Holmes, I discovered that Holmes’ insistence on basing his operations in Sonoma was not just a whim or a wish to have a short commute to work. It turns out that five generations of his family had been involved in California agriculture and he was passionate about California wine and wine-growing.

I made a decision to turn BuySide’s remoteness from financial and media centers of action into a positive. His location in California's wine country would become part of magazine’s positioning.

The first step was to create a private label BuySide Wine. In a deal with local wineries, we were able to source a sufficient amount of BuySide Merlot and Chardonnay. A special wine bottle label was designed to reflect unique story of this boutique wine.