I’ve attended some of the follow up events for the GoogleApp Marketplace ( http://www.walterroth.com/?p=240 ) and Google is doing a great job in promoting its partners on the back of their marketplace efforts.

The CEO of MyERP was very clear and open about this when answering questions. He had mentioned that over the last few years they had developed at user base of about 8k. He pointed out in the first four weeks of the GoogleApps Marketplace launch, he was able to get 3k new customers. When asked how many were paying users, his one word answer spoke volumes: Half.

I was in the crowd and asked him what type of “up selling” he was doing, and he smiled. None. He then said that he would be working on that soon. Wow. Thats impressive and a huge opportunity for any startup.

Beyond believing in the value of what you are selling, there are a lot of tactics and habits one can acquire to make cold calling much more effective, repeatable and scalable.

For example:

- Requesting a minute of their time which at the end they can decide if it makes sense to keep talking or to set up a meeting in the future … (this is opposed to talking as fast as possible and hoping you’ll hit something before they hang up on you)
- Structuring a 60 second “flow” that informs the person you are calling of what value prop you have … (not an absolute script but a framework to lean on as you adjust to who you are talking to and how they answer the phone)
- How to move past the, “sounds great, I’m busy, send me info, call me later” as usually this means you’ll never see them again (“Sure, I’ll call you back, but I’m not sure it will be a good use of your time, mind if I share with you for a minute what I’ll be calling about and you can tell me if its worth your time?”)
- How to find and develop multiple pain points, how to dig for budgets, and to map out how the buying decision is made and who is involved (As fast as possible …)
- How to condense multiple steps into the sales process into one, “Sure, let’s set up a demo … but let’s pretend I do that, and you are convinced you need what I have … THEN WHAT …”
- How to manage which leads you develop and with what priority you give them (managing a pipeline based on the Three Questions: Why buy anything, Why buy from me, Why buy now as Step 3 of a 10 step process from lead to close)

Etc…

These are some of the things I’ll be working on to fit within the SweatStart focusing on Cold Calling for Startups.

Thanks!

Walter

Also calling after lunch usually helps according to me