Collision and a day of cold calling

We are back in action after a break last week.

In case you forgot, I was attending a 3-day long conference called Collision – the biggest tech conference in North America. And it was pretty awesome.

On the one hand, I got to meet and network with thousands of people in or related to tech. As someone selling to tech companies for my immigration tech company, at Visto.ai, this was obviously a good thing.

On the other hand, I was pretty surprised at how frickin tired I was at the end of each day. When you spend a few years inside (thanks Covid), on video calls and not getting to attend many events in person, doing a whole bunch of in person networking sure does wipe you out.

Each of the 3 days I spent at the conference, and then some more activities in the evenings.

On Tuesday, I got there early around 830am to check-in, stayed until a bit after 5pm, then attended a fancy schmancy networking event for investors and founders at a nice joint on Ossington (for those of you in Toronto who want to keep track). At around 7:45pm I started losing my voice and figured it was time to call it a night.

I was back at the conference for 8:45am the next day, there until 4:45 and then off to a dinner at 5pm (pad thai in case you were curious…) with some other immigration tech founders – many I had met virtually, so it was great to meet them in person and talk about business, immigration, tech, etc. Headed home around 8pm and right to bed.

Thursday I was back around 8:45am until close at 5pm, then off to another dinner before attending a networking event that night hosted by Techstars. Did some more schmoozing and drinking there, then off to bed.

Suffice to say, my body was not used to so much activity and I slept like a baby that night (and all weekend).

Overall, it was a great week and I did some good networking, now let’s see what comes of it.

I’ll share some more stories this week, and you can check out a picture of me and the Visto team at the event on my LinkedIn post here.

The next week, I did some cold calling.

Not sure how many of you are in sales, or how many of you have ever had to cold call for any reason, but it’s quite the experience.

It was a bit uncomfortable, at least for the first few, for two reasons.

First, cold calling is always kind of weird. At least for me, as someone who isn’t a full-time salesperson. Naturally I’ve had to spend a lot of my time in sales, especially at this point in the Visto company journey, but I’m not a full-time salesperson who is used to cold calling regularly.

Second, we’re still in a bit of a discovery phase for a newer offer we’re testing. So not only is it a “cold call” by definition, but I’m also doing it for a product we don’t necessarily have ready to go off-the-shelf, and I’m trying to learn important information to help guide our decision making from whoever is on the other side of the phone.

I’m by no means an expert, but in my opinion, nailing cold calling is all about the prep. If you know:

  • why you’re doing it/have an end goal in mind
  • who you’re trying to talk to
  • exactly what to say – or at least the first few sentences/questions

It makes it much, much easier.

Otherwise, it’s easy to get nervous and/or intimidated.

The good thing is that the absolute worst thing that can happen is someone hangs up on you. And at least in Canada, most people are pretty friendly, even when they’re trying to politely tell you to “eff off”.

Anyway, I’ll be doing a lot more of it over the next month or two, so I’ll be sure to keep you updated with progress and (most likely) some embarrassing stories along the way.

Hope you had a great week. To keep track of my journey day-to-day, make sure to sign up for my email list here, and keep grinding.

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