Gethardgetraw's 2009-2010 Cold Calling Journal
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I am just wondering, why are you focusing on cold calling your entire day? I am sure you will snap soon. Why not work the people you already know? or try to get additional business from your existing clients, provide value, get recommendations and introductions.
Terrible schedule. I’m not trying to be negative. It’s just that a schedule that you won’t be able to follow will quickly lead to failure. You need success. For instance, if your schedule was changed to the following, I bet that you’d have more success:
8:00-10:00 A.M.: Cold call 10:00 A.M. -5:00 P.M: Do whatever I wantI agree…just finished the Chris Gardner book (basis for Pursuit of Happyness). He went from homeless black man to making over $1MM/year within 5 years by making 200 calls a day. His secret was not about burning himself out making as many calls as possible…just making 200 quality cold calls every single day before he went home. Without exception.
PS: I recommend the book over the movie.
If he is just starting he doesn't have that optionI am just wondering, why are you focusing on cold calling your entire day? I am sure you will snap soon. Why not work the people you already know? or try to get additional business from your existing clients, provide value, get recommendations and introductions.
[quote=anonymous]Terrible schedule. I’m not trying to be negative. It’s just that a schedule that you won’t be able to follow will quickly lead to failure. You need success. For instance, if your schedule was changed to the following, I bet that you’d have more success:
8:00-10:00 A.M.: Cold call 10:00 A.M. -5:00 P.M: Do whatever I want[/quote] Takes more time than that to be productive if you are starting out... 2 hours isn't enough...[quote=anonymous]Terrible schedule. I’m not trying to be negative. It’s just that a schedule that you won’t be able to follow will quickly lead to failure. You need success. For instance, if your schedule was changed to the following, I bet that you’d have more success:
8:00-10:00 A.M.: Cold call 10:00 A.M. -5:00 P.M: Do whatever I want[/quote] I think he was being facetious with his schedule. The schedule has him drinking 10 cups of coffee per day. I got a chuckle out of the 7:50PM task of "Check tomorrow's schedule". Why does he need to check out the schedule? All he's doing is dialing, drinking coffee, dialing, drinking coffee, dialing, drinking coffee. Doesn't seem like something you need to prepare and review the night before.[quote=Still@jones]
I agree…just finished the Chris Gardner book (basis for Pursuit of Happyness). He went from homeless black man to making over $1MM/year within 5 years by making 200 calls a day. His secret was not about burning himself out making as many calls as possible…just making 200 quality cold calls every single day before he went home. Without exception.
PS: I recommend the book over the movie.
[/quote]
In 20 years newbies will be reading the book about a young struggling advisor who was kicked out of Edward Jones, switched to the insurance side, and became the Ben Feldman of our generation.
The book will be titled “Not@jonesNow@TopoftableMDRT”
[quote=Squash1][quote=anonymous]Terrible schedule. I’m not trying to be negative. It’s just that a schedule that you won’t be able to follow will quickly lead to failure. You need success. For instance, if your schedule was changed to the following, I bet that you’d have more success:
8:00-10:00 A.M.: Cold call 10:00 A.M. -5:00 P.M: Do whatever I want[/quote] Takes more time than that to be productive if you are starting out... 2 hours isn't enough...[/quote] Actually, if he makes two hours worth of calls every single day, he most likely will ultimately end up a huge success. Anyway, I'm not trying to tell him to call for two hours and then go out drinking. The point is that daily goals shouldn't be some pipe dream. They should be about doing something that is achievable.Haha yeah I suppose checking tomorrow's schedule is pretty ridiculous, but every now and then I have a call session or a regional breakfast the next day that I absolutely would not have remembered.
I definitely do need to time block calling existing clients and prospects into my schedule, which would actually give me a well-needed break from straight cold calling. Right now I'm at 12 blocks of cold calling, or 10 hours per day. I could change 3 of those cold calling blocks to calling existing clients and prospects. Those who cold called to build their book... thoughts? Not enough contacting previous clients or too much time given? I am able to do so much calling b/c right now I'm simply gathering assets and selling bonds and I only have a handful (<5) of "active" clients who proactively call me to trade. Right now I'm still on a huge emotional rollercoaster. Some days I hate waking up and walking into my office, however some days I crave the challenge and I figure if I'm going to fail, I'm going down swinging. Already, this journal has been a huge help for me. It's amazing how much a simply internet forum can light a fire under your ass. I honestly look at my call log every day and think... oh god I'm going to have to post this in a few hours.Also, I downloaded The Pursuit of Happyness a few days ago and watched it halfway through and turned it off b/c it's spectacular and want to read the book before I watch the movie. Its been recommended to me by 2 regional vets as well as mentioned on this forum many times, think I'll spend the whole $0.01 on a used copy from amazon.
