5. Initial sales calls & making appointments

Understand customers problem

and see if your solution fits their

requirements

1. Cold calling prospects2. Email introductions3. Breaking the ice4. Sharing customer successes5. Telling a great story with a demo

Cold calling works if you do homework on the client – use LinkedIn, read company news

Expect 1-2% conversion, call high and be okay with rejection

1. Make it easy for your contact to introduce you

via email (include email template)

2. Keep emails short: max 2 paragraphs, 5 sentences each, include phone number, website and email

3. Sending images, attachments in your initial

email does not work, most people use mobile devices to check email

Hi <Name of agency contact>,

Dell, Intel and Carlsberg reduced their cost of proposals, by generating social media pitches that increased their client conversions. We helped them save time and effort by providing high impact analysis and insights into their customers business and industry.

We help address the following questions: 1. How can we leverage social media to understand our client’s industry trends &

products, competitors & customers? 2. How can we create high impact custom client proposals faster & at a much lower cost? 3. How can we focus our resources on brainstorming & idea generation instead of data

collection & analysis?

I would love a chance to talk to you about the same and setup some time to showcase our solution. You can see our offerings at http://www.companyname.com

P.S. I will call you at 10 am on Friday Jan 29th. If you are not free, please let me know a better time to call you.

Name and contact information

• Leverage your observation powers• Mobile phone (brand, ring tone)

• Lead with an industry news question• “What do you think about …?”

• Carry something conversation worthy• Business cards, pens are best

• Customer stories make the best presentations

• Before and after scenarios tell the value your product generated

Look for the forest, not the trees

Generic Specific

More men discussed Louis Philippe than women during this period

Maggi noodles has more mentions from younger people, but few older people also talk about the brand

Men discuss color and shirt size, women ask questions only during festivals

Younger people discuss time to cook, middle-aged the flavors (masala) and older people the health content of Maggi

Demo the script to show the way you expect customer to use it

Highlight key differentiator in the first 60 seconds

Showcase one “wow” feature, which gets clients excited

5. Initial sales calls & making appointments