This weekend, I spent time at my favorite coffee shop reading one of my favorite copywriting business gurus. Peter Bowerman’s The Well-Fed Writer is one of the best guides for becoming a freelance writer. I’ve gotten a handful of really good gigs from my first 50 days as a professional freelancer, plus I’ve got a couple of great prospects, but I’m not really paying the bills yet.

Bowerman says, in his Well-Fed follow-up book, “Back for Seconds,” that if I am spending a lot of time thinking about specific prospects and kind of waiting for things to start with them, I’m not working on marketing enough.

I hear a lot of references to specific prospects, how they’d contacted this person or that company… as if a lot of psychic energy was riding on the outcomes.

Whenever I hear this, my reaction is, You’re not making enough calls…. If you find yourself focusing, in detail, on a few specific prospects you’ve called, and seem to have a lot at stake mentally in having them pan out, you need more irons in the fire. Period.

Bowerman preaches cold calling, cold calling, cold calling. He says it’s a law of averages. Make 300, 500, 1000 phone calls the first few months of your business, and you’ll find work.

I’ve perhaps made 50 in the last month. I hate them. I hate getting voice mail after voice mail, or receptionist after secretary, or polite refusal after half-maybes with no real potential. Instead I’ve been trying to generate interest by getting people to come to my website and my blog, and by subtle emails.

I’ve been the victim of a number of cold calls in the last month, and while I don’t like them at all, one of them was actually
for a service I need. So I know that people are out there who need a copywriter today.

The best things a cold caller can hear:

Actually, this is good timing. We were just talking about this.

Oh yes — I got your letter, and I was going to give you a call.

You know, so-and-so in marketing was just asking if anyone knew anybody — let me transfer you to her.

Oh — I’m glad to hear from you. I have an emergency….

Those responses are rare, but they do happen — perhaps every 25th call. So in order to get four positive responses, I better get cranking on 100 calls this week.

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