Admit it. No one likes making cold calls. But if you're a
salesperson with a lumberyard, there's no better way to acquire new
customers — unless you can find someone to do it for you.
That's exactly what Kevin Kamerud found in marketing consultant
George Clay, president of San Diego-based Marketing Direct. Kamerud
is a sales rep with Bennett Lumber, a pro-oriented dealer in
Minneapolis. In September 1999, Kamerud enlisted Clay's services to
conduct over-the-phone cold calls to builders and remodelers in the
Twin Cities market. "Cold calling takes away from the service that I
need to provide to my contractors," Kamerud says. "And cold calling
is something we hate, anyway."
Before getting started, Kamerud and a few of the other sales reps
at Bennett provided Clay with the information he'd need to begin.
"Clay had never done any work with anyone in the lumber industry
before, so we gave him the lowdown on what this area is like,"
Kamerud says. "We told him about the market and a little bit about
our company and about our competition."
The second contact consists of a follow-up letter that Kamerud and
Clay developed together. "Once the prospect is qualified on the phone,
we send out a simple one-page letter that's signed by the salesperson
at the lumberyard," Clay says. The success of the cold-calling program,
Clay adds, "has a lot to do with the quality of the salespeople at the
lumberyard. It works like a machine now. I usually don't get the sales
rep involved until I feel the prospect is ready and serious about
getting an estimate or filling out a credit application."
In the year or so since the effort began, Kamerud has acquired 10
new customers. "And we have another 10 who are real close," he
adds. "This has really worked well for us." Ten, maybe 20 new
customers in a year? That would certainly take the chill out of cold
calls. —Hillary Kanter.
