159: The Art Of Cold Calling In Japan

<p>Cold calling always creates a debate amongst the sales community.  Some say it has seen it’s day, others defend it as part of the sales resource bank for getting leads.  I don’t think anyone suggests it has a high rate of success.  Yet, there are occasions when we need to call someone we have never spoken to before and who has never heard of us.  Why would we be doing that?  We may have spun the spider into action.</p> <p> </p> <p>The spider is a metaphor for when you have success with a client in one industry or industry sector and you believe you can have success with other similar companies.   Often the problems you discover from talking to one client are probably common for other companies in the same industry.  Say you are talking to a Five star hotel and they have a problem with turnover.  The chances are that many other Five star hotels have the same issue.  If you have a solution that fixes the problem for this client of yours, then why not help out the other hotels suffering the same problem.  So, like a spider with its web, you branch out to the other hotels and bring them into your ecosystem of solutions.</p> <p> </p> <p>Or, you may have run out of leads.  Maybe your marketing efforts are not proving very fruitful and the lead flow is a bit dismal.  There are a number of industry and association directories which list the key people in those organisations.  You know who you want to speak with and that is a great starting point for making a cold call. </p> <p> </p> <p>Now there are many difficulties with cold calling, so let’s deal with the most problematic.  This is when you only have a company name and want to talk to a decision-maker.  You are not even sure of which section you need.  You are forced to navigate your way through the company’s phone system.  In Japan, the task of taking incoming calls is allocated to the lowest person on the totem pole. Usually, the youngest, newest female in the administration section.</p> <p> </p> <p>Her job is to get rid of pesky salespeople.  Which are the pesky