First Day's Experience

416-621-9348 cgreaves@chrisgreaves.com
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Prospecting Tools (Home); Unsolicited Mail ; What Criteria? ; Researching the Prospect ; Establishing a Group ; The Introductory Kit ; The Follow-up Call ; First Day's Experience ; The Second Version of the Harvester ; My Working Documents ; Scripts ; My Experience

On Friday, September 25, 2009, a quarter of an hour after noon, I began making calls.

It Was a Great Success.

I started then, fully aware of the image of public relations folks taking long liquid lunches. Who would be at their desk Friday lunchtime, right?

Wrong!

I got through to 9 of my 20 first prospects on the first call; they picked up the phone and every one of them agreed to receive an email. Two agreed to be cc'd on an email sent to a contact they volunteered.

It Was a Great Success.

These are people who have agreed to receive an email which contains a short text and a link to a web page. The email text includes a link to download a copy of Indxr_FREE.zip.

It Was a Great Success.

Because I made this first tentative step, and am bolstered by the results.

Late Friday afternoon I started making plans, of course, for a better means of building, using and maintaining the data base of (currently) 3,724 contacts harvested from 13,403 documents (although I now possess 16,403 documents, having added about 3000 since the FFInf project began).

My Scripted Message

I have essayed with a closed-question that forces a positive response: "Do you work with word-processing documents?" (puzzled: "Yes?").

My scripted message (I'm leaving no voice mails) reads "My name is Chris Greaves (no pause!) and I got your name and number from the Canada News Wire article. I wonder if you could help me? (slight pause) I'd like to find out who is responsible for creating publications documents in your organization". The nature of my harvested data means that 80% or more of the time it is them.

My first sentence establishes who I am and gives a reference (see below) and a purpose for my call.

I have a second sentence that says "I would like to send a one-time email describing a FREE product that will build in Index to your documents.".

At this point most of them initiate a conversation about Indexes; I ask if they ever create an index, none do, but they all know what an index is, of course. A few have tried and found it too time-consuming.

When a contact gives me a different name, I take that name and email address then immediately ask if I can CC my contact on this first email so that the other person knows from whence the unsolicited email.

I Listen to Their Voice-Mail Recordings

In some cases the voice mail gives me a date ("September 29th") when they will return to their desk. I mark that in my follow-up field.

In some cases the voice mail offers one or two alternate names and extensions. I harvest those with glee.

After-Hours Shopping

Contact records that show an extension number look like easy marks for calls late-at-night or weekends, a swift mechanical attack, but that's just what it is, and I don't want to come across as a frightened telemarketer.

The may be OK once I have thirty raving testimonials on my web site.

References

The most common question is "Which article", and luckily I have retained that data in the records. I say "The Canadian Institute for Pain", and I hear "Oh GOOD!". I guess that a media relations person does not often get feedback by phone from reporters; I guess that most of the time the reporter grabs the text and runs with it.

I contemplate stressing this data up front, perhaps "My name is Chris Greaves (no pause!) and I got your name and number from the Canada News Wire article on The Canadian Institute for Pain".

I make a note that in my database, I must include a hyperlink to at least one story.

The Second Version of the Harvester

Toronto and Mississauga, Sunday, December 05, 2010 9:11 PM