This is the summary day 17 in my #3Kin2 challenge.
Plan:
- call 60 numbers☑ (134📞)
- document code and workflows contact scraper finally❌
I just did some more revisions of my program & the related workflows.
Cold Call Results in Numbers
Now I was able to create the following results (contact creation):
- 34 HTML files (from 34 Google Maps searches)
- 1037 Google Business Profiles (from 34 searches; ~30 profiles per search (incl. duplicates))
- 573 non-duplicate profiles (aka. new contacts)
- 50 non-duplicate contacts in my niche who don’t have a website (in non-duplicates)
This means (relative numbers):
- 0.68 contacts per search😅
- 4.82% of found profiles are potential clients
Results from calls (Round 1):
- 50 contacts ended up in 43 calls (several numbers aren’t available anymore & some GBP’s don’t have phone numbers at all)
- 1 Person who may eventually be interested and calls back later this week
Round 2 of contact creation:
- 75 HTML files
- 2673 Google Business Profiles
- 1694 non-duplicate profiles
- ~175 non-dubplicate contacts in my niche who don’t have a website
Round 2 of relative numbers:
- ~2.3 contacts per search
- 6.55% of found profiles are potential clients
Insights after 134 cold calls📞
Okay, just thinking that it may have been a super stupid idea to target Google Business Profiles which don’t have websites. 50% of the related phone numbers seem to be dead…☎
And most times there’s a clear reason why people don’t have a website. In this case mostly because these people are also almost dead…😅
And of course, another super valid reason for not having a website is that their business works without one anyway. So many of them just get patients by word of mouth.
I am not sure if several hundred calls, with only two people being interested at all, are enough to prove that a pivot of the outreach strategy would be wise.
I’ll definitely finish calling through the list which I’ve prepared so far. And since the Raspberry Pi is running and collecting more contacts, I’ll just let him run.🏃♀️ Maybe I can use the data at some other point in the future.
If I don’t see reasonable success until the end of this week, I’ll focus less on cold calls (of people who don’t have a website in their Google Business Profile yet).
Alternatives to Cold Calls
I have two options for potential pivots:
- call schools for alternative practitioners & offer info presentations for their graduates
- publish ads on classified ads platforms on a regular basis & at different places (for free)
Another strategy could be to cold call practitioners who already have a website. I could just ask them if they are happy with the current state of their website and if not I could eventually fix it, or at least find out what their biggest pain points and most important needs are (or have been during the setup of their website).
And even if they don’t need a website there might be additional digitalization services which could be interesting for them (& which I could learn or facilitate). And finally there’s always the chance that they know others or have connections to schools where they could recommend me as a lecturer for info about websites.
Further Thoughts on Cold Calling
Fortunately I didn’t do all the searches manually.😁
I’d probably have spend the same time searching I spent coding.💻
Ultimately I could certainly have used a more scalable approach (e.g. talking to multipliers aka. people or institutions who have a direct connection to a large number of potential customers).
Fortunately I can still do that.😉
However, now the actual work actually begins…
How would you start?
What are your days for potentially more scalable outreach? Do you think cold calling is the best way to go in the beginning?
Or would you start with something that has the potential for stronger leverage?