In an age where many businesses use digital marketing techniques, others use old-school tactics such as cold-calling. Cold calling is telemarketing, a direct marketing method involving phoning potential customers they’ve never met or spoken to previously.

Cold-calling isn’t for the thin-skinned, because even if your opening gambit is polite, friendly, professional and concise, you can soon be met with a firm “not interested, thanks”, before the phone gets put down. And cold-calling often requires having to charm your way through a 'gate-keeper' before you get put through to the person you actually need to speak to.

But the fact remains: cold-calling can be an extremely effective way of generating new leads and sales. So, what’s the key to success when you’re cold-calling? How do you make a good first impression and buy yourself a few more valuable seconds? What should you say and how should you say it? Realistically, what should your aims be when you’re cold-calling?

Here to answer these and other key questions is small-business marketing specialist, Tracy Heatley. Based on many years of practical experience, Tracy shares her insight on how to achieve better results when cold-calling potential new customers.

This episode is brought to you thanks to the support of investment platform, Lightyear.

Show notes for the episode can be found on the Start Your Own Business podcast website. Visit Start Up Donut and sign up to the Donut newsletter for more free start-up news, advice and special offers to help you save time and money.

It’s often said that a business’s most valuable asset is its people – and that includes you. Your team’s talent, knowledge, hard work and commitment will be what enables your business to succeed. But to make the most of your team, getting the necessary training is essential. And that’s an ongoing challenge, of course. New talent must also be brought onboard, too, and trained to the necessary standard.

Natalie Cahill, CEO of work-based training provider, Fareport, explains how to use funded training and upskilling to ensure the success of your business now and into the future.

This episode is brought to you thanks to the support of Fareport Training. Fareport is a trusted provider of apprenticeships, skills bootcamps and higher technical qualifications in areas like leadership and management, human resources, digital marketing, data analysis and project management. They make learning flexible, practical, and tailored to real-world needs. Find out how Fareport can help you unlock new opportunities and future proof your business.

Show notes for the episode can be found on the Start Your Own Business podcast website. Visit Start Up Donut and sign up to the Donut newsletter for more free start-up news, advice and special offers to help you save time and money.

If you’ve shopped at John Lewis, Selfridges, Oliver Bonas or a large number of smaller independent retailers in the UK, you may well have seen The Bottled Baking Co products. They’re available in a wide range of mouth watering flavours and varieties. The company sells ready-measured baking mixes that contain all of the dry ingredients you need to bake delicious cookies, cakes, brownies, tray bakes and more, all conveniently within a lovely glass bottle. The Bottled Baking Co has even collaborated with M&S to create bottles containing Percy Pig and Colin the Caterpillar sweets as part of their brownie ingredients.

In this new Start-Up Story, Leeds-based The Bottled Baking Co founder Greg Fraser looks back to the key challenges he overcame before launching his business in 2016, while explaining where his fantastic business idea came from and how he turned it into a successful business. So, what are the key ingredients when you want to start and run a successful and innovative food business?

Show notes for the episode can be found on the Start Your Own Business podcast website. Visit Start Up Donut and sign up to the Donut newsletter for more free start-up news, advice and special offers to help you save time and money.

When you start your own business, you must minimise your start-up costs, because then your business starts to make a profit much sooner. If you have to shell out for stock, it increases your start-up costs considerably. And you tie up money you could have used to run your business, while there’s also a risk that you’ll be left with stock you can’t shift.

For many small businesses, print on demand provides the perfect solution. If you sell printed items such as greetings cards, wall art/posters, T-shirts, mugs, water bottles or a wide range of other items, print on demand enables you to get the exact amount of products you need after you’ve made a sale, which is far better for your cash flow. And you can trial new products without having to shell out big sums of money.

In this new Start-up Story, Ruth Sparkes of poster/wall art brand Nordhuset explains how she started her own business and she shares her key start-up tips. She also explains what role the global pandemic played in her Nordhuset start-up story and how your business can get the very best out of print on demand.

This episode is brought to you thanks to the support of Gelato who enable you to create and sell high-quality, custom products and merchandise for your ecommerce business with their print-on-demand services. Sign up to Gelato for free today and get 50% off your first order (within 48 hours of signing up).

