The LeadGen.com Blog
Category: Cold_Calling
Another brain teaser from the puzzle lab at LeadGen.com.
A little easier then the first one, and one less error.
The real question is: Isn't Marketing just another puzzle?
While you're contemplating the meaning of life, the universe, and everything, if you need help with any aspect of your Sales or Marketing program, call us!
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Stupid Marketing Tricks: Email Edition
Back in the day, salespeople who were afraid to make cold calls, or who didn't know how to open one, would employ an excuse on their calls such as "I'm calling to follow up a letter I sent you..." - never actually having sent a letter. They did this as a way to make the call seem less cold.
And prospects were often dumb enough to fall for it, or too polite to challenge it. And so the prospect would apologize, and tell the salesperson that they didn't get the letter.
"Oh, sorry," the salesperson would say, "I guess it hasn't arrived yet," knowing full well that no letter was ever sent. "But as long as I have you on the phone, do you have a minute?"
And off they'd go...
Fast forward, and today lazy marketers don't even bother making the phone call. Instead, they send misleading emails, and hope someone is stupid enough to respond.
How many emails like these have you received:
• "I tried reaching you by phone, but apparently you were out."
• "I don't know if you got my voice mail, but I was hoping to catch you at your desk."
• "I'm following up my previous emails to see if you're still interested."
Setting aside that these things clog up your inbox, the real tragedy is that is that someone is actually paying for this.
Some poor business owner has bought into the drip email process, probably because he or she can't find salespeople who actually know how to sell. And, of course, email is cheap.
The problem is that, by the time this business owner finds out that it didn't work, they've blown half their year.
And their salespeople are on to their next jobs.
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Have you even gotten one of those pitches from a call center where they brag about the high number of dials they can make each day, and it sounds high but reasonable?
And then as icing on the cake they tell you that they can generate lots of great leads too, and it sounds even better?
Run the math, though, and you may find out you're about to get snockered.
Let's assume that it takes three minutes to dial someone - because you have to familiarize yourself with who they are and what they do. Otherwise, of course, it will sound like you're reading from a script, and they'll just hang up on you.
So that 100 dials/day will take about 300 minutes, or 5 hours - assuming no bathroom breaks.
Then ask yourself: If the caller actually gets someone on the line, how long do you think it will take for them to persuade a prospect to agree to a meeting? Ten minutes? (Ten if you're lucky, but probaby more like twenty. But let's run with ten.)
And how many of these ten minute conversations would the caller have to have to get one person to say yes? Five? (Again, five if you're lucky, but probably more like ten.)
So here's the math: Five appointments required 25 conversations, each of which took ten minutes (not counting the time it takes to write notes), for a total of 250 minutes. Add that to the five hours from before, and you have a 9 hour day.
Do you know what a "blivit" is?
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