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Cold calling is a very important part of your marketing strategy and when it is used properly, it can be an effective tool to generate more leads and attract more customers. If you can prep properly for your cold calls, you can make each call go a lot more productively. Proper preparation will also make sure that you feel a lot more confident while you’re talking to prospects, build a better relationship with potential customers and clients, and have a higher rate of success at turning cold leads into confirmed sales.
Research Every Prospect
Before making a cold-call to any prospect, you need to do some research on the prospect that you’re targeting before you make the call. This research should be a pre-call ritual that you complete every time. If you put some time into finding plenty of helpful information about every prospect that you reach out to, you can make sure that every call has value for the prospect and will hold the interest of the person you are approaching. If you miss out on doing this essential research, you will appear uninterested and as though you are putting very little investment into offering any solutions to the person you have cold called. Your prospects will notice the extra effort that you have put in, and appreciate that you have been able to personalize the call to them. With more personalization and a better beginning relationship, you will also be better able to have a much more productive talk.
Write An Outline Of What You Need To Say
Prepare a brief cold call script that takes you a little under thirty seconds to deliver during a call. You can turn to this script while you are on the telephone. Resist the urge to turn to this script and just read it out loud. Instead, you should use the script as a helpful guide to allow you to deliver your message with confidence and clarity. With the script for support, you are less likely to feel nervous, even if the call is a difficult one. When you are preparing your script, remember that the main goal of all your cold calls should not be to pitch straight away during that call. Instead, you should be aiming to persuade the prospect to agree to a meeting with you at another time in order to further discuss your products and services, and what their benefits are.
Take A Couple Of Hours To Go Through Your Call List
To get through more calls and make each call go quickly and productively, you need to make the calls without any distractions. You should never try to and make your calls while also doing something else like checking your emails or typing up meeting notes. The only thing that you should have on your desk or in front of you while you are making calls is the list of people that you need and the brief script that you have prepared. Having other things in front of you can be a distraction. If you’re distracted, you won’t be able to be entirely present with the other person on the line during the call, and they may be able to tell that you are distracted. You can also use tools like Call Cowboy Auto Dialer to speed things up and make more calls.
Work Out How Many Calls You Need To Make To Hit Your Goals
How many cold calls do you need to have made in order to hit your monthly quota? If you don’t know, you need to work it out. You can figure out this number by starting with your goal and then working backward from this point. You can then pinpoint roughly how many cold calls you will need to make each day, and from there how many calls in total each month in order to reach those goals.
Prepare A Strong Opening Sentence
When you are making a cold call, you have roughly ten seconds to catch the attention of the prospect and convince them that they want to be speaking to you. To make a successful call, you must stand out immediately from the dozens of other cold callers that most companies are contacted by. Once you have introduced yourself, immediately move the focus onto the prospect and off you. Do this by using some information from your research that allows you to tailor the call to the prospect.
For example, you could start your call by giving the prospect a sincere compliment on a recent accomplishment that you have learned about while doing your research into the prospect. This could be congratulating them on an award win or mentioning a recent piece of media coverage they have earned. This shows you understand them and pay attention to what they do and will start the conversation on a positive note.
Be Motivated By Rejection
Rejection is never pleasant, and nobody likes to have to face it. This unpleasantness can mean it is all too simple to become discouraged if a call goes badly and then struggle with the calls you need to make later on. If you do become discouraged, you must allow this to interfere with other calls you need to make. Instead of becoming put off, try to maintain a positive attitude. Pick up the phone again, and make more calls, using what you have learned from calls than have gone less than perfectly.
Practice Makes Perfect
Go into every call properly prepared. In order to feel more confident on every call you make, prepare by taking some time to rehearse what you are going to say. If you’ve spent some time practising some time what you want to say, you will be better able to perform well on the call.
Overcome Reluctance To Make Calls
One of the main reasons that salespeople fail at making successful cold calls is because they are reluctant to make any of those calls. It is totally normal to feel somewhat awkward about making a cold call, but with proper preparation and confidence in your services, you can set aside reluctance and get on with making those all-important calls.
There are several methods you could try to ease any nerves before making a cold call. Regardless of the outcome of any calls, learn to see every one as an opportunity to learn. Even if the call doesn’t go as you hoped, you can learn from your mistakes so the error is not repeated. Embrace the positives instead, and remember what worked.
Use Trigger Events To Find An Opening
You need to time contact right. If you reach out to someone just after that have agreed to work with a competitor, you are wasting your time and theirs.
However, if you know that a prospect is in the market for a new vendor, you should reach out before they start the search, so you can get ahead of the competition.
Getting this timing right doesn’t have to as difficult as you might think. There are some great moments that can capitalize on, known as trigger events. Monitor publicly available information, such as in the media. You can use services like Google alerts to keep an eye out for these trigger events. Good things to look out for include:
New executive hires
Winning large contracts
Large customer announcements
Company expansions
Mergers and acquisitions
Funding
Behavioural indicators
All these things suggest a potential need for a new vendor, due to increased budget or new blood in charge, making this a great time to make a cold call.