Cold Calls: Your Secret Weapon for Growth

Once upon a time, I worked with an organization that had to raise funds. The two biggest parts of the job were talking to people at street corners to gather contact information by selling literature, and then calling those people back afterward. The point was to either get them to donate money, or come to meetings, or both.

But, oh, those calls. I could sit and stare at that phone for hours and not make a single call. I would play procrastination games like organizing my contact sheets in the perfect order in which to make the calls. Or, spend hours scripting out the perfect briefing. Or, go take a two hour dump while reading a book.

You may be asking, who cares about cold calls? Here’s the problem – I want to launch a successful business. This means I need a product to sell, and a market in which to sell it. In order to come up with a product, I need to know what problems need to be solved.

So, for a given customer base, how do you find the problems that your creative genius can solve?

That’s where cold calls come in.

In this post, I’m going to describe how cold calls fit into my current business plan. Let’s call this the “reconnaissance phase” of entrepreneurship. I’ll also give some practical advice on how to carry out this phase of research.

The goal here is twofold: 1. By telling you my plan, I will burden myself with the social pressure to carry it out, and 2. Maybe you will find some of these ideas useful, and use them to go make yourself a fortune.

Solutions Need Problems!

I don’t right now have a product, or any idea of a clear market demand. So, where do I find a pool of customers, and a product that solves a problem for those customers?

Like you, I listen to a bunch of podcasts. Recently, I’ve been spending some time with two podcasts on side hustles: Side Hustle School and Side Hustle Nation. One podcast on Side Hustle Nation caught my eye. It’s about this Australian guy named John Logar who makes cold calls to company bigwigs, and sells them software that he doesn’t make. He hunts down companies in markets experiencing growth, and calls decision makers in those companies. When he gets one on the horn, he sweet talks them into divulging areas of friction facing the company. When he finds one that could be solved with software, he hires out a few freelancers to build the software, and boom, he’s sold a product!

It’s probably more difficult than that. But the main idea is actionable – to find a real problem, talk to people to find their problems.

One industry I found that is growing in the USA, is mining and resource development. It turns out, I have a master’s in Geology, which means I don’t know anything about mining or resource development, but I think I do! So, my reconnaissance phase involves finding companies taking part in the boom, finding the decision makers at those companies, and then hustling them to cough up their problems, so I can sell them the solutions.

It couldn’t fail!

Now, what if I actually get some dude on the horn willing to talk to a random for 60 seconds. What do I say? For the record, I’m the exact opposite of a crisp salesman who can talk to anyone about anything. My most comfortable state of being is holed up in my house talking to nobody.

But, progress is not made without taking personal risks.

The Questions

I started reading a book a few months ago called The Science of Selling, by David Hoffeld. The author criticizes modern selling tactics as being born out of instinct instead of teachable skill. In response, he studied every research paper known to Man about the psychology and behavior of how people decide to buy. It’s a good book, and worth reading.

The section pertinent to my challenge is on how to ask powerful questions. Hoffeld points out that we are typically taught to ask open ended questions, or questions that can’t be answered with a simple Yes or No. He then describes research that shows we typically don’t communicate in a logical progression, but rather tend to reveal information layer by layer, like an onion. So, he boiled it down to three successive layers of question to ask while hunting for primary buying motivations.

1. Open up the topic to reveal thoughts, facts, behaviors, situations This is the layer that hunts for areas of friction or pressure. These are the typical open ended questions we’re taught to ask. Something along the lines of “In your opinion, what are the challenges faced by a growing company like yours?”

2. The Elaboration Questions Here, you get the person to think through their opinions about what was revealed by the first layer of questioning. For example, “Why do you think it’s so hard to find qualified people for that specific role?”

3. Desire for gain, Fear of loss Finally, get the person to express their desires or fears related to that problem. For example, “How much would you say it costs your company in terms of man-hours for each interview that leads to a non-hire?” Hoffeld calls these fears and desires the primary buying motivators, because they are the main reason the customer would be moved to trade money for solution.

This third layer of questioning is also where you can gauge the actual dollar value of a solution. Logar from the Side Hustle Nation episode suggests that, once you know how much the client could save or make with a solution, a good value to charge for that solution is 10%. In other words, if your solution will save him $50,000, then your product is worth $5000. Ballpark.

With these question guidelines, we have a map of how to get to the information we need from prospective clients. You and I are both creative enough to come up with a few potential solutions to whatever problem is revealed.

Taking the First Steps

With all these great ideas, I still haven’t made any calls. My goal in the next week or two is to make just one phone call. The bugbears in my way are fear of rejection, lack of time, and an internal critic that says “It’s never going to amount to anything.”

But now that I’ve told you my plan, you will hold me to it, right? You might even want to take on the reconnaissance phase yourself, and get on the path to great fortune. I’ll follow up in a few weeks, and let you know how it’s going. If you’ve already made a few cold calls like this, leave your story in the comments below.

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