How Cold-Calling Every Print Shop in the City Actually Lead Me to Design Work
I’ve never worked in sales, so I’ve never had to cold-call anyone before. Being on the other side of a telemarketer phone call, I had a perception of how terrible those people are and questioned how that strategy ever worked — except for scamming old people. I was never going to fall for a cold call and wondered why they ever bothered trying. I just assumed everyone handled cold calls the same way I did — by slamming down the phone while yelling “stop calling me!”
But, one day it dawned on me. I was a tad desperate after one of my largest clients was putting their business on hold — which meant I needed to land some new clients real fast, or I might not be able to eat after a few weeks — not to mention rent.
I thought to myself, “Everyone needs a designer, how do I get in front of them before someone else does?” I thought back to the time I was working as an on-site graphic designer at a print shop in Philadelphia and how all kinds of random people would show up looking for small projects that they “needed yesterday” and how we sometimes had to turn away people because they expected us to be able to turn around ridiculous projects while they waited. I didn’t particularly like working in a print shop, but I didn’t mind working on small rush jobs. I wondered how other companies handled…
