Cold calling might be one of the oldest marketing strategies, but it is still effective. With cold calling, you get to connect directly with the prospect, sell your ideas, handle objections, answer any questions, and assess the prospect’s interest in real-time.
This feedback enables you to improve your strategy, improving your chances of closing. Here are the top tips to help you improve your cold-calling strategy.
1) Research The Prospect Before Cold Calling
Conducting research about the company might seem like a tedious task, especially if you have a target number of calls to make per day. In most cases, in a fast-paced environment, an average sales representative tries to make 30 calls per day, implying 30 prospects to research.
Your research should be brief. Go to the company’s website and social media accounts to learn some basics about the company. If you are getting your numbers from a business directory like yellow pages, then you can get some basic information about the business from the directory.
By researching the company, you can deliver a call with value and show your prospect how you can add value to their company.
2) Keep The Prospect On The Phone
Like all other marketing strategies, the main objective of a cold call is to move a prospect to a higher sales funnel. Simply put, your goal is to keep the prospect long enough on the phone to take a step.
The longer you stay on the phone, the higher your chance of convincing the prospect to agree to a demo, coffee, meeting, or appointment with a decision-maker.
Every sentence should be focused on keeping the prospect on the phone. Like the proverbial foot-in-the-door salesman, you want to ensure your prospect says yes to your requests.
So, how do you keep a prospect interested? Being inquisitive and showing genuine interest in the prospects’ business is one of the best ways to keep a prospect interested. Don’t make the call about you and your products, but make it a fact-finding mission. Be genuinely interested in hearing their pain points and give solutions if you can.
3) Write A Script
While you don’t want to sound like a robot, having a script can help you cover the main parts of your cold call. Your script should answer four questions:
- Who are you?
- Why are you making the call?
- What benefits do you present to your prospect?
- Why this prospect? What qualities or features make this prospect a perfect-fit customer?
Your script should enable you to introduce yourself and your company, explain why you are calling, qualify the prospect and move the conversation to a higher sales funnel. As a rule of thumb, this should be covered in the first minute of the conversation. Remember, cold calling is highly intrusive, and some prospects find it annoying, so shoot your shot before they hang up on you.
When drafting your script, make it unique, personal, and interactive. Avoid sounding like a common cold caller with a typical script like:
‘Hello, my name is XYZ and am calling from ABC company. I would love to talk about our new products…’
This is a script that will not get you anywhere. Use a more interactive script that allows you to engage your prospect, ask questions, have a conversation, and move the discussion to a higher funnel.
4) Have a strong opening statement
You have less than 5 seconds to convince a prospect to continue listening to you. Remember, you are competing alongside thousands of other activities for the CEO’s time. Thus, have a strong opening statement.
Begin with a genuine compliment like congratulations on a recent appointment. Ensure your opening statement is conversational and personal. Don’t flutter the prospect, as this might be misconstrued. Some of the opening statements you can use include:
- Hi, I saw your recent article about the XYZ topic, I think it was really inspirational…
- I noticed you have been promoted to position XYZ, congratulations.
- Great insights on the future of data science…
- I was inspired by the work you did for the community, are you looking to cooperate with other organizations?
With these opening statements, you can show the prospect that you are interested in their projects and not merely push down your products. Also, with such background information, you have an easy time moving the conversation to a higher sales funnel.
5) Have A Great Call-To-Action
Like the opening statement, your closing statement should be intentional in helping you secure a meeting. The major goal of the call is to get the prospect to agree to engage you on a different platform. Use your closing statement to get a commitment from the prospect. All you call should end with a call-to-action which is what do you want the prospect to do?
Some great closing statements include:
- How does coffee on Friday sound to you?
- How is your calendar on Tuesday, can I drop by for a quick product demonstration?
- How about a team skype call tomorrow?
These statements can help you gauge the prospect’s stage in the buying process and handle any objections that the prospect might have. Also, if they agree to a meeting, you can prepare a script to sell your products or services.
While cold calling might seem dead, it is still quite effective at generating leads. Using these tips, you can build a lead list for your business.
