Excerpt from ILLUSTRATION 101

Excerpted from Illustration 101 by Max Scratchmann. Copyright 2006. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

Max's Golden Rules for Cold Calling

(1) Do Your Homework. Make sure that the person you're calling actually needs what you have to sell, or, in layman's terms, if you're selling illustration don't waste time (theirs and yours) ringing up clip-art merchants. They're not interested! As someone who's spent many, many hours cold-calling, both for myself and for employers, I can assure you that a client who has no need for your service is a total waste of time and effort.

(2) Get Your Timing Right Please don't get paranoid about this. You can't know if it's a good time to call your client but if you set up a few ground rules you'll avoid the situation of being brushed-off because the client can't be bothered talking to you. To get the best out of your freelance cold-calling it might be a good idea to set up an ad hoc time table. I would suggest that you don't phone a client first thing in the morning when she hasn't had her coffee or organised her post, lunch time for obvious reasons (ie, she isn't there!) or last thing when she's trying to clear her desk and get out in time for the five-fifteen from Victoria.

Obviously, everyone has their own preferences. I prefer to confine my cold-calling to between 11 am and 12:30 pm, for example. I find that the art directors and editors who use me don't tend to be at their desks much before ten-thirty in the morning and by afternoon have either wandered off somewhere or have got involved in that day's project and don't want to be disturbed. The key to good timing, therefore, is to know your sector of the industry. When will your target art directors be at their desks and free to listen to your pitch?

(3) Always Know Who You Are Phoning Any book on sales will tell you all about speaking to the MAN - not a sexist preference but a snappy mnemonic for the person who has the MONEY the AUTHORITY and the NEED. Throwing your pitch at anyone else is a waste of time.

So, when you ring up a client the first thing you must establish is who you're speaking to. For example, if you want to get into adverting, there's no point in ringing up an ad agency and just asking if anyone there would like to look through your portfolio. For all you know you could be speaking to the janitor or, even worse, the office junior. Don't pitch to anyone other than the Head Honcho. Many, many illustrators attend interviews with clients and never receive any work while lesser talents prosper. Why? Because the person they pitched doesn't have the authority to commission them and their business card is gathering dust in a barren filing cabinet.