Cold calling is a marketing technique used by sellers to engage in conversations with other sellers. This tends to feature calling someone that does not expect a call in order to expose your products to them. In the world of sound production and voice overs, it’s often rare to find people who are willingly looking for that service, however, when offered to them, they tend to notice the desire for your services. When cold calling someone, there are a few steps that you should take to ensure the effectiveness of your call and to ensure that there will be a positive response from your client. This article will list 5 techniques that you should keep in mind when cold calling to ensure that your client will have a positive outlook on your voice over and voice acting services.
The Client is Your Priority
When cold calling, as with other marketing techniques, you have to put the client or customer first. This means that your questions should be focused on what the client needs and not what you need. You are looking for their demands, they arn’t looking for your supply. Cold calling is looking to see if the client is interested in your voice over services, this means asking them what they need a voice over on or if they require your job.
To be effective, you must also ask the right questions, you must know the client’s demands and you must know what they have to offer. This can segway onto another principle that must be kept in mind which is the knowledge of the clients products or services. When cold calling, you should not call random directories, it is often preferred that you call people who you have done business with in the past and are familiar with you. This will make it more likely for the client to actually invest in your abilities and skills.
Planning Your Questions and Being Prepared
Obviously, when cold calling, you are going to be forwarding your questions to the client and asking about what they need in terms of services. This means that as the seller, you must be asking the right questions. You can’t go in and expect that the client will already be familiar with what they need especially considering that sometimes, a voice over job is not needed until pointed out. Maybe the client has a video that needs to be narrated or an ad that they may need in another language.
In order to expose demand you need to ask the right questions, so have them prepared. If you go into the call not knowing what you want to ask, it will only show unpreparedness and uncertainty which is a large red flag when it comes to cold calling. You want to seem professional and knowledgeable on what you want and what the client wants and you need to be prepared for any questions that the client might ask you as well.
Don’t Follow a Script
Just simply, don’t follow a script. It is a sign that you are doing this on routine and that you aren’t giving the client a customized treatment which is another red flag when it comes to business. Your services should be customized to the client and you should show genuity when calling up a client. It is also a large risk considering how you won’t be prepared for any sort of questions that they may bring up. Cold calling is also a case by case situation and your questions should again be focused on your client. Following a script will also reduce your chances of exposing your personality and building a relationship with the client. Innovating and improvising is an amazing quality to have as a voice actor, make sure your client sees that by not following a script.
Don’t Be Too Intrusive
In other words, don’t expect to sell or overwhelm your client on the first call. This also means don’t ask too many questions that could confuse or in some cases dishearten your client from buying your service.
What Benefit Will Your Client Gain
Lastly, it’s important to find out beforehand, what your client could benefit from investing in your services. Don’t just call someone expecting that they could benefit from what you have to offer. This means doing research on their website if they have one and seeing if they actually do have demand for your service. Sometimes, the client might have some key factors that they are keeping in mind that could make or break a deal with them. Find out what these are through the call and make sure you keep them in mind. It could be quality, it could be price, whatever it is, find it out and make sure that the client will have something to benefit out of this.
Conclusion
Marketing your services is essential to becoming a successful voice actor and networking/making connections and relationships is vital for setting yourself up as a business person. As listed above, each technique is connected to one underlying technique which is to prioritize your client and getting to know them. This would be the most important technique in cold calling that you should keep in mind. If you would like to know more about some other principles of voice acting and music articles in general, check out mellostudio.com.
