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52 •
PPB
• MARCH 2016
GROW
WE’VE ALL BEEN THERE BEFORE. There’s this person out there whom we
believe we could benefit from knowing, and who might be able to benefit from
knowing us. We go to the functions they are likely to attend, but either they’re not
there or you don’t get to make a connection. You check LinkedIn, and they’re a
fourth-degree connection at best from you. So how do you make that association?
A TRICKY BUT PRICELESS WAY TO BUILD RELATIONSHIPS
By Troy Harrison
Cold Calls For
Networking
SALES
You decide to take the bull
by the horns and simply call
them. Why not? You make cold
calls all the time; how much dif-
ferent could this one be?
Well, the answer is: Very!
There are many pitfalls when you
make a cold call to network—and
there’s also a clear path to suc-
cess. I receive a number of these
calls, and unfortunately too many
people get it very wrong. Let’s
look at how to do it right:
PLAN AND RESEARCH.
This is the
opposite of my approach to cold-
call teleprospecting; I’m not a big
fan of extensive pre-call research
in teleprospecting because that
technique is, at some level, a