Ask HN: how do cold calls/emails work for you? - lauremerlin
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MortenK
I don't do many cold calls, but sometimes I reach out to people on email based
on their online reputation, blog posts or similar if I feel I can help them or
they can help me. A lot of these people are busy but many actually give a
reply, at least if you're being short and to the point about your message.

Ironically enough, the guys who sign their blog posts with "what do you
think", "drop me a line", "I'm always available on email" etc, are usually the
guys who never reply :-)

~~~
pyre
Probably because everyone is emailing them, and they can't keep up.

~~~
larrys
I have a way to describe this. I call it "they need everybody yet they need
nobody".

They have decided that they would rather have contact from as many people as
possible and be the filter that decides if what someone is offering (or
wanting) is desirable to them or not.

The other side of this is (back in the day) people who would do a version of
"serious inquiries only" which would surely scare off all but the hardiest
people.

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petercooper
I've found they can work well and are generally not despised in two
situations: 1) if you're inviting someone to speak at an event, 2) if you're
asking to interview them.

You're not guaranteed a "yes" by any means, but people generally seem to feel
flattered by such requests, and I know people who've tried to increase their
profiles in niches by attempting to interview many of the big names there.

I guess my hidden point is that if you want to achieve a business aim with
cold calling and e-mailing, it might help to hang it off of something else
that the callee might find desirable or at least non-annoying.

~~~
logicallee
wow, I kind of disagree. I don't know what businesses you've been in but I
find that if you think your "business aim" is something that it "might" help
to "hang off of something else the callee might find desirable" \- then your
approach is really tough.

Businesses exist because customers love paying them. There are few to no
business aims that you could possibly fulfill without being inherently
interesting to the people you're writing or being in touch with.

If you don't have an offering that is interesting, it's not that you should
hang your offer on something that is of interest - it's that you need to fix
your product/market fit!

That said, there are appropriate and inappropriate venues. As shown by my
shopping habits, I love buying groceries, or paying for utilities - but that
doesn't mean I'd like to see emails about either.

So I can see that you might have to overcome the limits of your channel.
Overall, however, you should be able to find channels where your business aims
align easily with what customers want.

~~~
petercooper
In my main day to day business we do no outbound marketing or cold
e-mailing/calling as we are overrun with business from companies who randomly
find us. That said, if were to use outbound, I'd still come up with a
separate, more intrinsically intriguing Thing™ to talk about than the nuts and
bolts of the business.

In my original post, I was just pulling on experiences with ancillary
projects, particularly content driven ones (e.g. interviews are a great way to
launch a blog) or in my role as chair of a a commercial O'Reilly conference,
where e-mailing potential speakers or inviting them to give interviews, etc,
is a common technique that works well.

As ever, YMMV.

~~~
wslh
The major part of my company prospective customers came from the web but I
really want to tackle the outbound marketing/sales "mistery". They are two
different beasts, we can close a USD 20K sale in less than two weeks in the
first case but it can take months or years to close a sale with someone from
an outbound channel.

Obviously if you are working for an O'Reilly conference the inbound flow can
make you forget the other side of the problem. Our company participated in the
MIT G-Lab program [1] to help us in the outbound part. They helped us a lot,
mainly because they can interview prospective customers as MIT students and in
this way people are less reluctant to talk.

[1] [http://mitsloan.mit.edu/actionlearning/labs/g-lab-info-
for-h...](http://mitsloan.mit.edu/actionlearning/labs/g-lab-info-for-
hosts.php)

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shovel
I've never made a cold call but I've had 100% success with email in 2
scenarios:

1\. I've just started a digital magazine with curated articles. I emailed 6
contributors (5 of whom had never heard of me) and just asked clearly and
politely for permission to reprint their articles. I gave them the option to
say yes or no. I used a similar flow for each but they were personal and
focused on the reader.

2\. I emailed the local Mac dealer to offer some webdev services (email
marketing and SEO). Just as a test, really to validate cold email as a
customer acquisition tactic. Again, it was all about the recipient. The polar
opposite of the generic emails I get from Indian agencies every week.

There's a great I Love Marketing podcast that talks about a play they call
"the cats whiskers". It's worth a listen if you plan to do cold emails. It's
episode 24.

Actually, I just thought of a third -

My girlfriend is an artist and had gifted a painting to some friends for their
wedding. They hung it prominently in their restaurant and had a few enquiries
about it from their customers. They collected a few email addresses.

About a year later, my girlfriend decided to do a limited edition print run
and sent 9 emails (just as a test really, to see if there'd be any takers).

Basically said "You saw my painting in Ord Ban. I'm doing a ltd edn print run.
Send £100 to my paypal email if you'd like one". Next morning there was £700
in paypal which covered printing/shipping and a profit margin. Not 100% cold
because the recipients had expressed an interest but there'd been no prior
contact at all.

