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Picture courtesy of Naito8

Cold Calling – two words that send a chill down the spine of a lot of sales people, I can tell you!

There are so many ways to develop leads, and picking up the phone to speak to a complete stranger is among the least popular, as well as not necessarily being the most effective. There is a huge psychological barrier to overcome, which is even greater when targeting customers in a different country who speak a different first language to mine.

Psychologists tell us that, in a typical face-to-face conversation, our brains are processing information from a range of sources, only a relatively small portion of which is to do with the words being spoken. Some really persuasive sales people study the subject of body language carefully, and learn techniques such as mirroring. In point of fact, we all know a lot of this stuff instinctively without having to learn it. We read a lot from things like someone’s posture, whether they sustain eye contact, and we subconsciously modify our behaviour accordingly.

It’s the absence of these signs that make cold calling such a challenge. We hear a voice, but we have no visual information to support our impression of the person. We don’t know if they are sitting hunched over a desk with a huge pile of papers or a massive list of unanswered emails on their computer screen, or alternatively relaxing over a cold drink.

The absence of information is even worse when calling a new contact who doesn’t speak the same first language. Whether the conversation is held in my language or theirs, I am likely to miss something else, and that is the tone of their voice. Signs of anxiety, impatience, or alternatively of enthusiasm are much more difficult to detect when one person is not using their natural language.

For me, cold calling is very much a technique of last resort, but nevertheless it’s something I need to use from time to time when more gentle methods of establishing contact are not producing results. From my experience, incidents of truly unpleasant conversations are in fact extremely rare. If I tell someone I have a great product that is going to fly off their shelves, there’s a good chance they’ll give me at least a minute or two of their precious time.

Cold calling is a great way of finding out if there’s a market for my products in a certain country. Actually talking to potential re-sellers or end users invariably tells me far more than any market research can. And it’s free, as well.

Effective cold calling is something that can be learned. I find it’s really important to prepare for each call or batch of calls, to the point of working out a broad script. Scripting a call is also helpful in conversing with someone in English when it’s not their first language, as it’s a chance to ensure I keep the message simple, and avoid jargon or complicated sentences.

I claim to speak three languages, two of them with difficulty, but in my little region of the world, there are around 50 official languages, so in most cases, I don’t speak the language of my target. In those cases, my call starts with the inevitable phrase:

“Do you speak English?”

And the truth is that in virtually all smaller countries that have a unique language that is not widely spoken outside of their borders, the answer will usually be yes.

If I were calling a company in my country, I’d then explain briefly what my company did, but it really helps to keep it very simple at the first point of contact, so I would clearly and politely ask to speak to the Buying Manager. If the person on the other end is a confident speaker of English and is also well acquainted with the business, they may well ask who I am and what I’m calling about. If they are not, they will be pleased to pass the call to someone better able to deal with it.

On being passed to a second person, I’d begin by again asking if they spoke English, or if they had answered the phone with a fluent sounding English phrase, then I’d greet them, using their name if they have told me what it is, (this breaks the ice a bit, and also gives me a chance to get the name right and write it down) tell them my name and the name of my company and ask them if they were ok speaking to me in English. A silly question really, since if they say no, that’s probably the end of the conversation, although they might say they would prefer to speak French or German in which case I am still in with a chance!

I’d then have a brief script ready, of no more than two or three sentences that contained what sales people call a ‘headline’. I’d intersperse this with plenty of questions, to give them a chance to interject. Effective selling is at least as much about listening as talking.

For example:

“My name’s Axy Exporter, I work for a company in England called Super Spark Plugs, maybe you’ve heard of us?”

(“No, I can’t say that I have”)

“Not to worry. We aren’t very well known in Latvia yet. But in England and France, our sales are growing really fast, because our spark plugs perform well, are reliable and the price is very good too. Does your company buy spark plugs?”

(“Yes, we are a supplier of car parts!”) Well at least I know I got the right number.

Great. We are looking for someone to distribute our products in Latvia. Do you think you might be interested?

Now although that was a ‘closed’ question, it’s very unlikely that I’d get a simple yes or no answer. More likely it will be qualified with a few ‘it depends’ comments, each of which gives me a chance to gently probe them for more information about their company and their perception of the market.  If I’m really well organised on that day, I might even have a check list of things I want to know, such as how big they think the market is in their country, what their market share is, what resource they have in the way of sales representatives etc., whose products they currently sell and so on. I may only get a small part of this information, but I already have at least one friendly contact on the inside in that country.

