When I first started my business, I purchased a copy of the Times 1,000 Top Companies in the UK and started with the top companies, calling the largest companies to try to reach their PC buyers. Not surprisingly, I would go to voicemail, leave messages, and not call back. It was a frustrating choke point and there was obviously a lot of buyer friction at this stage of the sales funnel.
One of the key parts of our service was content. We published australia mobile database the International Software Guide, a 600-page book that reviewed nearly every software product available for the PC at the time. If a customer purchased software from us, this book was provided to them as part of our service. It was pretty impressive see below.
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My insight was that if I gave them the book for free first and then asked them for a meeting, I could probably prove to them that we were different and could provide them with more value than all the other vendors out there. The results were amazing: I went from a 2-3% success rate in my meetings to around 90%!