Know-How Exchange : Strategy

You will need five things:

- a list (very, very important)
- an initial or introductory offer
- follow-up marketing pieces
- someone to make the calls
- reasonable objectives

For specific step-by-step details on how to do this, email me or check out my web site - www.persist.biz

I would absolutely agree with Nicholas that results from telemarketing are often disappointing. You will generally get much higher ROI from other lead generation techniques.

However, I believe that a sustained telemarketing program can give you a much higher response rate than any other method. Such a program might make sense if you have a high margin offering, and can identify a list of targeted prospects who might send you repeat business over time.

My answer may not be exactly what you are asking for, but I was in business development in the design industry for a few years so I hope it has value.

My advice is that any marketing efforts/strategy in the design industry need to be based around networking. You probably already know this, if not, you will soon.

The horizontal structure of the industry is such that a lot of your cold-calling should not with end clients, but with strategic partners and alliances. It is a referral industry, so you need to get involved in like organizations, take industry people to lunch, join or start a leads group. If you do this you will quickly have your "cold-call" list full, except it will be by referral - the best cold-call of all.