$2400 Salary to $21000 Profit. How a cold call changed my life!
How consistency and a cold call changed my life!
I started my career in 2012 in a BPO with a monthly salary of merely $100. I just had completed school and joined the BPO to earn something to support the family.
But contrary to supporting my family, I used to ask for money from my father as $100 was not enough to sustain a month in the National Capital Region (NCR) of India. After four months, I was fired for not performing well. My manager and team leader were supportive and guided me a lot. I was hardworking but could not get the business despite putting in all the effort. So finally, they gave up on me and wished me success in my future endeavours.
After being fired from the BPO job, I worked at a Hospital as a Kitchen coordinator, where I had to update the records and diet of the patients on the instructions of doctors and dieticians. While I was searching for the job, I gave many interviews, and one of the interviewers said that I liked you and would definitely hire you in the next opening. I also was fascinated with the thought of working there and used to pray every day to get a call from there.
I was excited because of the salary, office space and work. This new office was supposed to change my life, and it really did change.
I worked there for about ten months and decided to leave after getting fed up with office politics. The company was in the field of EXIM (Export-Import) consultancy. I decided to start my consultancy firm with the experience 10 months that I had there.
I was sure that I would be able to earn as much as my salary, which was $200. But, reality hit really hard, and I had to struggle a lot even to crack my first deal.
It took me 4 months to crack the first deal, and the payment for that deal was received after 2 years.
But, I never gave up during those exhausting months. I used to work more than 12 hours collecting data of the prospective clients, finding contact details and then finally calling them one by one.
A cold call paid off all the efforts I put in and the hard work.
I was, as usual, dialing cold calls to pitch our services when a person who wished to import restrictive aquatic species came in contact. I had no idea how to get the required import permit, no idea about whom to contact and what amount to ask for the consulting charges.
I enquired about the same with a person in the EXIM field for a long time. He said he could do it for ₹1.4 lakh ( approx. $2000). It was a massive amount for me, at least even to ask, but I have to quote the same since I did not have any idea about it. I thought that I’d convince the person doing the job to give me a discount of ten thousand so that I could also make some money. So I sent the quote of ₹1.4 lakh to the client, and to my surprise, he agreed to the same.
I was jumping out of sheer joy and bracing myself to get the job done to gain the trust and add another service to my portfolio. I asked for ₹40,000 ($570) as an advance and the rest after the approval. I got the credit confirmation within the next few days. It was unbelievable as I had received more than 3X of my salary in one go as an advance payment for a service.
I decided to get import permission on my own after my father’s advice. So I started exploring data available on the internet on how to import Aquatic Species in India and also visited DGFT ( DGFT is responsible for foreign trade policies and procedures in India).
At first, our application got rejected, but I kept on trying, and finally, I got the approval for my client. It took me almost six months to get the import permit for him; it was a great learning curve, and it opened new doors for me.
The skills and set of learning I get from the whole exercise of meeting concerned officials, reading policies and procedures, and donning a positive attitude made my company the recognized one in the EXIM consulting industry.
I earned almost identical to what I was supposed to earn in a year from my salary through a single cold call. That cold call changed it all for me. Now, I employ a few people in my office and working on expanding it even more.
Never ever give up. You are just a shot away from realizing your dreams.
Feel free to contact me anytime on Twitter or via email rishabd154@gmail.com
Many thanks 💚