Congratulatory Cold Calls

After we won an award last week for the third fastest growing company in Atlanta, my phone started ringing off the hook from service providers that I’ve never met calling to say congratulations and introduce their company. I had calls from lawyers, accountants, commercial real estate brokers, staffing agencies, and other random providers. Not a single one tailored the call to me with a strong value proposition. Let me repeat myself: no one left a meaningful voicemail.

Here’s what I would do if I was in their position:

• Use LinkedIn to see if we know people in common and mention their names in the email (the best would be to get one of those people to do an introduction)
• Review my site to get a feel for what we do and come up with an example client that is related and talk about a success story with them (e.g. provide social proof)
• Follow me on Twitter and send an intro tweet from there as well explaining how they think they can help
• Read my previous blog posts and start to add value through comments
• And, finally, the number one way to make their cold call effective: make an intro to a potential prospect that could use our product

Have you had these calls before? How else can the cold caller improve his or her effectiveness?