Learn in 10 minutes how I set an appointment with the CEO of a $100 million company, with a real life example.
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Successful Cold Calling in Oil and Gas or Any Other Industry
Hey, folks. Let’s learn something new about the oil and gas industry.
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All right. Today, we’re going to talk about cold calling again. It seemed like every time we do this, it ignites this firestorm of controversy. Basically you have people that say it’s a waste of time and it doesn’t work and you have people on the other side of the fence that say it does work. In our world, it works and it works really well.
Now, oil and gas is little bit different animal than other verticals for a couple of reasons; they’re old fashioned, they’re relationship based. So we actually have a team of people that do nothing but cold call for our clients and we know exactly how to make it work in oil and gas. But today, I’m going to share something that would have work probably inside any vertical and, the bottom line is you’re offering value to somebody that’s have an issue.
So if you take a look at on the screen, we’re going to look at – I’ve received on LinkedIn this invitation to a luncheon learn basically. And anytime a company is hosting a luncheon learn, you know what they’re after, right? They’re not trying to give away free food, what they’re after is they’re trying to increase the number of prospects they have, right? And usually if they do it right, the subject of the luncheon learn helps them segment so that they have a higher increase of selling.
So, in this case, it was a technology company that is doing a luncheon learn for – and basically it was on three information management best practices reducing your land litigation expenses. So, when I went and looked at what the company was and saw that they were a technology company, I realized what they were after, right? They are trying to attract people who struggle with their land leases in oil and gas to come sit their luncheon learn, so I had. “Aha!” right? I know what they’re struggling with, right?
So, I went on LinkedIn and found the CEO. Now, this is a hundred million dollar a year company and this doesn’t always happen, but the CEO have its contact information public so I was able to get his e-mail address.
What did I do next? If you look at the time and the date, it was on Sunday evening around 6:30, I shot him a very specific e-mail and basically it says, I think you’re on the tip of something enormous the intersection of oil and gas industry and the great crude change.
Now, for those of you out there who don’t know what the great crude change is, it’s basically this coming wall where we’re to lose a lot of talent right in the part of the industry when we have an increase demand for talent, so it’s a major business driver.
And then, I went on to say, knowledge transfer is a major business driver for 2014 and there’s a shortage of talent to solve this issue including experts in MS SharePoint Integration. And if you don’t know what SharePoint is, it’s basically a way to collaborate that’s really popular globally. It’s a Microsoft product. But then, you have to be able to talk to the business not IT.
Now, since I knew the CEO sold IT solutions to oil and gas before, I knew he would resonate with that because you don’t sell your technology solutions to IT. So, anyway, and I basically didn’t push any further than that. I shot him the e-mail and ten minutes later, I got a reply. “Hey, Mark. Let’s talk Thursday at 1:30 PM. I have about thirty minutes in that slot. Looking forward to it.”
So, if you see what I did, I basically reached out to a CEO of a company that had very specific problem which was attracting qualified prospects, I told him there was another way for him to attract qualified prospects that he probably wasn’t aware of arouses his interest and that he set an appointment. That’s classic cold calling. It took me ten minutes and one e-mail and I had an appointment with the CEO of a hundred million dollar a year company.
So, if you pay attention to what – how that works, you could apply that to your business. I don’t care what you are, right? If you are a digital marketing company. You could look for people that are trying to attract prospects ‘cause digital marketing, you can also help them attract prospects, right? If you’re a company basically selling frac sand, right? You want to look for companies out there that are struggling with lining up their frac sand suppliers. And then, you can reach out to their executive team. Don’t be pushy, don’t be salesy, but be very spot on with your message, talk specifically about what problems you can help them solve, right? And then give them some times and dates for follow up and you’ll be surprise how much this will lead to really good robust business.
So, hopefully this helps. We will see you next time.
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