Cold Calling is dead?

I received an email last week from a real estate representative asking me if cold calling was dead. If you’re wondering the same thing, ask yourself this question:

Think of all the times you pick up the phone to reach new buyers: those people you see on social media and that you think would be a good fit, all the leads generated by your company requesting more information, all your customers that you call. to increase sales, the “qualified” leads that you or your business pay for the ones you call, and so on.

Then ask yourself: if your phone were taken away, would it affect your sales? Would you be as successful if you couldn’t reach out to these prospects and introduce yourself and your company?

If your answer is Yes, guess what? Cold calling is not dead. Oh, you can call it friendly or prospecting, but the fact is, you still have to reach out to people you don’t know to connect with them, introduce yourself and your company, and rate them to fit your product or Service.

The real question should be: how can you “cold call” more effectively?

As for this real estate agent, one suggestion I had was to do what others in your industry are doing. And that’s calling local homeowners and offering them something of value first, and if they want to take advantage of it, then qualify for interest in a service they are offering.

For example, many real estate agents have put together a free, up-to-date market analysis of comparisons of other homes in the area and call in local homeowners to give it away. They call and ask the landlord if he would like an updated report on the value of other houses in his area (including his own).

Now who wouldn’t want that?

After the owner says yes, they collect their email address and promise to send them the report. They then continue to rate the owner by asking any of the following questions to generate a lead:

“And would you be interested in a personalized, no-obligation assessment of your home’s current value?”

GOLD

“Are you going to be on the market by any chance to sell your house within the next 6 to 12 months?”

GOLD

“Are you looking to downsize anytime within the next 5 years?”

And so on. If you are in real estate, I am sure you can raise many other questions. The point is to discover a potential customer, and these questions help reveal who they might be.

Obviously, you can adapt this strategy to any other industry, that is, yours! The point is, you will find this information by calling prospects cold.

So cold calling is dead? Unplug your phone for a month and see if your sales suffer. If they do, then it is not dead; you may not be doing it right.