Affiliate since: 02/08/2020, Power Rank: 99999999 | Read Michael's 202 other Ask SC answers

Hi Adjoua!
As far as I know, cold calling, using a local telephone directory, is a bad method for attracting new PSAs. I have too many reasons for saying so. I won't mention all of them, but just a few.
1. In my country, most companies that are using Call Center Agents for recruiting/sales, are failing most of the time. They lose lot of money on calls than what they make on sales. They give their agents targets to meet and their agents can't meet them.
2. You spend lot of time explaining to one person, so the cold calling is consuming lot of your time, costing you too much money and limiting yourself to one person at a time.
3.Many people, like myself, don't like to talking to strangers on a phone.
So all in all, it is better to use your time and money trying to attract many affiliates at a time on online marketing. Telephone calls are expensive. It is better to use that telephone money on buying SPAs and have more time for your other tasks.
I hope this will help you.
Thank you.
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Hi Adjoua!
As far as I know, cold calling, using a local telephone directory, is a bad method for attracting new PSAs. I have too many reasons for saying so. I won't mention all of them, but just a few.
1. In my country, most companies that are using Call Center Agents for recruiting/sales, are failing most of the time. They lose lot of money on calls than what they make on sales. They give their agents targets to meet and their agents can't meet them.
2. You spend lot of time explaining
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Affiliate since: 11/01/2014, Power Rank: 99999999 | Read Reva 's 13 other Ask SC answers

In my opinion, cold calling is a form a desperation.

I follow the author of this quote Frank Rumbauskas.
There's an excerpt below...
My answer is NO. His answer, don't even think about!

Cold calling isn’t a lost art. It’s simply inefficient. Just like the horse & buggy when compared with an automobile, and a telephone when compared with a telegraph key.

Worse, it’s ineffective! At least the telegraph would get your message across, and the horse & buggy would get you from point A to point B. But that’s not necessarily so with cold calling.

It annoys people. It destroys your status as a business equal. It’s horribly inefficient, and nowadays, decision makers are becoming experts at avoiding cold calls! Gatekeepers are taught to refuse all of them, and now many businesspeople are setting up “cold call” voicemail boxes that are NEVER checked!

(Just in case you’re wondering why your cold calls aren’t being returned.)

In fact the University of North Carolina did a study, concluding that 80% of executives absolutely, positively will not buy from a cold call!

As to the second statement, that salespeople who don’t cold call are lazy, this is typical of an old-school dictator manager who never actually succeeded in sales.

All of the top sales pros I know and have worked with never cold call. They use efficient lead-generation strategies that bring prospects to them, and eventually they have so much referral business that they don’t have to prospect at all.

If a sales rep isn’t cold calling and isn’t making any sales, you probably have someone who isn’t necessarily lazy. What you have is a rep who was never taught anything effective. I know, because I was in that very position my first few years in sales.

I hope this helps!
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In my opinion, cold calling is a form a desperation.

I follow the author of this quote Frank Rumbauskas.
There's an excerpt below...
My answer is NO. His answer, don't even think about!

Cold calling isn’t a lost art. It’s simply inefficient. Just like the horse & buggy when compared with an automobile, and a telephone when compared with a telegraph key.

Worse, it’s ineffective! At least the telegraph would get your message across, and the horse
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Affiliate since: 12/31/1969, Power Rank: 99999999

In my honest opinion, cold calling is a total waste of time and money. People do not like to be annoyed by telemarketers. If you want to use this method – try a little variety to it. Go through the phone book and, using this information, draft a letter to each person and make up a small package.

In your package you can include your explanatory letter, a $12 Gift Card, a brochure on the ECA program and any other information you deem fit to include.

Now I guess some of these will end up in the bin but most people are curious and will take the time to have a look. You never know, you might get some valuable team members this way.

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In my honest opinion, cold calling is a total waste of time and money. People do not like to be annoyed by telemarketers. If you want to use this method – try a little variety to it. Go through the phone book and, using this information, draft a letter to each person and make up a small package.

In your package you can include your explanatory letter, a $12 Gift Card, a brochure on the ECA program and any other information you deem fit to include.

Now I guess
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Affiliate since: 08/29/2023, Power Rank: 99999999 | Read Osaro's 206 other Ask SC answers

This is not called “cold” because you decide to make it so, but rather because all or almost all the people picking the phone are not expecting your call, so it will be a bit of naiveté to not research these people before hand where possible. For example you should thrive to get information only on people interested in online business or second income.

You should have it at the back of your mind that coldness may result from the response of the receiver, so you need to develop some skills that will trigger warmness from your target and a prior research may be of assistance here or by sending/dropping a leaflet, brief letter, business card etc, with a promise to call by phone at a later date, in order to build a prior relationship before the phone rings.

Another important step to a better and maybe fruitful result in your conversation is to introduce yourself, your company and your relationship with it and how you think it will be important for his attention.

