I tried cold calls to bring customers to Orcaa. Honestly, they brought nothing compared with going to the business itself and showing the owner the system. So that is what I do now, and this is what I learned on the way.
The problem with the phone
On a cold call the person on the other end is not interested and is not convinced of anything. To them you are a pushy salesperson who called to bother them, not a technical expert offering tools that could take their business somewhere new. The medium decides your role before you say a word.
There is also no shared object. I describe a screen they cannot see, they imagine a different one, and we both hang up having talked about two different products.
What changes at the counter
Walk into the business, open the laptop and show the platform. Everything is different:
- The owner sees their own kind of business on the screen, not a slide about businesses in general.
- Questions get answered in the moment, with the feature on the screen instead of in a promise.
- The decision maker is usually there, and if not, the person in front of you knows exactly when they will be.
- The visit itself says something about how support will feel later: I came to you.
Owners buy from people who understand their day. The fastest way to prove you do is to stand in it for twenty minutes.
What it costs, and what it does not
Visiting is slower per conversation than dialing a list. It is much faster per customer. A morning of calls produced polite refusals; an afternoon of two visits produced a trial and a referral. The arithmetic was not close.
It also changed the product. Standing next to a receptionist while she tries the schedule for the first time teaches you more about your interface than any analytics dashboard.
If you are building for small businesses
If your customers are salons, clinics, shops and cafés in Egypt, and your pipeline is a phone list, try the door instead. Bring the laptop, ask for the decision maker, and let the product do the talking. The owner will tell you what to build next before you have closed the lid.