Cold calling for hackers

As a hacker, you live by what you think is a high code of ethics and standards. You pride yourself on your good work, you take your work very seriously and it’s not uncommon to work every waking hour to meet a deadline. Every year or two you invest lots of time and effort learning a new technology, be it a new programming language, server platform or design paradigm.

When you stroll into the office every morning, you can almost be forgiven for having what appears to be a chip on your shoulder (even though it’s really just a desire to be recognized for working so hard). You venture into the other side of the office where the salesmen do their “work” and wonder why these people get paid so much and command so much respect from business owners.

The reason is simple, the only way anyone gets anywhere making software, or indeed any business, is if people actually use your product or service and money changes hands.

It is hard making software, it requires a lot of work, but as anyone whose tried will tell you, getting sales is in many ways much harder. I feel hackers scoff at this notion because “getting customers” is such a simple concept, no where near as complex as the 1000’s of lines of code thats been written in their sophisticated software. But give a hacker a list of possible customers, a phone, a cubical and 8 hours, more often then not their minds will break and you will reduce them to sniveling, delicate flowers who will go home and talk to their moms about how rough life is for hours (not that I would blame them).

As a hacker trying to start a business, I am in the unfortunate position of having to get customers. As I have very few personal contacts that can help, I have been relying on cold calling. And it has been a tough slog.

I read on a blog post that if 1 out of 20 calls ultimately results in a sale, you are doing good. That means you are going to get rejected a lot. When you make cold calls you aren’t actually trying to sell anything, but merely set up a meeting where you can give a proper pitch as well as take the time to listen to the customers needs and make sure you can help.

As the main stake holder at Schedule Bin, getting constantly rejected has been gut wrenching. Let me be clear that the success or failure of my company rests squarely on my shoulders and that after getting constantly shot down or told I’m crazy for having such a lame product, I have been reduced to a delicate, whimpering flower.

But, they say cold calling is a numbers game eg. I just need to call 1000 people to get 50 customer. I don’t know about that, I don’t think I’d be able to physically or emotionally do that. But what I have found is that when you do get shot down, asking the person why is the key for figuring out what you are doing wrong and adjusting.

After 20 calls trying to sell Schedule Bin and ultimately getting rejected each time, I put a list together of why people were not interested. The top reasons were they didn’t want to change the current system, and/or they didn’t want to pay for software that does something they do for free right now. Without giving away more hard-fought marketing info, suffice to say that I was able to change my approach significantly based on this feedback and now when I do my cold calling, I am able to line up meetings every 2nd call I make.

When you are programming a fairly complicated component and are running into all kinds of constraints and limitations, chances are you aren’t on the right track and you need to rethink how to approach your problem. When selling your business, the same is true. Try as best you can to roll with the punches, but it’s critical to ask questions and track what kind of feedback you are getting.

[a Cobworks commentary]