Cold, warm or hot acquisition

Cold acquisition, or cold calling, means: contacting someone who you don't know, to try and sell your product or service. Often this is done by telephone: you call a number, or you have a call center call people, and you do your 'sales pitch': "Hi, would you be interested in .... " Cold calling is difficult, search the web and you will find many 'tips and tricks'.

Read more ...

Cold emails are easy to send, and you can send them to a large number of people. But most of those people will think 'Spam!' and delete your message. Many email programmes delete SPAM automatically, with a SPAM filter. Here are some tips of what you can do, to make sure that your email is not recognized by SPAM filters.

"Warm" acquisition: contacting someone who you've met before, but don't know very well yet. Maybe you've met them at a networking event, or a friend or relative gave you the name of the person. This makes your introduction easier, and more personal "Hi, we met at ..." or "Hi, my cousin Mark told me to contact you ... "

"Hot" contacts: people you know well, former customers, etc. The most important thing about 'hot' contacts is to keep them hot, and not to let them cool down. This may mean: Christmas cards, regular e-mails or newsletters, asking about the wife/the husband/the kids, and/or special discounts for regular customers.

CRM software (CRM: Customer Relationship Management) can help you with this; click here for an example and introduction.