Could 'the dreaded' Cold Calling be my best option?

[tryingtomakealiving]

I've recently started an online business, My company works like so;

A person requiring construction work posts a job advert on my site, that post is then submitted as a 'lead' to the relevant tradesman in the relevant area... simple?

I charge tradesmen a membership fee(very competitive), and job posters aren't charged a thing.

Now the problem I have is this... I need to generate public interest for people to post jobs, thats easily done, i have large national ad campaigns waiting to start. But initially i need quite a large tradesmen base on my site, i need to recruit these quickly in time for the ad campaigns.

The only real options i could come up with was cold calling, does anyone know how successful this can be? are there companies out there that will sell for me?

Any suggestions would be welcome

[nonrate]

Cold calling does NOT have to be the chore or uncomfortable process it seems to be. There are ways to make it challenging, fun, almost like a game. Listen to The Sales Roundup podcast, and look at the early shows especially, from #20 - 40, they have some awesome cold calling shows that make the process a lot of fun.

[alcglobalpartners]

Hi there,

Your business model seems good, but I have to honestly tell you that I have never had much luck with cold calling. I tried to start my import business exclusively on cold calls about 1 year ago with little to no results. I think face-to-face networking, online presense and blogs are much more helpful than calling people without notice. Also, facing rejection and genearl bad tempers from the occasional call is a given.

[Dan Rollins]

You have invested in a national ad campaign without any contractors available? Is the cart before the horse here or am I missing something?

Anyway, back to the topic of the OP...

IMHO, cold calling would be very time consuming and in-effective. Anyone who's tried it can relate to that.

Being a former contractor myself, I would have brushed you off until "later" and someday would have never came - and you probably would have annoyed the heck out of me trying to sell me on it.

Here's a much better way:

Locate a mailing list of contractors... and write them a sales letter.

Yes - a real letter - comes in the mailbox and everything.

A letter that looks like a personal communication and follows proven direct response, "salesmanship-in-print" principles. One that gets their attention, creates interest in your service, builds desire to join your network, makes a risk-free urgent offer, and calls for action.

If you do your marketing this way, you'll have a letter that you can mail as many times as you like with the greatest chance of success... eliminate all that rejection... and save yourself truck-loads of time.

Instead of making hundreds of phone calls throughout the week, and playing phone tag for God-knows how long, you print off your letters, address them, and drop them off at the post office.

Done right, they'll call YOU!

If you'd like a hand, let me know!

Best
Dan

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[brandoncdg]

As a new Civil Engineering company, I would be interested in something like this. The important thing is we don't have money to spend up front right now and your leads have to almost be down to the city and county. I think you could cold call contractors forever and still not get all of them. Is there a certain area you are trying to be in?

[tryingtomakealiving]

We intend to be a nation wide company, but the Idea is this that we take on contractors in specific areas that require work to be done in that area.

Our leads are Postcode Specific, so if you were to register you would receive leads in a 40 mile radius of your postcode, they are then automatically sent to you.

A lot of time, agro and money has been spent getting our database functional.

I may look into the 'Junk mail option' but that tends to be expensive and a waste of time/effort... Not that cold calling isn't!


We are currently running stalls and events to attract contractors then advertising in that area to get the leads comming through, this is succesful, but I feel there must be better and more cost effective ways of doing things like this