Cold calling is very challenging too, so you must be prepared to be a skilful and very professional sales person in understanding the nitty-gritty of this business, with some degree of eloquence and determination not to let failure discourage you from forging ahead, because there will be a lot of setbacks. As a result you need to understand that all calls are not going to be the same because different things work for different people, so you are going to be very dynamic in your conversation in order to meet the challenges of diversity.

You must desist from unnecessary persistence especially where the person has no time to listen to you or blatantly uninterested. However, there is nothing wrong from requesting the e-mail of your prospect and asking his permission to drop a message for details of your intention and promise a call back when he/she is less busy for example. Learn to politely call it a day if permission is not granted.

From my experience in this business, I will not rule out any legitimate method to target prospects, so yes, cold calling could be one of the methods , but the goodness or badness of it depends on your attitude or approach and the results. However, I advice you may want to do the followings:

1. Be very professional, articulate and well grounded in SFI business, in order to properly position your response to concerns, issues, queries and questions in your conversation.

2. You must plan in advance the strategy and method you want to adopt, for example make calls at the likely period you think someone will respond. For example, Monday mornings and Friday afternoons are deem bad periods, while holidays that do not attract too much merriments are deem good periods according to research, but there is no perfect time actually in my opinion.

3. Always remember to highlight the benefits rather than the costs

4. You must leave a message if no one answers the phone and make a plan to call back

5. Engage in self appraisal by evaluating the success and failures of this strategy, in order to recalibrate and be more successful.

6. You must be polite in all circumstances for many reasons; change of mind, for the benefit of the next sales person, in case you mistakenly call back, avoid been reported etc


At the juncture, you should give it a try but a lot of people do not like to engage in cold calling because of some inherent problems but what sets you apart from another sales person is the way you organise yours. Go Conquer!

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This is not called “cold” because you decide to make it so, but rather because all or almost all the people picking the phone are not expecting your call, so it will be a bit of naiveté to not research these people before hand where possible. For example you should thrive to get information only on people interested in online business or second income.

You should have it at the back of your mind that coldness may result from the response of the receiver, so you need to develop some
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Affiliate since: 01/19/2014, Power Rank: 99999999 | Read Karl's 41 other Ask SC answers

Before doing this, you need more information.

You need to find out if it is legal in your location place cold calls, and the way in which the calls need to be placed in order to make them legal if there are regulations.

In the US, where I live, it is legal as long as I am manually dialing each number and am not calling a cell phone or someone who has put their number onto the federal "do not cal list." It is illegal to call a cell phone even if you are manually dialing the number or if they have put their number onto that list. So I have a lot of work to do before I pick up the phone. Setting up a computer with a recorded message and putting it to work calling all the numbers in a block, which was legal 20 years ago, is now against the law in most places here. Your local and federal laws will give guidance.

Even so, there are people and companies that do this practice in the US. Most people do not like to get a cold call, a very few will know if it is legal or not, and will take action against if it is illegal. I have a friend who makes a portion of his living by suing people and companies that violate the phone call laws here in the USA. The statutory mandated awards for violation are pretty high.

In short, I do not think that this is a good idea and you better have the resources to pay a court award or defend yourself against people who will sue you if you do it.
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Before doing this, you need more information.

You need to find out if it is legal in your location place cold calls, and the way in which the calls need to be placed in order to make them legal if there are regulations.

In the US, where I live, it is legal as long as I am manually dialing each number and am not calling a cell phone or someone who has put their number onto the federal "do not cal list." It is illegal to call a cell phone even if you are manually dialing
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Affiliate since: 04/26/2002, Power Rank: 386 | Read Debra's 28 other Ask SC answers

No. I can not say this strongly enough.

In the 1990s, before the modern internet and before surveys were offered online, I worked for a market research company in San Diego.

It did not matter that we were only asking people to do surveys, not asking for money. I was hung up on or cursed. Very few people were willing to talk. I hated going to work each day but it was the only job I could find at the time.

Read all the information about marketing here on SFI. There are many free ways to attract new PSAs, both online and offline. Cold calling is no longer the best way to go, just as the horse was replaced by the automobile.

I wish you the best of luck.
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No. I can not say this strongly enough.

In the 1990s, before the modern internet and before surveys were offered online, I worked for a market research company in San Diego.

It did not matter that we were only asking people to do surveys, not asking for money. I was hung up on or cursed. Very few people were willing to talk. I hated going to work each day but it was the only job I could find at the time.

Read all the information about marketing here on SFI. There
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Affiliate since: 12/31/1969, Power Rank: 99999999

Cold calling from a telephone directory only has been successful in a very local area. We used to do a lot of cold calling that way. Back when people had more trust from someone calling on the phone, it was somewhat effective, and still is for local people calling local people for things such as carpet cleaning. Otherwise it is less effective than advertising on the internet. You will probably get 1000 nos before you get someone who will listen.

The best way to sell anything is your warm market. If you have a long list of telephone numbers of people you know, that is where to start. They at least have some contact with you and aren't as skeptical. The second best is to build repore' on social media sites to get some credibility, and then go from there.

