Cold calling not effective so far

Today I continued the project of trying to get more customers for a software product of mine. I have not met with as much success as I had hoped:

• One company on my list doesn't even use the necessary companion product despite being listed on that product's web site as a long-time user
• Another is actually out of business, despite being listed on the web site
• One answered the phone, I asked to speak with the person who I had already e-mailed, but he was unavailable, so the phone answerer took a message, but the person I was trying to reach has not responded in any way

I have yet to expand into non-already-emailed potential customers. Hopefully those future attempts will go better.

Sorting through sales strategies

I'm currently trying to market a product to a certain rather niche market. The pool of potential customers is finite and indeed quite small, so it's very important that I make the best of the contacts I've found.

There is no shortage of sales strategy articles or cold e-mail templates on the web. I have no trouble getting ideas. The problem is that there are so many, and all the advice is conflicting. Not a single article that I recall has specified what markets/circumstances its contents should be used on. I feel that the more informal examples would be inappropriate for my target audience. There's even one page with nine different formats for cold e-mails, which all use different methods of persuasion. Still, no mention of what cases each is appropriate for.

Usually I would try to meet in the middle and incorporate aspects from everything I read, but such e-mails are supposed to be concise. A bland, safe message would probably be supremely useless in terms of audience engagement. This will be a tricky project.

I Voted

I missed being able to vote in the 2016 general election by a month. My township held an election today for a few local positions, so I got to exercise my civic duty for the first time.

I hadn't registered in advance - I didn't know this election was coming up. Therefore, I couldn't vote at the township hall. So I went to the area's courthouse and registered there. After a very brief wait while they processed my registration, I voted in a room of the courthouse.

Interestingly, there was only one position with more candidates than seats. There were also plenty of positions with no candidates running; I'm not sure how those will be filled.

All the college decisions are in

This week, I received the last two college admission decisions - Dartmouth and Stanford. Both were rejections, but that's to be expected; those are very prestigious institutions. On the plus side, that means all my applications have been judged, and I already have a pretty narrow list:

• University of Iowa
• University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• Reed College
• University of California, San Diego
• (University of Chicago - waitlisted)

Now I need to decide, probably between UCSD and Reed. College Decision Day is May 1, only a month away.

Volunteering at Imagination Station, again

Last year, a group of friends and I volunteered at PBS's Imagination Station event, which features fun and educational activities for young children who are fans of PBS Kids television programming. This year, we did it again. I was assigned to one of two Sid the Science Kid rooms, fortunately the one for slightly older children.

I and one of my friends managed the electricity table. When children arrived, I showed them a "circuit" with one wire missing and then lit up the bulb by making that connection, explaining that electricity only flows when there's a circuitous path. I increased the brightness of the bulb by inserting additional batteries.

Nearby, we were provided with several question-and-answer sheets. Each cell in the table had a metal pin through it, and wires on the back connected each question to its answer. When the children touched one free wire of a bulb-and-battery apparatus to the question and the other wire to its answer, the bulb lit. For some reason, the division quiz had several questions with the same numerical answer, but there was one answer choice per question and only one instance of the answer worked. Since that would not do, my partner and I inserted wires on the back as appropriate to make all copies of each answer electrically equivalent.

My favorite demonstration and knowledge fragment of the event - which I only remembered late in the day - was that batteries add or subtract brightness (i.e. voltage) from the circuit depending on their direction relative to the other batteries. It was interesting to hear the children's attempted explanations of that phenomenon; some came much closer than others.

Two more college decisions

Apparently 'tis the season to hear back from colleges.

• Reed College, accepted! They even sent the admission letter in a nice box, with confetti folded inside it. Their first-year humanities course has a focus on the Iliad, and they included a copy of that book too.
• University of Chicago, waitlisted. Interesting.

More admission decisions

A few more college admission decisions came in since last post:

• UC San Diego, accepted! This is looking like a very good option.
• MIT, rejected. Not surprising.
• Washington University, rejected. Somewhat surprising, but I had about zero interest in actually attending there after getting accepted in a couple other places, so no disappointment.