Do you do cold calling?

The quality (or lack of it) of cold calls I seem to be receiving lately is upsetting.

Nobody really likes to receive cold calls I'm sure, so is it not vitally important to excel in that call to make sure you get the result you are looking to achieve?

I had yet another Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) company call me this afternoon.

Without introduction to who they were, they proudly told me that my website wasn't ranking a particular keyword phrase and presumably would have gone on to tell me that they could get it to number one in the Google list within a week.

They obviously hadn't done their homework as the phrase is one of the most competitive on the internet and I have only one sub-page deep in my website targeting it. So the chances of that being sustainably achievable in a short time scale without resorting illegal methods that could potentially get me removed from the index completely - are zero.

Not only that, but they had based their statement simply on the fact that I have, as a short term test at the moment, a Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaign running that targets the phrase.

They didn't ask me what my business goals and plans were and how that keyphrase fitted in with them, nor had they looked at my website to understand what I was really about.

You might get a good idea of how that call ended today. I should have offered to mentor their sales staff perhaps, but I didn't get their company name and when I called 1471 the number had been withheld, surprise, surprise!

I'm occasionally asked to run call campaigns on behalf of my clients, often targeting very high powered individuals within global industries who have an even shorter fuse than me! But I get through and get the job done because I take the time to research and find out what they are up to and what they really need.

Every business needs to do some cold calling at some point and if it's going to be successful it needs care and thought to get good results.

http://www.roygough.co.uk/