Another cold call approach

Searching for an evolution of a pitch for one of my products, I surfed the web to see how people may pitch something that’s brand spanking new.  In doing so, I came across a small biz university site, and their advice on how to make a cold call.  Their personal tenet is to lead with “this is a cold call, do you wanna hang up now?”.  I’ve never used this, but I think there may be something in it.

The reason is, that I thought I’d try out my ideas for my new product’s pitch, so I grabbed a load of untouched names from our in-house database and picked up the phone.  My initial dials were (as always) to people heading up sales departments, and naturally finding someone in the office took a while.

Then I ended up speaking to a PA (it’s amazing how few sales ‘leaders’ have secretaries these days actually).  Trying to mask my ingrained gatekeeper contempt, I outlined roughly what it was about, but to be honest, my description was woeful.  Thankfully, she informed me that her boss never choose to pursue ideas from outside unless brought to her my one of her managers, so I was passed on to her 2i/c.

Quite a pause later, that very chap picked up and ask what I wanted.  By this time, I was in quite a relaxed mood, hence my gambit of “a-ha, sorry you’ve drawn the short straw, as the big boss wants you to hear my pitch!”.  Luckily he laughed and gave a comedy sigh of resignation.  A minute later, I had the first meeting booked.