Over the next few weeks I plan to write quite a bit on this blog about cold-calling. I know a lot of people are totally against it and I can respect that. However, I’ve found it to be a good way to reach a certain segment of customers in a certain niche and so I’m pushing forward with it. In this article, I’ll discuss the trial-and-error process I went through to find the most efficient and least expensive way to make hundreds of phone calls in a small(ish) chunk of time.

Quick disclaimer: I did not purchase leads and the leads I’m calling are all at least luke-warm; meaning they have at some point agreed to be called about this specific service. This doesn’t mean they’re all gung ho to hear about it when I call, but I’m not just opening the phone book or using some crackpot’s “super-list” of phone numbers. That said…

I started out my cold-calls using my personal cellphone because I don’t have a dedicated business line. I’ve always done most of my prospecting and selling on the Internet and my cell phone was fine for a small amount of in and outbound business calls. Since my cell has unlimited U.S. minutes I figured it was the obvious choice.

It wasn’t until a friend pointed out to me that I was broadcasting my number to hundreds of people a day – some who might not be so happy to hear from me – that I realized that using the cellphone could present several problems. I considered adding a dedicated business line to my cell account, but decided to give Skype a try first.

I’d used Skype a fair amount for Skype-to-Skype calling (both audio and video), but hadn’t tried calls to landline or cell telephone numbers. As it turns out, there really isn’t much difference and I’ve been really happy with it.

First of all, you can’t beat the price: for $2.99/month (less if you play quarterly or yearly) you can make unlimited calls to phone numbers in the U.S. and Canada. I have a super-nice headset for interviews and other audio work, but it’s the double-ear monster kind and I knew I wouldn’t want to wear it all day long. So I picked up a single-ear headset (Cyber Acoustics USB – AC-840) for $30 and was pleasantly surprised by call quality. No echo, no popping, solid sound.

The problem I started running into was one of efficiency. Skype has some great keyboard shortcuts, but once you bring up the “Call Phones” screen you can only make a single call before you have to close it and then click “call phones” again. This meant closing call windows and opening new ones, then dialing – extremely clunky and quickly annoying. I figured I was cutting my calls by at least 1/3 with this process so I went hunting for a solution. There is apparently a Skype option that automatically turns all phone numbers into links you could click to engage a new call, but for some reason this wasn’t working with my database.

After a quick search (How much do I love Firefox add-ins?), I found a beautiful little Firefox add-in called Telify to solve that problem. It worked like a charm, turning my numbers into links and automatically resolving country code issues as it goes. A few clicks and my call is in process. Excellent!

The last issue I am having will also be easily resolved. Since I’m calling from Skype, my number comes up “unknown” on the caller ids of everyone I call.” This not generally a good way to get folks to pick up. Honestly, I send “unknown” and “restricted” calls straight to voicemail, so I can’t expect my leads to pick up if I don’t have a real number. Luckily, I can purchase my own incoming Skype telephone number for less than $8/quarter. Then my calls will show an actual number rather than “unknown” and I should see an improvement in my pickup rate.

So there you have it. My powerhouse plan for using Skype + Telify* to reduce my cold-calling cost and increase efficiency. How about you guys? Do you cold call? What’s your method? Share!

*Telify was created by the obviously awesome Michael Koch and can be downloaded for free via the Firefox add-on site or Michael’s own site. Or you can just:

download Telify here

Michael also has another cool add-on for Firefox called FlexBar that gives you added control of all those toolbars that take up important browser real estate.

Easter JV Member Sign-up

There are currently over 400 items and lots of them are brand new just for this event. As I’ve mentioned before, this is my favorite Internet Marketing event of the year and I highly recommend you don’t miss it.

Spring is almost upon us and you know what that means… singing birds, blooming flowers and a whole bunch of awesome internet marketing giveaway events! Easter JV is just around the corner, but to keep you busy signing up and downloading until then, here are a few active or soon-to-be active events.

2010 Prosperity Giveaway

This is a big one. At the time of writing the free downloads in the Prosperity Giveaway numbered around 300. There are some pretty good one-time-offers here as well if you don’t mind shelling out a few bucks.

Members-Only Giveaway 2

Even bigger than the first, this giveaway has over 300 products in all internet marketing topics as well as some self improvement and personal development content. Keep your eyes open for the Easy WordPress Sales Pack, a set of preformatted landing and squeeze page themes for WordPress that are search engine optimized and ready to go.

Queen Bee JV

Over 200 internet marketing products from scripts to ebooks and memberships to PLR content. Comb this one carefully because I found a few products in here that I hadn’t seen in a giveaway before.

Free Giveaway Announcer Software
While we’re on the subject of giveaways, I’d also like to tell you about a great piece of free software. Giveaway Announcer automatically promotes all giveaway events, allowing you – as a contributor – to get the most from the money-making and list-building potential of giveaway events.

]]> http://pajamaprofessional.com/3-giveaway-events-and-free-software/feed/ 11 http://pajamaprofessional.com/twitter-app-wish-list-help/ http://pajamaprofessional.com/twitter-app-wish-list-help/#comments Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:30:38 +0000 Sara Ch. http://pajamaprofessional.com/?p=1454

This is a call for input from readers. I am looking for the perfect Twitter client – for me. Even though I think I tried at least 18,000 of them, I still haven’t found one that meets all my needs. And, honestly, I don’t think my needs are much. Perhaps the problem is that it’s been awhile since I’ve done a full search and tried out new apps. Maybe now there is a client that does what I want it to do.