~~~
Omnipresent
Did you get a reply back form Mac dealer? Would love to see a sample text of
the email you sent.

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tluyben2
Receiving: I get a lot of mails from Indian companies for outsourcing work; I
delete them. I sometimes get mails from EU freelancers; I don't delete them.
So depending on the content they seem to work. Calls never work for me; if I
see an unrecognized / blocked number i'm not answering.

Sending: works fine if you write a targeted mail / make a targeted call. In
software consultancy my experience is that companies you call are more often
than not looking for a new 'partner' to have software developed with as they
will commonly rotate the companies they work with because the grass could be
greener elsewhere. Same for products; if you have a good/better proposition of
something they need or already have they'll want to listen.

I think cold whatever works unless it's perceived as spam. That's why you need
to be careful in composing and timing such communication. For instance; it is
4.5 hours later in India, so i routinely get mails/calls from outsourcing
companies at around 5-6 my time which is 9:30 for them. That is automatically
spam to me; if you want to make me a business proposition, you have to do it
on my time.

~~~
wslh
I agree and the main problem with the received e-mails is lack of focus. For
example, they offer me software development services when my company works on
extremely challenging software issues.

The lesson is: before contacting people do your homework.

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loganrandolph
This summer I did several hundred cold calls and several thousand cold emails.

On the sales front, I found emailing a much better use of time. While sales
were marginally easier on the phone, getting the right people on the phone
beyond difficult. And even when people agreed to chat - they often bailed last
minute or never called me.

With emails I found two techniques -

For sales emails, I found the best response rates when I was the weirdest. For
example, in a moment of exasperation after emailing the same guy 4 times (and
getting no response), I wrote "Maybe you're like the wizard of oz, everyone
lists you as a media contact, but you don't exist." I heard back within 30
minutes.

For intro cold emails, I found people incredibly receptive. The more specific
the emails (specific to the person), and the more concise the email, the more
warmly I was received. Perhaps common sense.

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soundlab
Cold calling via phone is a not an effective use of a smaller team's time in
my experience-- you will rarely reach the right person within an organization,
there are lots of 'gatekeepers' for high level executives, and voicemails just
don't generate responses. You can only make so many dials per day, and it is
exhausting getting rejected all day. Where I've seen it become more effective
is for larger inside lead gen teams for products like credit card terminals,
or energy efficiency services where a quick pitch can be made to almost any
business person who picks up the phone.

Email however, when done correctly (and legally!! don't spam!!) can be very
effective. Instead of focusing on making a sale via an email, try instead to
focus on getting a referral. Consider it a "win" when you get a referral to
someone in the organization with whom you can have a "warm" conversation.

If you are honestly looking for feedback on your product/service, the sales
will come. Your cold email will get forwarded to the right person and you can
get some conversations started. For us, these campaigns have been extremely
low cost and have yielded some great partnerships and repeat business in our
niche industry.

A couple rules we laid down:

1\. No attachments, no pricing, no selling

2\. Make no more than two attempts over 30 day campaign

3\. No more than 5-6 sentences with 1 embedded link and a clear request for a
referral

Some recommended tools and resources include:

[http://www.amazon.com/Predictable-Revenue-Business-
Practices...](http://www.amazon.com/Predictable-Revenue-Business-Practices-
Salesforce-com/dp/0984380213)

[http://www1.toutapp.com/](http://www1.toutapp.com/)

[http://www.data.com/](http://www.data.com/)

~~~
larrys
Agree with all you are saying above.