Advertising locally is the next best, if you want to use telephone contacts. You may get some people from the ad that will talk to you about your business. Advertise that you will help them to build there home business. Some places you can advertise consulting services for home business. No matter what; you have to develop some credibility for anyone to give you the time of day on the phone. Robot calling must be effective judging from the huge number I get and put on the do not call list. That is the only way I would go doing cold calling on the phone.
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Cold calling from a telephone directory only has been successful in a very local area. We used to do a lot of cold calling that way. Back when people had more trust from someone calling on the phone, it was somewhat effective, and still is for local people calling local people for things such as carpet cleaning. Otherwise it is less effective than advertising on the internet. You will probably get 1000 nos before you get someone who will listen.

The best way to sell anything is your warm
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Affiliate since: 08/06/2012, Power Rank: 249 | Read Ronilo's 408 other Ask SC answers

As a general guideline, do whatever method you know to get PSA as long as it will not give bad reputation to SFI.

This methods depends largely on your local culture. Most Asian would accept calls from strangers and sustain the conversation for awhile. But Europeans and Americans will hardly sustain a conversation to a telemarketers.

Not everyone can do this, but I tried to do this myself with some success. I want to share what I did and suggest it as guidelines.

Here are some guidelines If you do cold calling using a local directory.

1. Introduction - Introduce yourself politely and where are you from and ask if they can spare 2 minutes to talk about working from home using internet.

2. If they say No. - Say thank you but leave you telephone number if later he/she want to contact you. If he/she took you number that means he/she is interested but don't have time when you call.

3. If he say yes - Give him/her a very concise description of SFI. Tell him/her that you can best explain if he/she is inside the website. Immediately ask him/her if he/she is in front of a computer and immediately type your gateway link.

If he is not infront of a computer, then ask him/her to write your gateway link. Better use url shortener so that he/she will type the whole thing. Then ask when he/she can be on her computer. Do not forget to give your contact number, FB account or Skype for him/her to contact you back easily.

This is your main objective for that first call, "for him/her to sign up as SFI affiliate". The follow up will now depend on the channel of communication that you agreed.
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As a general guideline, do whatever method you know to get PSA as long as it will not give bad reputation to SFI.

This methods depends largely on your local culture. Most Asian would accept calls from strangers and sustain the conversation for awhile. But Europeans and Americans will hardly sustain a conversation to a telemarketers.

Not everyone can do this, but I tried to do this myself with some success. I want to share what I did and suggest it as guidelines.

Here
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Affiliate since: 12/12/2014, Power Rank: 99999999

Interesting question,

First of all Cold calling typically refers to the first telephone call made to a prospective PSA.

Cold calling is an important stage and technique in the selling process.This is useful in many aspects of business and work communications outside of sales activities and the selling function.

Cold calling actually enables the you to:

- identify and create new sponsoring possibilities
- establish relationships and a respect beyond normal sales responsibilities
and be an entrepreneur.

This works well only if you use it the correct way as shown below;

1. Preparation - be prepared and have knowledge of who you represent and the product on offer
2. Introduction - use correct key phrases in explaining and positioning yourself and your product
3. Questioning - be able to help, facilitate and enable rather than assume, sell and push the potential affiliate
4. Objectivity - the mark of an adviser
5. Inform and educate - do not sell
7. Involve and coordinate
8.Keep in touch - keep notes and keep informed your new potentials

Hope this answers your question.
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Interesting question,

First of all Cold calling typically refers to the first telephone call made to a prospective PSA.

Cold calling is an important stage and technique in the selling process.This is useful in many aspects of business and work communications outside of sales activities and the selling function.

Cold calling actually enables the you to:

- identify and create new sponsoring possibilities
- establish relationships and a respect beyond
...more

Affiliate since: 12/31/1969, Power Rank: 99999999

Hello.

I don't see cold calling, using a local telephone directory being a very good method of attracting PSA's at all. I have the same opinion for recruiting ECA's. My reasons are these:

Firstly, it implies a degree of desperation. SFI & it's affiliates are not desperate. We are business owners, growing our business to a point of financial success.

Secondly, you don't know what motivates them, so therefore you don't know what information they require to be attracted to your business. You may in fact put them off altogether.

Thirdly, & I believe most importantly, we don't spam people or businesses. Cold calling using a telephone directory is called 'canvassing', which essentially is spamming, without a computer.

I would say definitely NO. Don't do it because it gives you & SFI a bad reputation, & is against SFI's rules of conduct.
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Hello.

I don't see cold calling, using a local telephone directory being a very good method of attracting PSA's at all. I have the same opinion for recruiting ECA's. My reasons are these:

Firstly, it implies a degree of desperation. SFI & it's affiliates are not desperate. We are business owners, growing our business to a point of financial success.

Secondly, you don't know what motivates them, so therefore you don't know what information they require to be
...more