Cold Calling - for Sales and Job/Career Search

I attended a workshop last night at the SBA in San Francisco about cold calling, presented by Tony Wilkins, a local small business development consultant (reachable at awil267487@aol.com). Tony has written a book about cold calling available from Amazon.com and Ex Libris.

He shared a tip that I felt was as relevant for a job search as for small-business selling.

When you send a "cold call" e-mail, fax or cover letter to a hiring manager or other contact and subsequently phone (say in a week's time) to follow up, the first three questions to ask on the call (after introducing yourself and saying why you are calling) are:

1. Did you receive it?
2. Have you read it?
3. What do you think about it?

Of course, if the answer to question 1 or 2 is no, be prepared to quickly explain what's in the communication.

For people who are running their own business, he also gave sage advice when contacting any organization to explore making an in-person sales call. Namely, make sure that:

1. The business has a need for your services.
2. The business has a budget for your services.
3. The potential customer is looking to do business in the next 1-3 months.

If the answer to any of these questions is "No," a personal visit will likely be a waste of your time. Of course, that doesn't mean that you can't send literature (with their permission) and put a tickler in your contact management system to remind you to touch base again in a few months time, if appropriate.

The same advice does not necessarily apply in a job search, where you may want to meet the person to conduct an informational interview, establish rapport, and/or begin building a relationship over the longer term. Job and career-search related calls are not automatically "sales calls"; it all depends on your purpose for making contact in the first place.

Finally, he suggested that Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were the best day for "sales calls" as people are neither getting back up to speed after the last weekend nor trying to wrap things up in anticipation of the coming weekend. This makes sense to me; and I would offer the same advice with regard to follow-up calls on cover letters and other correspondence.