The final stage of the call would be to agree what we are going to do next. We may agree that  I’ll send them some samples by courier, some literature and prices by email, or perhaps there is an opportunity to meet.

And it’s that simple. Except of course, that I do get a number of calls where people don’t speak my languages, already know my products and hate them, have a lucrative, exclusive deal with my main competitor, or are just about to go out of business. A small number just don’t want to talk. They are probably not the business partner I’m looking for. In all of those circumstances, I end up knowing more about the opportunity and getting a little closer to finding my ideal contact. Would I rather be responding to an enquiry via our website, or a recommendation from another customer? You bet! But cold calling can produce results, and it’s a quick, simple and cost free way for me or any other business to get started in a new market. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

Happy accidents!

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If you read the trade press, you are very likely to come across the term ‘accidental exporters’, usually being used in a disparaging sense.

Well I’m an accidental exporter, and what’s more I’m proud of it!

In point of fact, it’s my contention that most business success, particularly in international fields, has at least some element of good fortune about it. As the American film producer Sam Goldwyn is reputed to have said “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

More years ago than I care to admit, I took a postgraduate course in Management. We spent a lot of time looking at case studies, and in almost every case I recall, someone offered the factor of “they were lucky” in an explanation of the subject’s success.

For a successful business to replicate its success in other countries, there is always going to be a element of luck. This is even more true for exporters than it is for business ventures in general, mainly because the way that a given business sector operates often varies considerably from one country to another. In my experience, this is true even among countries that are thought to be very close, either culturally or geographically. Most of my time is currently spent developing business in continental Europe, and I have learned that every time I focus on a prospect in a new country I have to leave all my assumptions and experiences at the border.

I am not suggesting that exporting should be approached in a totally haphazard manner, of course. Failing to plan is planning to fail, after all. But particularly for the firm that is setting out on exporting for the first time, the best plan you can hope to produce is really little more than guesswork, and it’s important to treat it as such. A business plan is basically a prediction of what will happen in the future, and as Edgar Fiedler famously warned “Forecasting is very difficult, but especially if it’s about the future.”

Probably the most useful first step anyone can make in developing export business is to study the markets and make some intelligent guesses (that’s the best I’ve ever been able to do) about where the best place to start might be. Look at the economy, the current size of the market for your products, the competition, any obvious legal or cultural barriers, and pick your target. In the UK, you can get quite a bit of help to do this, often for free. It might be worth contacting UK Trade and Investment, (UKTI) the government body that helps companies to export. Having done that, it’s useful to have an action plan. Decide how much resource to allocate to the venture, plan a budget and some activity. It’s probably a good idea to talk this over with someone outside of your business, such as one of UKTI’s advisers. They might be able to offer some suggestions based on their experience, but don’t whatever you do, take anything anyone tells you as gospel. I almost cried with frustration once when, as a junior member of an export team, my boss resolutely refused to talk to a potential distributor in Germany who looked perfect for us, because our advisor had told us to tackle France first. Make plans, of course. But don’t be afraid to vary them or even ditch them altogether if you can see that things are not going the way you expected.

When I started in my present job, I carried out my research diligently, and produced a logical plan based on the carefully considered assumption that the countries of Scandinavia would be the best place to start. I then packed my bag with samples, literature and prices and trotted around Oslo, Helsinki, Copenhagen and Stockholm talking to anyone who would listen. For my troubles, I got virtually nothing other than a few polite nods and stifled yawns. A big disappointment, yes. But I also came home wiser, and armed with a first-hand understanding of how these markets operated in these sectors.

Incidentally, about a year later one of those first contacts I made called me and said he was now very interested in our products. He is now one of my best customers, so the trip was not as fruitless as I thought at the time.

But the essential point is this: when you first set out to export, you have very little idea what is going to happen or when and where you will find success. Exporting is as unpredictable as starting a new business from scratch, possibly more so as at least in our home market we have a certain amount of life experience to draw on that helps us understand our own culture and ways of doing things. In exporting, we start with nothing except the notion that, as our products or services are accepted in our own country, there’s a good chance that customers in other places will like them too. It’s only when we start talking and even more importantly, listening to prospective customers in our target markets that we can really expect to make any progress.

So it’s an uncertain journey, and carries risks that I will talk about over the coming weeks and months. But the rewards are invaluable and in all probability will go far beyond the financial and help the business to become more competitive, more innovative and in all respects a more enjoyable and rewarding place to work.

Good luck, and happy accidents!