How Effective is Your Cold Calling?
Are you using effective cold calling techniques, or simply missing opportunities?
With technology at our fingers tips and the ability to fire off an email or direct message, salespeople can often forget the art of the cold call. This generation has learned to communicate with iPhone, iChat, and iPad over phone calls; We know that times have changed but all good salespeople know that building relationships is the key to doing well in sales. And even though times have changed, relationships are still built with two people having a conversation. And believe it or not, traditional people used to build relationships over a series of phone calls.
Because we are spending our days online, engaged in digital strategies and new forms of communications we forget that people still use phones for conversations. Every business and customer that you are trying to connect will have a phone.
Use Cases for Effective Cold Calling
At TheSalesLine we still believe in the art of the cold calling and actively encourage our staff to pick up the phone and get dialing.
Here are some tips to making great cold calls:
- Remember that a phone call is a conversation. Have fun and be personable. Prospects will naturally engage in conversation with sales professionals, provided they sense genuine excitement.
- Always remember that cold calling doesn’t mean that you are cold selling. The goal of the first cold call is to get your prospects attention and engagement; Remember, you only have a few seconds to get it.
- Take your time! Salespeople often make the mistake of getting right to the pitch, throwing out value add statements and explaining the ROI of their product of service. But what you need to do on a cold call is get your prospect to talk to you. Ask probing questions and give your prospect the time to divulge their pain points.
Cold Calling Tips for Success.
Remember that your first call is very unlikely to close business. Studies have shown that a typical sales cycle requires a minimum of 5 customer touch points. We all get so many e mails, tweets, LinkedIn messages, but how many voice mails do we get? Multiple calls require vulnerability and sometimes making that effort to call, more than once, shows the prospect that they are important to you.
Most formal sales training programs provide a one size fits all approach to sales, including prospecting and cold calling. They prescribe messaging techniques, a process framework, and generic objection handling statements. The lack of understanding your business and your people means these programs will fail to produce the results you seek. Instead, focus on understanding your products, value propositions and sales reps first. Once you, then you can be effective in optimizing your prospecting techniques. Let us help you transition to the next chapter of your success story. Your team will feel liberated, and sales will become fun again!
Cold Calling Statistics that Might Surprise You:
Collection of interesting stats, originally posted on Hubspot and Linkedin.
- 82% of buyers accept meetings from sellers who cold call.
- Successful cold calls include 65% more “we” statements.
- 42% of respondents say that the phone is the most effective sales tool at their disposal.
- Over 30% of leads never receive a follow-up call after initial contact.
- 79% of unidentified calls go unanswered, and 92% of consumers think unidentified calls might be fraud.
- Asking “is now a bad time?” on a cold call makes you 40% less likely to book a meeting.
- Mentioning a common connection during a cold call can increase the likliehood of attaining a meeting by 70%
Similar articles at our sister site: “Outbound vs Inbound Sales – 3 Important Details.“