Many great suggestions. Let me answer from the point of view of the call recipient. I was an in-house Marketing Manager for 18 years, so I got quite a few of these calls. Other discussion groups have mentioned the need to ask “how are you” or similar to build rapport. I always hated being asked that by someone who didn’t know me. If I’m being called at work, and you have a valid work product/service, it doesn’t matter how I am — I’m there to work.

Here someone is recommending to not spend too much time on the phone, to just set the meeting. I hated that too, because I needed to know if the product/service in question was worth a meeting with the caller. I would rather spend a moment more on the phone, to determine if there was value. And frankly, if there was, I may not have needed a meeting — I may have bought via phone. And the worst was if I was interested, and the junior telemarketer didn’t know enough to answer my questions — if it was a really valuable product or service, I wouldn’t have wanted to wait for the senior person to call.

I disagree completely with the poster that thinks prospects like to talk about themselves and their companies. I didn’t have time to do that — even if the thing you’re selling is useful, I can usually figure out how my needs fit in. And I hated the caller asking me questions so basic… “what does your company do?”

Anyway, bottom line is that a cold call can be a success, but in my opinion only if you start out telling me why I should care, what value it has for me.

Contributed by: Mona Zemsky, Marketing Strategy for Small Business Owners, Maximizing Bang for the Buck

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