Last week I wrote about the idea of calling your prospects’ office lines during the next several months to enjoy more success than you have had in the past. The reason, in short, is because no one is calling office lines. Most salespeople think their contacts are working remotely, so they’re reaching out to their mobile numbers and through email. If your prospect is in the office, then they’re more likely to answer their office line because it’s been silent forever.
The same theory holds true for another old-school prospecting technique: the in-person cold call.
Yep, stopping by a facility without an appointment with your business card and a piece of printed content. The same argument is made for this technique as for calling office lines – no one is stopping by and doing cold calls right now so there is a higher probability of your prospect seeing you. I believe there is an even stronger conviction to why they’ll see you than why they’ll answer their office line…
If your prospect has decided to or has been told to work from the office, then they will naturally bond with someone who has also chosen to get into the field and make a personal call. They might think anything from “I’ve gotta see who this crazy salesperson is.” to “That’s what I’m talking about – someone out there doing their job again!” Not everyone will be in the office, but those that are will be more likely to see you and definitely more likely to work with you.
Quick tip: Act especially careful and safe when making in-person cold calls. For one, you want to stay healthy. Secondly, you want to respect the most extreme wishes of your prospects’ organizations. You won’t impress anyone by not wearing a mask, but you might alienate someone.
Go for it and go for it now! I suspect the elevated success ratio of this technique will start to decrease in the fourth quarter of 2021 and we’ll be back to normal by mid-2022, so get out there and knock on some doors! (BTW, you should still perform these in-person touches for the rest of your career to help position yourself as a subject matter expert, but over the next several months you’ll enjoy an excess of success actually getting in front of prospects.)
