Misdials mean free sales!

Wrong numbers are usually considered a nuisance and in large numbers can be a royal pain in the neck. But what if you could get wrong numbers that were looking to purchase something from your competitor? I think that might change your attitude toward wrong numbers a little.

I’m going to show you a really cool hidden feature of our Keyword Lookup system that will help you find phone numbers that can send you a continuous stream of leads. All you need to do is enter your competitor’s phone numbers and we’ll show you all of the numbers that are one digit away from their number.

Write down one of their numbers and reverse the last two digits and dial it. If anyone answers it ask if this is the competitor who’s number it’s similar to and when they say no, ask if they get many calls for them. If they say yes, you know the other misdials will probably get wrong numbers too. If you can make a friend with them you can probably even give them your number and stay in touch with them. A Christmas card and birthday card each year might even guarantee that they give those callers YOUR number instead.

Go to our Advanced Keyword Lookup at http://www.TollFreeNumbers.com/more_info.shtml and in the keyword section enter the 7 digits of your competitor’s advertised toll free number followed by a space and then “(Z?)” where the ? is the third digit of the area code (ie 0, 8, 7 or 6). So if your competitor advertises 800-123-4567, in the Keyword box you enter 123-456 (Z0). You can put as much as you want in, one per line. You’ll get a list in about three minutes of all of the numbers available or that are going to be available. We’ll even redo the research for you every month.

Warning: Once you try this even once, it’s very easy to get addicted. You’ll start to notice the competition’s phone numbers everywhere and you may wind up with more leads than you know what to do with. Don’t go too crazy though, stick to your direct competitors and try to make the numbers go to different lines so that you can measure their effectiveness, because some numbers will wk much better than others.

This works best for gorilla marketers who compete with large advertisers in industries that have a high value per sale or lead. The more they advertise their number, the more leads you’re going to get. And the best part about it is that they will probably never even know you’re doing it. I’ve even talked to sales representatives who do this with the main company number. And if they do find out, there’s nothing they can really do even if they wanted to. You didn’t mislead anyone or make them use and advertise their number. And it’s probably not worth the expense to change all of their advertising.

A friend has a number one digit away from a large mortgage company and he gets about 100 leads per month from it. All he does is take down the customer information and gets paid $20 per lead. That’s not a bad little side line business, with no advertising or expense at all except answering a few calls. Oh, and you might want to put in your own advertised numbers too. You’d hate to find that your competition is doing this to you!

How to minimize wrong numbers

There’s no real way to tell ahead of time how many wrong numbers a toll free number is going to get. In general toll free numbers get more wrong numbers than local numbers because there are many times as many calls to them as there are to local numbers.

There are several types of wrong numbers. That is probably a good topic for another post, but I’ll touch on them quickly. You may get some callers looking for the previous customer. There are also about 150 neighboring numbers for any phone number when you get creative and figure out all of the possible different ways to dial it wrong. There are people simply assuming that if they dial a large company name they’ll probably get the company. Some people will read or hear 866 or 877 and remember the name and that it’s toll free and they’ll dial the 800 version. I call that roll up, because the wrong numbers roll up to the 800 version, they don’t usually roll down to the 866. This is also why "800" numbers also tend to get more wrong numbers than 866 or 877 numbers do.

Getting a few wrong numbers is to be expected. But getting too many of them definitely becomes a problem, especially for smaller businesses. There are several things you can do to deal with wrong numbers to minimize their impact on you and your business. The simplest is to look at the geography of the callers. If you do business in one state or a part of the country and most of the wrong numbers are coming from a different part of the country, then it’s very easy to block the service for that area.

If you need to receive calls nationwide or if the wrong numbers are coming in from the area you need to get calls from the best way to minimize their impact is to put an automated greeting on the line. Most wrong number callers will hear that message and realize that they probably dialed the wrong number before they get to a live person that way. This can make you sound professional as well as reducing the wrong numbers before they get to a live person.

One of the reasons we always recommend transferring your new number to your regular carrier before you need it is to make sure you don’t get too many wrong numbers early on when you still have an option to change something. You don’t want to find out you’re getting a lot of wrong numbers after you’ve printed it on all of your marketing materials and commercials.

Oh, and there’s one more easy solution to wrong numbers. Just change the number. If it’s new and hasn’t been advertised it’s certainly possible to get a different number. If it was a standard number that we got you from the spare or available pool, or a numeric (star) number, we’ll be happy to give you another equivalent number at no cost. You should also consider if those calls might be valuable to anyone. Numbers that get wrong numbers are often very valuable. Some numbers generate calls that can be turned into a significant income just from answering the phone, because those calls are often leads for someone.

If you have any interesting wrong number stories, please add them below!

Misdials or problems with Q, Z, zeros or Os

0 = none
1 = none
2 = ABC
3 = DEF
4 = GHI
5 = JKL
6 = MNO
7 = P(Q)RS
8 = TUV
9 = WXY(Z)

When I first started this business in 1995, we had to stay away from any words with Q or Any, because some older phones didn’t have a Q or Z on the keypad or a few even had it on the ZERO button. The buttons we use now were standardized in the late 80s. Today there are VERY few phones left that don’t have the Q or Z or have them in a different place. So that really isn’t much of a concern any more.

Some people have also had issues with people confusing the ZERO button with the O (which is on the SIX button with M N O). That isn't usually much of a factor except in very high volume, easily monitized commercial situations. In other words unless you get a huge number of calls for something that people can easily make money from, it really doesn't matter much. The best example is probably 1-800-FLOWERS. It's easy for any florist that uses FTD to take calls that go to them by mistake and 1-800-FLOWERS is a high volume application.There are of course numerous factors to weight in picking your number, but I wouldn't avoid terms with Os. It may be worth checking, but I would only try to get the misdial zero option if it was a high volume monitizable situation.