 How cold calling (properly) works better than AdWords
I have to express similar experiences with the blog post.<p>While I have Adwords experience for 5 years now (with my MMO guild hosting system), with my newest offering (Plug: Sports League Management - <a href="http://www.bracketpal.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.bracketpal.com</a>), I knew that I'd be facing a much more established market with higher PPC and I'd be up against more established players with bigger budgets.<p>So, I faced my fears[1] and began a sample of calling Volleyball leagues in the Milwaukee Area, expecting rejection after rejection.  So far, it's proven to be well worth it.  Not knowing how to structure these kind of things, I pretty awkwardly and directly opened with something like:<p><i>Hi, My name is Jesse Gumm, I'm a software developer in the Milwaukee area and I'm in the process of getting a new product off the ground for running sports leagues, with a particular emphasis on volleyball leagues. It was used to run the leagues at Bradford Beach this summer, and I was wondering if you would be willing to sit down with me for a few minutes to try and see if maybe this would be a good fit for your company.</i><p>That (terrible) pitch landed me around a 60-70% success rate for setting up meetings, and of those, the majority of them <i>sound</i> like they'll be buying from me this coming summer, and at the very least, has turned into referrals for other leagues and other sports (since I'm much more active in the Milwaukee volleyball scene, it helps getting those referrals for other sports for which I've very limited information).<p>I'm gearing up for a massive cold-calling spree (just finishing a few critical features for a few Winter leagues I've got lined up), making an effort to call every volleyball league within 200 miles to see if they'll set up a personal meeting, before I start calling to try to sell the (what I think will be much harder to get) remote-desktop meeting.  The article above and (the article linked in the comments: <a href="http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3234286" rel="nofollow">http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3234286</a>) looks to be extremely valuable towards getting a better success rate, and is consistent with what I've been reading in sales and cold-calling books, regarding the success rate of setting up a conversation to find out the prospects pain points before pushing a product in their face.<p>[1] And fears they are.  I have to psyche myself out before every call, despite the fact that all of my calls have been pleasant, and most of them have produced meetings.  And after the call, while I'm energized to launch my product and work, I still have to psyche myself out AGAIN for the next call.  It's really a difficult thing for me.  I'm definitely not the kind of guy that approaches someone at a party and strikes up a conversation.