
Cold calling for my startup and how I learned to embrace the challenge - golmansax
https://hackernoon.com/cold-calling-for-my-startup-and-how-i-learned-to-embrace-the-challenge-31f16728de48
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plinkplonk
I hate _getting_ cold calls. So I avoid doing it to other people.

Yes that makes me less of a salesman. So be it.

Tangent: In India you can report unsolicited sales calls to a central
(government) authority, where you can sign up to get on a "Do Not Disturb"
list, and get any sales caller who ignores this fined, and eventually get his
number disconnected etc.

The system isn't perfect, and there are some impressive hacks to bypass it,
but the situation now is _much_ better than before these regulations existed.
Where one used to get multiple spammers a day, now weeks and months can go by
before getting one (who I promptly report). My number must be on some shared
"cranky idiot who hates cold callers" list, I almost never get these calls
now.

A minister was interrupted in parliament while presenting the annual national
budget (iirc) by someone who wanted to sell him a credit card(!), which led to
this regulation.

And it is a godsend. Cold callers should all burn in hellfire (imo)

~~~
sremani
Are you an entrepreneur? Have you built a business? When things are done to
extreme sure.. the slimy salesman or the spammy robo-calls are a nuisance.

Take a list of the world's 400 billionaires and ask them who has NOT Cold-
Called?

My guess is its less than 10. Or to put it another may, most successful people
Cold-called, their "heros" or experts in their field or successful people in
town etc.

So I disagree the way you put cold-calling.

If you want to start a business, I strongly suggest you to change you attitude
towards Sales. Unfortunately, Engineers have this unjustified hate towards
Sales, not every sales pitch or call is unethical or pushy.

~~~
Nullabillity
Yes, all cold calling is horrible and unethical. Whether or not it works is
besides the point.

~~~
gnicholas
This is an interesting perspective. I agree that some types of cold-calling
are terrible, like if you sell credit cards and just randomly call anyone who
might want a credit card. This is untargeted, and if everyone who sold
general-purpose goods did it, we'd all be inundated.

In the B2B context, things seem a little different, especially for startups
who have products that are not known. If you work in a particular field and
someone calls you to tell you about their new product that is relevant to your
company and your specific role, that seems much less terrible than the
untargeted calling described above. And in some cases, you may actually be
glad that you were called. I don't think it's fair to say that "all cold
calling is horrible and unethical", since it can be done in very targeted
ways. And small startups in particular (who are here on HN) often try to cold-
call in as targeted a way as possible—because when you're spending CEO time on
the phone, you're very sensitive to wasting anyone's time.

At the end of the day, it comes down to balancing the benefits to people who
are glad you called and the detriment to people whose time you wasted. If
you're not targeted, you're likely a net negative to society. If you're very
targeted (as many small startups are), there's a much greater chance you're a
net positive.

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EtDybNuvCu
If you cold-call me, I will spend the first few minutes feeding you false
information. I will deliberately drag out the process, and at about 12min into
the call, I will confess that I've been faking everything. At this point, I
will attempt to tilt you so that you lose your temper and start cursing at me.
On a really good day, you'll be so angry that your manager will have to come
onto the call. I will feed them a few minutes of fake information, then
attempt to tilt them as well. On the best days, you and your manager will sit
around a reverse phone book and dox me, looking to find ways to intimidate or
control me while I laugh and attempt to keep you on the line. My record is
52min, lasting over multiple phone calls, ending in a dramatic reading of a
maths paper over the phone to a speakerphone consisting of three levels of
management.

I want your business to fail if you cold-call.

~~~
goatherders
Lol. You do realize that you are wasting your time, not mine?

My business succeeds BECAUSE of cold calls. So your drop in the ocean matters
not.

~~~
michael_h
How many cold calls can you make per day?

What if they're 52 minutes long?

------
gnicholas
One useful tip I got from a friend in sales: open the call with an offer to
set up a call at a more convenient time. It seems strange to immediately ask
for another call, but it is really helpful in showing that you're
friendly/flexible, and you recognize that the person you're calling is busy.

About 30% of the time, the person was happy to chat in the moment (they had
chosen to answer a call from an unknown number, after all). And the rest of
the time, you benefit from setting up a time that is more convenient for them.
Some of the time you end up never having the later call—but it seems this
happens where there wasn't a great fit to begin with, so it actually saves you
time talking to an unlikely lead.

~~~
ftio
This is a great technique.

1\. Ask if they have 30 seconds to chat.

2\. If they say no, ask for another time that works better. People are polite,
so many will not say no. Schedule this time immediately and have them confirm
on the calendar right away.

3\. If they say yes, immediately start asking them empathetic questions that
demonstrate knowledge of their problems, followed by, "Does any of this
resonate with you?"

~~~
michael_h
Being honest, what I would do: schedule a time for the call back and make sure
to not pick up the phone at that time.

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overcast
Cold calls like will likely get forwarded to our internal extension that
relays to "Lenny". The longest we've had someone on the line talking to the
bot is currently at 8:37 on the leaderboard. :D

~~~
goatherders
I don't understand this. Say you're not interested and move on. Being a dick
to someone trying to earn a living says a lot about your character. And I
promise, the sales rep doesn't care. Their job is dials and talk time. Your
bot is helping them reach their daily quota.

~~~
908087
Cold calling people you have no previous relationship with is a dick move.
Lenny just helps some people return the favor.

419 scammers are "just trying to earn a living" too.

