In my first real career, I worked in radio and eventually became news director of a radio station. Since I had multiple half-hour newscasts to fill each day, I had to put together lots of stories. That often meant calling people who had no idea who I was. It was a form of cold-calling and I got pretty good at it out of necessity.
When I became a freelancer, one of the suggested ways to gain clients was to cold-call businesses. Despite my comfort level with picking up the phone and making calls to people I didn’t really know, I decided that, for me, cold-calling wasn’t the approach I wanted to take.
I have no doubt cold-calling can work, because I know people who have found lots of success that way. My success as a freelancer came a different route.
I mention this because I read an article today on Clayton Makepeace’s site. It was written by Bob Bly and titled The Trouble With Cold-Calling.
I read a lot of Bob’s books when I started my freelancing career, so I have a lot of respect for him.
What makes his article interesting is the responses, one of which is by another guy I have a lot of respect for and whose books I’ve read: Peter Bowerman. Peter is pro-cold-calling. (As a useless aside, try saying “pro-cold-calling” really fast five times.)
It’s great to see these two, and others, debate this issue. That’s why I’m pointing you to the article today.
As I said, cold-calling wasn’t for me, but I’m not anti-cold-calling. I’m a “whatever works for you” type of person. I’m also a “if you don’t have any clients, you can’t afford not to try everything you can to build your business” type of guy.
But if you’re not sure if it’s something you should do, read the article and the responses… it might help sway you one way or the other.