Show notes can be found on the Start Your Own Business podcast website. Visit Start Up Donut and sign up to the Donut newsletter for more free start-up news, advice and special offers to help you save time and money.

Confidence is said to be everything. That’s not strictly true, because other things in life and business are also important. But, confidence can help you to overcome challenges, build relationships, take risks, deal with setbacks but ultimately achieve great things. You need to have confidence in yourself and your business. So, why might that not be the case? What impact can a lack of confidence have on you and your bottom line? Crucially, what can you do to build up your confidence in yourself and your business and what’s the best way to communicate that confidence to your customers?

In this fascinating episode, which contains lots of practical advice, these and other key questions are answered by Debbie Green, founder of award-winning Wishfish Coaching & Development and co-host of the Secrets From a Coach podcast.

This episode is brought to you thanks to the support of PPL PRS. TheMusicLicence from PPL PRS provides a streamlined music licensing service, with a single point of contact, to make it easier to legally play and perform music in public. Visit themusiclicence.co.uk to find out more.

Show notes can be found on the Start Your Own Business podcast website. Visit Start Up Donut and sign up to the Donut newsletter for more free start-up news, advice and special offers to help you save time and money.

Building a website and driving traffic to it is all well and good but if your site visitors don't go on to make a purchase, an enquiry or subscribe it will be of little benefit to your business. In part two of this special two-part mini series, Craig Murphy, founder of Birmingham-based Alt Agency, shares top tips and advice on how you can improve your website's conversion rate. With practical tips on issues such as page loading speed and calls to action, you will walk away with actionable insights that can boost conversions and turn your web visitors into subscribers, paying customers or advocates for your business. Craig is an expert in web design, development and maintenance and he has helped many businesses to optimise their website conversion rates.

This episode is brought to you thanks to the support of ALT Agency.

Show notes for the episode can be found on the Start Your Own Business podcast website. Visit Start Up Donut and sign up to the Donut newsletter for more free start-up news, advice and special offers to help you save time and money.

Even if you don’t sell online, having a great website is a must. Before many customers will buy from you, they’ll want to find out more about what you sell and how much you charge. Many will also want to know more about your story, who you are, your values as a business and what makes you special. If you want as many visitors as possible to your website, you need to optimise it so that it ranks high up in search engines such as Google. But what does that involve, where do small businesses go wrong when it comes to “SEO” (search engine optimisation) and as a small-business owner can you do it yourself?

In the first of a two-part special on small business websites, answering these key questions and others is Craig Murphy, founder of Birmingham-based ALT Agency. Craig is an expert in website design, development, SEO and website maintenance. He’s helped many businesses to optimise their websites for search engines, which has enabled them to attract more visitors and make more sales.

This episode is brought to you thanks to the support of ALT Agency.

Show notes for the episode can be found on the Start Your Own Business podcast website. Visit Start Up Donut and sign up to the Donut newsletter for more free start-up news, advice and special offers to help you save time and money.

Success, and indeed survival in business, relies upon making enough sales. If you don’t, you’ll soon run out of cash and that’s likely to spell the end for your business. If you are to make enough sales, you must generate sufficient sales leads, which is a never-ending challenge, because all businesses lose customers over time. So, how does your business generate leads and how many leads is enough? Not all will convert to actual sales, of course. What’s the difference between 'qualified' and 'unqualified' sales leads? What are your options if you want to generate sales leads online and how about offline?

Answering these and other key questions is sales expert Charlie Day, founder of her own sales consultancy, Charlie Day Sales, author of the book Sales Is Easy If You Know How and creator of the Facebook group of the same name, which has more than 10,000 members. Charlie is on a mission to “help small business owners to sell with ease and confidence”.

This episode is brought to you thanks to the support of AI-powered quiz platform Interact. Activate ideal customers with quizzes and convert them from passive viewers into engaged buyers. From lead generation to audience segmentation, the Interact tools are designed to help small businesses achieve their goals and grow their business. Try Interact's AI tool for free now.

Show notes for the episode can be found on the Start Your Own Business podcast website. Visit Start Up Donut and sign up to the Donut newsletter for more free start-up news, advice and special offers to help you save time and money.