Double your sales this month without spending money on ads or more cold calling.

The pressure is on. It's the fourth quarter, and you still need to book more deals to beat last year's numbers. Picking up the phone has always been one of the best ways to get more appointments on the calendar. Whenever I'm cold calling, I always try to prospect new businesses that need my services most. Smiling and dialing always seems to feel better when I have a fresh list of new businesses that have not previously told me "no".

The reason for the "nos" vary, but often timing and budget are the deal killers. Having a robust CRM and taking good notes can reveal which contacts just need a new call because their budget or priorities may have changed.

If you've been in business for over a year, you should have a pretty extensive database of prospects. Instead of focusing on finding new prospects all the time, many salespeople can benefit from reactivating their database. Think about it. If you have 1,000–2,000 contacts or more, it's likely you haven't reached many of them recently. At a rate of 50 calls a day, 5 days a week, you might cycle through 1,000 contacts in a month. But how many DMs do you actually reach? On my best day, I usually connect with less than ten decision-makers. That's only 200 contacts in a month. 

"Hold on. I'm not suggesting you make 100 calls a day." 

How do you close more deals? Easy! Double the number of contacts. You will still need to make your calls if that's been your most effective tool. But imagine if, in addition to those 200 cold phone contacts, you were able to add an extra 200 contacts. Hold on. I'm not suggesting you make 100 calls a day. 

Email on a good day has an open rate of about 25–30%, so that's not necessarily the best solution for this problem. But it's definitely a better option than doubling your phone calls. A well-planned email campaign with customized messages can be far more effective for scaling than cold calling. That is just a matter of math. 

"I recently helped a client by adding 44 new appointments to his sales team's calendar..."

Text messages are a much better solution here. Over 90% of text messages are read the same day they are received. I recently helped a client by adding 44 new appointments to his sales team's calendar using text messages. We sent about 1,000 messages using automation on our CRM platform. Sure, you could do this with your phone, but it's not very efficient. Some of those conversations required 2-3 exchanges to book the appointment.

Our AI chatbots handled over 90% of the conversations and nurtured the interested prospects through their appointment booking. A few required a phone call to book the appointment. But the point is, in addition to the standard number of calls, the client's team significantly increased their production without the uncertainty of an ad campaign. And they closed 38% of the booked appointments without spending more time prospecting. 

"The difference is, our bots 🤖 don't get their feelings hurt by negative replies, the way humans do."

What would an extra 44 appointments do for your business each month? By reactivating your database, you can quickly turn your warm contacts into new closed revenue. This not only increases your production but also gives you more opportunities to get referrals. In addition to the sales, the client was happy to have a freshly updated database. We eliminated prospects who were no longer interested, unqualified or opted out of future SMS outreach.

Of course some contacts will not like being solicited via text. But how is that any different than an email or cold calling campaign? The difference is, our bots don't get their feelings hurt by negative replies, the way humans do. Plus the automation removes any contacts who reply "stop", in compliance with federal guidelines.This campaign created a clean, updated database of viable prospects.

A good CRM is the foundation for any business's marketing plan. If you don't track your activity, how can you effectively improve it? If you don't have a CRM, I'll be happy to let you use ours for free. Go to www.riverfallsmedia.com and click the START FREE TRIAL button. Sign up for the Essentials plan and text FREE CRM to 301-867-7007 anytime during the 14 day free trial to keep the CRM functions for free after the trial is over.