Tag: Cold Calling

The Fine Line Between Persistence and Stalking

Some of you may be familiar with The List. They maintain a database of marketing decision makers at companies throughout the U.S. and Canada and sell access to this database on a subscription basis. It’s actually a pretty good service (although not cheap) if that’s your market, and I used to be a subscriber myself back in the days when we were doing more advertising and marketing communications work.

Yesterday, however, I was looking at the blog of The List CEO Todd Knutson and saw something that threw me a little bit. He had a post on 7 Voicemail Messages for Successful Ad Agency New Business Development. In it, he lays out a strategy for the information you should include in each of seven (that’s right, seven) voicemails that you might leave for a prospect without getting a response.

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Do You Have a Prospect Wish List?

I’ve talked in the past about the value of emphasizing content marketing over high-volume cold calling, but in that same post, I also recommended that you consider creating a “prospect wish list” that includes potential clients that you will proactively pursue. These are the companies that you would really like to work with, that are particularly rich sources of new work, or that have some unique quality that make them inclined to hire you. They are companies that you will research and monitor, and try to contact on a regular basis.

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Cold Calling Versus Content Marketing

For creative services firms, cold calling as a new business tool has always been a frustrating enterprise. Unlike people selling consumables, like office supplies or food; or services that are purchased on a regular schedule, like accounting; creative services marketers very rarely reach a prospect when they have a need for what they’re selling.

In the old days, though, you still had to do it. You did it to “get on people’s radar.” You would ask their permission to send some information, and if they liked your stuff they would hang onto it until they needed a firm like yours. In fact, they probably even had a file folder full of brochures and business cards for firms they might work with one day.

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