"Cold calling via phone is a not an effective use of a smaller team's time in
my experience-- you will rarely reach the right person within an organization,
there are lots of 'gatekeepers' for high level executives, and voicemails just
don't generate responses."

Along these lines I'm amazed at the amount of times don't use postal mail to
break the ice.

I don't mean a canned direct mail piece. I mean a personal letter, signed in
ink, that makes the point.

With that their is no (direct) rejection and it's possible to send many at a
very low cost (even if they don't end up in the right place).

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Kiro
I don't do it but I have friends who have built successful companies just
because of cold calling. Their products and services are not unique or
anything special but it works because they're not afraid of selling to
strangers on the phone.

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yanivs
many times it gave me surprising (good) results...even when I cold emailed
some "hot shots" (Guy Kawasaki, Fred Wilson, etc.)

Here's a great post I found by a seasoned entrepreneur about this:
[http://www.startupmoon.com/how-i-got-meetings-at-twitter-
lin...](http://www.startupmoon.com/how-i-got-meetings-at-twitter-linkedin-and-
github-using-cold-emails/)

I also wrote about my experiences with cold emails:
[http://blog.jhaniv.com/cold-mails-to-hot-people](http://blog.jhaniv.com/cold-
mails-to-hot-people)

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rb2e
I get sent emails from a guy offering to do web development work. He has
emailed me a number of times but I have never met him, contacted him or
communicated with him. Trouble is, he sent the same emails to a number of
recently registered domains. All exactly the same. They arrived in my spam
folder and then I delete them.

I also get telephone calls from people/business I've never contacted before. I
get so many, I just let the machine deal with it.

You have to remember if you cold call or email, then you are just one of a
number that people get every day at home or at work. They will assume its
junk, spam or your selling something they don't need. The ideal way is to not
to bother people with cold calling/emailing but rather be the person they are
looking for. The solution to their need. The useful thing they don't know they
want till they need it.

I am sure, cold calling, emailing works for some but for me I just ignore them
and I believe many people do. May be different in Enterprise.

~~~
huhtenberg
I'm pretty sure that OP was asking opinions of those who _make_ calls, not
those who receive them (as these are obvious).

~~~
rb2e
You're right. I was wrong. I was a bit too quick with the reply. Sorry.