First off let me say I am new to the business and new to the forum. I am a recent hire at a wirefirm and am still studying for Series 7 etc. so I have not begun my cold calling yet.
I applaud Gethard for holding yourself accountable on this forum, but did anyone else notice a problem with his time management? According to the new schedule (which maybe Gethard has not implemented yet) he is calling for a total of 10 hours yet only made 114 calls. This averages out to a little over 5 minutes per call which seems really long to me. Am I right or can someone show me where my math is wrong?
[quote=gethardgetraw]
Also, I downloaded The Pursuit of Happyness a few days ago and watched it halfway through and turned it off b/c it's spectacular and want to read the book before I watch the movie. Its been recommended to me by 2 regional vets as well as mentioned on this forum many times, think I'll spend the whole $0.01 on a used copy from amazon.
[/quote] Wouldn't buy it, just rent a lot of the book is crap...Unfortunately yesterday I had to leave early to attend a holiday party... however I do realize that I have a pretty archaic method of finding numbers to call.First off let me say I am new to the business and new to the forum. I am a recent hire at a wirefirm and am still studying for Series 7 etc. so I have not begun my cold calling yet.
I applaud Gethard for holding yourself accountable on this forum, but did anyone else notice a problem with his time management? According to the new schedule (which maybe Gethard has not implemented yet) he is calling for a total of 10 hours yet only made 114 calls. This averages out to a little over 5 minutes per call which seems really long to me. Am I right or can someone show me where my math is wrong?
Ok so here's what I'm doing: I pull up maps.google and find the wealthy neighborhoods in my surrounding area. I then reverse address lookup on whitepages using the street name and city/state. I generally get about 100 names and numbers of people who live on that street. I then scrub the phone number against the DNC and if it's a GO, I immediately call. The problem with this is that it's very time consuming. It generally takes about 1-2 minutes to simply find a number of which I can call.
This method is working however perhaps buying a list would be a more efficient use of my time.
Am I being retarded? (I know the answer to this... I should buy a list. Ugh gotta shell out a few hundo though)
As many people have pointed out on here before, there are free ways to get lists as well.
The one I think works the best is to check with your local library and see if they have access to Reference USA (My library did not, but my parent’s library had online access so I just used my mom’s card number to access it). On there you can search people and businesses (which give you the manager’s and people of power’s names). If you want to solely call residences, you can put a income qualifier on the search and find those most likely to qualify (those making $100,000+/yr). You can only print out 25 names per search, but if you want to just pull it up and work off there, it would be much more efficient. Or better yet, take some time at night or early in the morning to create your list of 200+ for the day.
That’s what my plan is at least.
Yeah, I’ve found a few sources of free lists. Salesgenie gives you 100 free when you sign up for their trial.
However, the value that I'd be paying for is the fact that the numbers pre-scrubbed against the DNC. Scrubbing the numbers is the most time consuming part for me. I'll have a list of 100 numbers, and after 10-15 minutes of scrubbing, I have 10 numbers that are callable which is a huge time drainer.Sparty is right with Reference USA, thing that sucks is the 25/search, so it gets annoying, but you can do 200 each night before you leave so you are set up for tomorrow…
Or just buy the cheapest list you can find that is scrubbed from a reputable company, there are reco's all over the site... CIS is popular with wires. But i would buy slowly and see how the llist goes then re-up for more if you find it is good info or if you even use it(i got 5 lists from advisors who bought them and never used them for $25/piece..)Have a $200 list of 3,333 names on my Christmas list and until then I'll spend more time gathering numbers while I'm at home. Wish there were more than 24 hours in the day.
Edit - Called the library 3 minutes from my office and they do have access to Reference USA, as well as remote access to library card holders