I don’t think that my “needs” – I suppose they are really “wants” because I won’t die without being able to run several twitter searches automatically at once – are too great. In fact, my list of “must-haves” is a grand total of three. Just three. It used to be four, but I took of the necessity that it be a desktop app. I figured that would increase my options and it’s not like I don’t have twenty-seven Firefox windows open all the time anyway, right?

After I write this, I plan to first comb carefully through my own Twitter Resources page and see if there have been any updates that include my must-have list. Then I may look for some new resources to meet my needs. However, if anyone reading this knows of an app – online or desktop – that does all of these things easily (TweetDeck is a bit too clunky for me even though it does it all). Here are my three must-haves.

Multiple Accounts – All Following

I have at least three Twitter accounts that I use regularly and want easy access to my entire follow list. There are a lot of apps that do this, but it’s hard to see navigate through them easily, especially with my next two wish-list items included.

Multiple Accounts – Choose Following

TweetDeck does this and I’m sure other apps do as well. I want to be able to create lists of specific people I’m following – on the fly – and see just their updates. Again, easy to do, but now we’re getting into disorganization territory. Especially with the last one.

Search Terms

I want to be able to run searches and create automatically udpated searches on various keywords. Again, I know TweetDeck does this, but at this point I’ve got eighteen columns up and I have to scrolls around to see them all and it’s annoying.

I think the major problem I have here is organization. What I’ve been doing is using TweetDeck for keyword searches and Twhirl to monitor multiple accounts. This really clogs up my desktop and sometimes I find I don’t even bother to use them at all and just ignore Twitter altogether. This is bad because Twitter is great (like those strong adjectives?!) and I really do find it to be one of the most useful services on the internet for keeping up with things, doing research and finding cool blogs and articles.

So, readers, here’s where you come in. What app(s) do you use to keep track of all this Twitter stuff? Have you given up on it or have you found the perfect set-up. I would love it if you’d share. Just use the comments and let’s get the resources flowing.

]]> http://pajamaprofessional.com/twitter-app-wish-list-help/feed/ 11 http://pajamaprofessional.com/productivity-plugin-auto-context/ http://pajamaprofessional.com/productivity-plugin-auto-context/#comments Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:41:34 +0000 Sara Ch. http://pajamaprofessional.com/?p=1301

Many internet marketers are self-taught. Sure, there are some who come from the brick-and-mortar business world or majored in marketing or advertising or a related field. However, most of us just pick stuff up as we go along. For this reason, it is absolutely crucial that you have an advertising “swipe” file.

The swipe file is exactly what it sounds like – you swipe ideas, text, etc. from other marketers’ squeeze pages and promotional materials. I’m not saying you steal stuff word-for-word, my advice (and practice) is to simply copy the text you find helpful and save it in a file: your swipe file.

The problem with this is that when you find this text you like, you have to open your swipe document, copy and paste the text and then save it. When you are reading a lot of advertising at once or you are in the middle of something else, this process can take you out of the zone and basically just be damn annoying.

As I was thinking about this today it occurred to me that I cannot be the only person on the planet who finds it annoying to have to find and open a file each time I want to copy a bit of text. Firefox being the user-loved application that it is, I crossed my fingers and visited the Firefox Add-ons repository.

To be honest, it took a bit more digging than I thought it would to find just what I wanted. I think this was mostly because I couldn’t figure out exactly how to work my search and – even when I did – the words used were very common (copy, paste, text, file, etc.). Finally, I found a plugin called Auto Context. It is a truly beautiful creation.

Auto-Context creates a new menu when you highlight text. (Note: If you right-click you will see your regular right-click menu, but if you just highlight, the Auto Context menu will appear) As you can see on the left, there are some very helpful and interesting options in this menu. In fact, I can already tell it’s going to be one of those that I look back on in a couple of months and say, “How the hell did I ever live without that?”

Now, back to the swipe file. The highlighed option on the context menu is “append selection to file.” This is the golden option. Since you already have your swipe file created (you do, right?), you can add whatever text on a webpage you want to that file in just three simply steps:

• 1. Highlight the text you want to add to your file.
• 2. When the Auto Context menu pops up, select “append selection to file.”
• 3. The “Save As…” menu that you’re used to will pop up. Navigate to your swipe file and click “Save.” In some cases the “This file already exists. Do you want to replace it?” warning will pop up.” If this happens, just click “Yes.” Your file won’t be replaced, the new selection will simply be added.

And that’s it. The next time you open your swipe file, the text you highlighted and appended with, in fact, be appended starting on the next line from the last text you added. It’s truly magical.

Though I haven’t played with a lot, I’m sure I will find other uses for this plugin. I already know it will come in handy for creating blog posts and any type of research. If I find a piece of information I want to hang onto and/or write about later, I simply use the “save selection to file” option. The “Save” dialogue will let me create a new file, automatically add the text I have highlighted into the file (without me ever having to open it) and allow me to save it anywhere with any name I choose.

I spend about four hours a day researching and working on various blog posts and articles. I copy text that inspires me perhaps twenty times during this time. Given this, I’d say that over the course of a month I could save a ton of time switching among files and – even with shortcuts – copying, pasting and saving. Excellent!

This is a plugin that could greatly contribute to your productivity and reduce your annoyance. Here’s the link again: Auto Context.

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