~~~
goatherders
I call people I don't know all the time because I have something valuable to
offer and want to share that with them. It's no different than any form of
advertising....its just more direct. Put another way, if I could call you
today and offer you a service or product that solved a big problem you have
for a fair renumeration you would be thankful.

~~~
908087
Other forms of advertising don't make my office phone ring while I'm in the
middle of something, or make my home phone ring while I'm eating dinner to
ambush me. Cold calling makes e-mail spammers look polite by comparison.

Also, despite the fact that I despise and block everything the internet ad
industry throws at me, that industry arguably provides something in return for
the trouble of putting up with their bullshit. Cold calling provides me with
absolutely nothing beyond a rude interruption of my day at best.

I don't care what you're offering, because I subconsciously tag anything
associated with cold calling as a scam and file it in the same mental folder
as that "free cruise" I "won".

------
goatherders
Cold calling is wildly effective. It just takes making more than 2 calls a
week. I tell my team "get 100 on the phone without selling something and I'll
give you $100" been doing that for years and have never paid a rep the $100.

~~~
MatthewRJones
Eh... I'm not sure about "wildly effective." A few years ago I started a
business and cold called for several hours each day for the first four months.
I didn't make a single sale, and I'm told I have an excellent phone presence.

What succeeded for me was SEO, direct mail, and email campaigns. I still had
to do sales pitches, but I was working off warm leads from people that
actually wanted to hear from me.

I'm not saying cold calling doesn't work. I'm saying it's an inefficient use
of time. Yes, some people will buy, but there are far more efficient ways of
reaching potential clients.

~~~
goatherders
It wasn't wildly effective for you, over four months, for your product/service
to the specific people you called at the price you offered. A valid data point
for sure, but far from empirical.

~~~
ecdavis
No true cold caller.

------
whataretensors
Cold calling is not for me. I hate even answering email or inbound
communication.

One thing I've realized working on my own is that you can do anything you
want. You don't have to do the thing you hate the most to make progress. It
will feel draining, feel like more work, and be less productive than focusing
on where you are strong.

~~~
WalterGR
You've made a living being self-employed and by doing exactly what you want to
do?

Is that it?

How do you accomplish that without communicating with others?

~~~
whataretensors
Yes. I find projects that do not require much human communication. Some is
fine.

You always have to do things you don't like when building a business. I'm just
saying don't make something you don't like part of your scaling strategy.

------
908087
Cold calling me is a guaranteed way to prevent yourself from ever getting my
business, and I know I'm not alone in that. My subconscious automatically tags
companies that cold call as scams.

~~~
52-6F-62
I have to say I fall into this bucket.

Most of the cold calls I get are, in fact, scams— so to save myself agony and
time-out-of-life, that's the category it goes into for me.

\--

Two shorts:

Number one:

I regularly get rotating numbers calling from scam credit collection agencies
(second-tier, purchased bad loans allegedly). I regularly now get called for
somebody who isn't me, and they're always threatening. Though my favourite was
receiving a threatening call once about 'urgent business matters' that
pertained to me owing a significant amount of money in outstanding debt to the
company I currently work for, and hold accounts with. Ridiculous. That's the
camp cold calls fall under for me.

Number two, and so much more infuriating:

a major telecom company held a sales campaign in the lobby of my _apartment
building_. For a week! Every day when I arrived home I would be confronted by
two or three sales people to try and convince me to change internet providers.
And god they were persistent. Even worse, two of the four elevators were down
so most of the people in the building were sitting ducks who couldn't very
well escape. Couldn't even deal with the doorman to pick up a package without
one sidling up to try and sell to me while I was in a conversation.

Just thinking about it grinds me. If I need something, I will look to buy it.
If I recognize inefficiency in my day or workflow or whatever—I will pursue a
solution. If I am unhappy with how much I'm paying for internet or some other
service, I will try to find something better.

What I don't want is to be confronted and put on the spot when I'm not
actively seeking to do business.

------
lefstathiou
Cold calling is an extremely effective strategy for us. Most important lesson
I learned building our SDR program is that nobody natively likes cold calling
so to do it well, it needs to be their only job.

When I had account managers that had to do their own cold calling they greatly
underperformed. When I had someone whose only job was to cold call and book
demos which were then closed by account managers one person was getting more
meetings than all my account managers combined.

Some people don’t like getting cold calls, I personally don’t mind and the
number of people that don’t mind statistically out number the ones who do. We
have tons of data to support this. I highly recommend evaluating this as a
strategy in any B2B customer acquisition program.

~~~
alexbeloi
> the number of people that don’t mind (cold calls) statistically out number
> the ones who do. We have tons of data to support this. I highly recommend
> evaluating this as a strategy in any B2B customer acquisition program.

I don't doubt it's a good strategy, but I doubt most people actually "don't
mind". What kind of data do you have to support your claim?

If you replace "don't mind" with "tolerate", I would find it more believable.

------
maxxxxx
Cold calling can be extremely effective if you can make yourself do it. Some
years ago I did that for a few weeks to promote a piece of software I wrote
and I made a ton of interesting connections. Not just for my product but there
are a lot of small business owners who are very willing to discuss business in
general and you can gain a lot of business ideas that way. It can be very
exhausting though if you don't enjoy talking a lot or take rejection
personally.

------
rpedela
Are there any good resources on who to call and where to get phone numbers?
Obviously it should be potential customers, but should it be the CTO of the
company if it is tech product for example? And how do you get their phone
number?

~~~
goatherders
Yes. But you don't need them. You need Google, LinkedIn, a spreadsheet and
time. Calling the main line of 99% of companies will get you to the person you
are looking for. The other 1% are multibillion dollar companies that aren't
going to buy from you.

~~~
istorical
Actually, multibillion dollar companies make the best customers, because they
won't balk at a $400,000 contract, they'll expect it.