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300bps
I made the mistake several years ago.of subscribing to finance/technology
magazines. I get an average of 2 cold calls per day as a result. Asking them
to stop calling you doesn't work. The only thing I've found that succeeds is
to tell obvious salespeople they have the wrong number. I really hate anyone
that makes cold calls.

~~~
rb2e
In my ye olde business days, I made the mistake of having my startup listed in
a certain "yellow" directory here in the UK. As I used the same number for
home and work (it was a low volume type business and YES I was stupid and I
will never make that mistake again), I then got more businesses trying to sell
me stuff then customers by a large margin.

I lost track of the large number of people who asked for the "Webmaster" or
person who owns the website. That was in 2001/2002 and way before Google.

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emhart
Cold emailing has worked out well for me in a research context. I needed help
and some leads from a couple archaeologists and linguists, reaching out
directly, yet demonstrating knowledge of their research in the area worked out
well. I'm not an archaeologist, myself, at the time I wasn't even with the
Ronin Institute, I was just a Barista with an interest in their field, but
each got back to me within 24 hours with the information I needed to move
forward in my research.

Conversely, the cold emails I've received have always been very welcome,
though I do encourage people to reach out to me for expert opinion or whatever
else.

Finally, the cold phone calls I've received have always been a very negative
experience for me. A lot of that is on me, but the immediacy of the phone is a
major inconvenience most of the time, especially when there are so many time-
delayed methods of robust communication now.

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codva
I'm Director of Sales for an open source consulting company (EU based with a
small staff here in the US) so I do this a lot. It really is a crap shoot. I
get a quick response of some sort about 3/10 contacts. However I don't contact
anybody unless I see something about their company that gives me a specific
idea of where we might be able to help them. I never, ever call / email
somebody for an appointment to learn more about business. I call because I
noticed their website isn't responsive to mobile devices and 35% of their
target market is mostly online via mobile devices, or their site is mostly
flash, or I met an employee at a networking event who told me how much they
all hate Sharepoint, or whatever.

That said, we just landed a new client that called me back out of the blue
months after I initially contacted them. So you never know...

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juhwang
It’s just like the saying at Harvard Business School - "Life is a cold call".
I've definitely done a lot of cold emails (and still do today). As a matter of
fact, my very first internship came from cold calling, it ultimately landed me
a job on Wall Street, coming from a none-top tier school.

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mintotsai
Cold emails have worked well for me for customer development and interviews
(problem/solution interview. I'm following Ash Maurya's Running Lean
approach.)

You can find tons of blog posts about cold emails with different techniques,
etc. For me, I had some key takeaways. (FYI, I don't have any hard data to
back my claims, only my experience and feelings.)

\- If the market sees value in the problems or solutions that you're pitching,
the market will respond.

\- When I start my emails being open and giving about myself and background, I
seem to get more responses. I usually open up with "Hi, my name is Minto. I'm
a software engineer in Austin, TX, developing X."

\- I'm very specific about the person's niche. ie. "I'm developing X for <Y
niche>."

\- My emails are very laid back and unpolished. I try to come off as informal
as possible, as if I was writing to an old friend.

\- I approach from a place of learning instead of selling. I think people,
myself included, don't like being sold to, but like to help a fellow human
being out. The fun and exciting thing is that if you hit on the interview with
the right problems and solutions, you've pretty much sold them.

\- I put a timeframe on my ask, "30 minute coffee", etc.

\- Adding your social identity seems to help. I add a link to my LinkedIn
profile in my signature. I can only imagine that this adds credibility and
many people I email will ask to connect with me on LinkedIn.

\- Referrals get high responses. Not really a cold email, but the technique of
having a subject line of "Referred by X", gets a high response rate. I only do
this if I was really given a referral by someone.

\- Be short and sweet. I'm not a very verbose person as it is, but I think
people will tend to read your emails if they're short.

I haven't done any cold calls yet, when I do, I would approach it in a similar
way. I am pleasantly surprised at the responses I've gotten and the
willingness of people to help.

~~~
monkeyspaw
Your approach would definitely work with me. (Side note: very off-put on Ash
Maurya's page by the autoplaying video, so I immediately closed it. But I'm
guessing it converts better for him.)

Your approach answers the following questions in the recipients mind:

* why is this person contacting me?

* what is it going to cost me (time/money/etc.)?

* what's in it for me?

* is this some sort of scam?

[edit: formatting]

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davidvaughan
I've had some success with cold calls.

I'm uncomfortable with the scattergun approach, so I research the business
before calling and use LinkedIn to see who I should be talking to. I use the
call to ask them about pain points, and while talking try to figure out a
solution tailored for that individual.

This takes _much_ more time per prospect than cold emailing or phoning through
a list, but figuring out something for each target already narrows the field
down a lot and increases your chances.

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wslh
I use LinkedIn InMail to pass spam filters and it works in the ~15% of the
cases. This means having an interaction.

The messages are very focused and I study people (LinkedIn/Blogs/etc) one by
one.

Do you prefer to receive an e-mail than a LinkedIn introduction? personally I
don't care where the message is coming assuming the proposal was directed to
me and can be of value.

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zsedbal
If you do a lot of cold calls our beta app might help you track and manage
them... check this out: [http://www.getinch.com](http://www.getinch.com)

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stephenhacking
Not very well.

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pfisch
We have had some success with them.

