Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount really helped me. I was in a very similar situation as you. After I read that book, it gave me the process/tools and inspired me to make 50+ cold calls a day in about 1-2 hours.
Another way to think of it is this: for each call you make, you are earning $X dollars. If your average sale nets $5k and it takes 250 calls to make that sale, then every time you pick up the phone you are making $20.
I'd recomend reading Demand‑Side Sales 101. I think it will change your perspective of a lot of things and help you sell better and more by helping people.
The best way to advertise is to have something people want to buy and a very clear one-line value proposition on how it will change someone's life for the better. Building a Story Brand is one of the most approachable and easily implementable books on creating marketing content, with great examples, and even a step-by-step guide to your home page.
Generally, beyond that, most "free" marketing actually means that you put effort into it. For example, content marketing where you gather a library of helpful resources that attract people, and occasionally advertise your product/service along with it. u/bawlerblog posted a comment in this thread where the offer free content marketing advice (For tech related niches). Even if that's not your niche, there will probably be other people offering a free content-marketing strategy session who are hoping to sell their services that way.
The other thing people do is create a free download to attract people who will sign up to your email list (and who you can then advertise to). The easiest way to create this is to create a free guide/tool/step-by-step exercise PDF that will make someone else's life easier. This adds an extra step in advertising, but it has the benefit of allowing you to offer something for free rather than immediately asking for something.
I'd create a brand messaging framework to reflect back to and re-wireframe your website with new copy. If you can't hire a conversion copywriter + designer, I highly recommend reading Building a StoryBrand. I work in this field and it's totally worth the investment of time and/or money–whichever you prefer. I use this method and so far, all but 1 of my marketing clients made their money back within the first 2 months. Copy is powerful!
Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01617VD3I?ref_=kcr_store_sample
The only book you'll need.
Basically, the gist of it is that you are a monster when it comes to cold calling, initial contacting of prospects. I can call up to 250 prospects in a day. I have known people that reach out to 10 new people per day. They failed, I didn't.
As long as you are not a total social awkward, if you make 100-125 new contacts per day, you will succeed. If you don't, you will either fail or be below average.
There are some industries that are not like this, though. So, if you sell airliners for $50 million per airplane, there are only 300 or whatever airlines in the world, so it is a limited pool of buyers, so that is a long-term relationship game. But, they really can't go anywhere else, as there is only Airbus and Boeing as the only sellers.
But if you are selling regular old "stuff", then it is a numbers game. Send out 200 new emails per day. Make 200 phone calls. Whatever. I like phone calls because I get immediate feedback, I'm on with the owner or decision-maker and not hoping that they will return my email or whatever. If you have a great website and SEO and that gives you hot leads every day, that is great. But what are you going to do if you get 5 leads and it only takes you 2 hours to deal with them? What are you going to do the rest of your day? Prospect. Calls or emails, or something else.
Outbound Sales no Fluff is $3 on Amazon right now - has a great section on how to handle your outbound workflow that has been huge for me
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https://www.amazon.com/Outbound-Sales-Fluff-millennials-something-ebook/dp/B077Y49KF4
Shift your perspective...it fucking sucks as a human (rejection) and that will never go away (though it should, over time, become easier)...but most cold calling is around 1-5% successful...so look at it like a game...or a gauntlet (I prefer game...as it seems more positive)
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"I know if I make 100 calls today I should get at least 1 sale"
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start there...see if you can do better than that...try and beat your previous records...
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Also...don't waste time...make a cold call, get to the point...if people aren't interested then don't argue with them...thank them and move on. Depending on your product and call list you should be making at least 1 call per 30 seconds or so.
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100 calls should literally be an hours work. Break it down into sessions and do it a few times per day (1 hour of calling 3x a day for example)
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Check out the book "Fanatical Prospecting" for a little change of perspective on the idea of cold calling and what goes on around it.
10 cold calls/day seems perfectly reasonable, based on the information you provided.
You may benefit from reading Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount.
Given that I am trying to bring the audience to speed quickly on something they would unfamiliar with, I would apply the principles outlined by something like Story Brand.
In the ad I would want to:
Identify how this product addresses a felt need, enables the person to achieve an aspirational perspective of themselves, concluding how your company could guide them and how your product accomplishes that goal. I think of the way apple interacted with the budding portable music player market.
> I'm perceived as an aggressive person when I speak. So Im just worried they might get scared away.
I'd suggest sending someone else over, then. It's essentially a sales pitch being made, for a piece of real estate.
If you suck at sales and need a professional salesperson to do this, and to spare you from being one among many buyers in a bidding war, hire a professional real estate salesperson to pitch it.
If you want to make the sale yourself, maybe spend a few months reading /r/sales or read this book really quick?
Have you read social wealth by jason treu? i think this is one of the best books on social skills imo and gives you some great tips. You should add it to your list