do not call

Hello felllas,
hope everyone is doing well. I was hoping to start some more aggressive marketing, so far all I have done is posted flyers on local public bullitin boards with no luck as of yet. I'm going to run an ad in the service directory of the newspaper and I need to check into possibly running a yellow page ad, but in the meantime can anybody give me any info on the national DO NOT CALL REGISTRY ? I want to do some telemarketing (cold calls) but don't want to get in any kind of trouble. I'll probably do a lot in person, but I would like to have the option of using the telephone as well. Anyway I know the laws havn't been in effect long. I also know that NC has adopted some laws of their own concerning telemarketing so if anyone has had any dealings with this (especially any of you guys in NC) the info would be appreciated. Also if you have any unique marketing ideas that you could share it would be great. By the way I'm about 15 minutes south of Greensboro. Don't want to step on any toes. Thanks and have a great day !

Personally, I don't think cold calling works well at all, if at all, at least for residential work. People are so conditioned to ignore telemarketers, they don't even really listen to what you have to say. That, and you may wind up getting more potential customers upset with you interrupting whatever they're doing at the time.

I've found direct mailers to work fairly well for residential work, and you can reach a lot more folks in much less time. It is a bit more costly, but in my experience the response is well worth the cost. I pick a neighborhood that I think will produce a good response, and send a letter to each homeowner offering a "neighborhood discount". For neighborhoods where each home is very similar, I give a price. For those where the size of the home varies widely, I'll separate the homes based on size and send different mailers to each category of home with different prices. It has worked pretty well, and has kept me busy all year so far.

Newspaper service directories usually work extremly well. On the yellow pages ad.... I'd suggest holding off on it and get yourself a good website. Not many people use the yellow pages anymore, if anything they use the yellow pages online. If you give me a call I can suggest quite a few things that will help you kick off your new company. Just give me a call at home during the day.

Henry 301-353-9234

I wouldn't say "not that many" use the yellow pages. Maybe fewer than in times past, but I know quite a few contractors who get their work almost exclusively from yellow pages ads. Especially in regards to commercial work. A property manager is much more likely to grab a phone book than they are to jump online and go hunting for a local PW company.