Liane Carmi

Okay.  Some people are amazing at prospecting and making cold calls.  Others, like me, are rather bad at it.  So I was pretty excited when my wife called me from her conference in California to tell me that part of her training for her new position was on making cold calls (in person) and closing sales.

I recently began offering my web promotion services to local businesses in my area, and making cold calls is a huge part of that.

So I stayed on the phone with my wife for over an hour getting all the juicy details, and finding out that I wasn’t as bad as I thought – some of the things she mentioned I was already doing. But there was a LOT I didn’t know.

Anyway, here goes.

Here’s the down-low on how to make cold calls and prospect, business to business, in person.

Start with your pitch.

Come up with a 30-second pitch.  Introduce yourself, say 3 things about your company, and 3 benefits for the potential client.  To hear the pitch I came up with, click play:

Next, ask the business owner if he is interested in learning more.

If not, it’s no big deal.  You just lost 30 seconds of your day.  Leave in a way that allows you to come back some other time.  You can say something like, “Maybe it’s not the right time for you right now.  Have a great day!”

If he is interested, schedule a second meeting.

Come to that meeting prepared to educate him on what you do, and how it can help him.  Bring lots of screen shots, examples, and so on.  Show him what you’ve done for other clients.  Also tell him what your fees are. Answer all his questions. If he’s doing 80% of the talking, you’re doing well.

After that, you need to find out if he wants to work with you.  So ask!  “Now that you’ve seen what I have to offer you, let’s move forward!  Are you willing to invest in (your service here) to increase your profits?

If the answer is yes, BE CAREFUL!  Don’t just ask for payment. First, go back & review all the benefits he’s going to receive.  Justify the purchase and make him feel really good about it. Then, tell him how you work – how you accept payment…and have him sign a contract.  Better yet, if you can accept credit cards, get his credit card information right then and there.

But he might say something else…

If he’s not sure he wants to move forward, he probably has some concerns.  You can say something like, “sounds like you still have some questions.”  Let him talk and tell you his concerns.  Then, respond.  Make him feel better.  At that point, ask for the close again.

Or he might say he needs to speak with someone else.  If so, you can ask him about the process.  “What does it take to make this happen?”  Get a time when you can follow up with him.  And follow up to ask for the sale again.

He could also say he’s not interested at all.  If that happens, you go back to the original response – maybe it’s just not the right time for him at the moment.

Anyway, the teacher in me got crazy and created this:

workflow for cold calling / prospecting

Prospecting Cold Calling Workflow

Okay…all you natural sales types…does this sound similar to what you do? What do you do differently that’s worked?

Is your twitter stuck at 2000 followers, and you can’t follow any more people?

This is the number one complaint I’ve heard from new twitter users.  You want to gain more followers, and you get stuck at 2000…

So do you have to wait until the number of followers you have magically goes up to 2000?  Well, no.  Thankfully, there’s a really cool tool you can use to fix this problem.  

Watch the video for more information:

FYI, here’s the link in the video:

www.dossy.org/twitter/karma

Did this help you with your twitter marketing?  Leave a comment & let me know! And if you really liked it, make sure you re-tweet & bookmark it!

It’s Wednesday night, and tomorrow Dennis Karganilla will log into Google and type in the phrase “DK is a Street Performer,” at which point he’ll pick the winner of the dkisastreetperformer contest.

A few weeks ago, Howie Schwartz decided to challenge the members of Dennis Karganilla and Jimmy Davis’ “90 Day Challenge” marketing group.  The question was, who can rank on the first page of Google multiple times – as many times as possible – for the long keyword phrase.

Personally, I took massive action, and remained consistent throughout the month of the competition.  Here are 10 things I learned about SEO, challenges, and what it takes to rank on the first page of Google multiple times.

1. Quick action gets you on page one fast.
When the challenge began, there were no results for the given keyword phrase in Google.  Acting quickly got me on page one, where I immediately owned at least six of the 10 sites.

2. A good blueprint is essential.
I used a marketing strategy I learned from Howie Schwartz.  Without this strategy, the competition would have been a big game of “who just posted last.”  But using a specific link-building trick, I was able to give my websites authority that helped them stay high on page one.

3. Consistency is a must.
Because I promoted consistently for 3 weeks, I was able to monopolize page one, getting as many as 9 out of 10 choices on the first page of Google, but more often getting 8 out of 10. Even when my competitors tried to catch up after taking a break, they couldn’t.

4. No automation = time suck.
I managed to automate a few of my processes.  Had I not, I would have spent at least 10 more hours each week trying to promote my sites.  Or I would have had less substantial results.

5. Outsourcing is a necessity in the real world.
One keyword phrase is easy.  But when it comes to really ranking on Google – in normal situations – you need to rank for multiple keywords.  That’s why you need more than automation.  You need someone – or a group of people – who you’ve trained and can take over the day-to-day tasks.

6. In a new niche like this one, Google lets you decide.
Yep – that’s right.  YOU decide what goes in Google.  But it’s more complicated than that.  Google consistently optimizes its search pages.  And it wants to know, what are people clicking on, and what are the media related to this new niche.  In the beginning, many competitors were using blogs and videos.  So for a long time, Google placed two videos, side-by-side, on the first page of search.  Towards the end, most of the marketers leaned towards press releases, and today, as I write this, there are 3 press releases on the first page of Google.

7. Google gives new sites the benefit of the doubt.
So when you create a new webpage, Google throws it on the first page of results – just to see if people like it.  It’s a good way to get quick rankings.  Follow this up with a good marketing campaign, and you can stay on top of the results.

8. Social marketing has a strong influence in several ways.
Tweets on twitter actually can rank on the first page of Google.  But that’s not the really important part.  What’s really incredible is how much social media – twitter, facebook, etc., can influence success in a new market.  When videos were on the first page of search results, the videos shown were ones that had been visited the most and had some ratings.  Someone with a good following on any networking site can post a link and have immediate rankings on YouTube or other video sites.

9. Challenges help people take action – especially when there’s a prize.
You may be wondering what the point of this challenge was.  Other than bragging rights, the winner gets an Amazon Kindle from Howie Schwartz.  The possibility of receiving a prize gets people in motion.  Good thing to remember if you’re trying to motivate a team.

10. The only way to really learn about something is to do it.
I thought I knew a lot about ranking on Google.  And I did.  But now, after being “intimate” with Google for one keyword phrase, I know even more.  And when Google introduced a new tool, I was one of the first people to see it.

So…

That’s what I learned in the DK is a Street Performer SEO Challenge.

Do you think you could use some of these tips to help you in your marketing?

Leave a comment below – I’m curious to know what you think!