Is cold calling really dead? It seems most folks who get into any kind of direct sales business dread cold calling. I have seen sales professionals leave their jobs, rather than pick up the phone and call a prospect. The truth is, for anyone small firm out there not utilizing cold calling as a way to drum up business, there are other big companies and organizations with hundreds of employees dialing their little hearts out and closing deals as a direct result.
Cold calling, when done the correct way can be a great, cheap way to generate new business. I have found ( through research and my own experience ) that cold calling, over time works for many different kinds of businesses.
However, some niches like IT, Insurance sales, or a non-profit organization, seem to benefit more from cold calling.
It is my belief that, for any cold calling campaign to be successful, you must have some version of the elements below.
A "Great" Script
The absolute most important element of any sensible cold calling operation is a carefully scripted ( No pun intended ), calling script. Your script should indeed be a well thought out and meticulously crafted document. Keep in mind, this will be the road, the guiding force that will help you navigate each interaction with a prospective customer. You can access various resources online to help you cover all the points you wish to talk about with your prospects, in a way that makes you efficient and effective. All while sounding natural and professional. Applications like Salesscripter, Hubspot and Scriptly are great sources to help build effective sales scripts.
5 Tips for a Successful Cold Call
Quality Sales leads
A second, yet an equally-important element of any respectable cold calling campaign would be your leads. There are various sources out there to get "quality" leads from. However, it is not so much where you get your leads from as much as what type of leads you get as it relates to your type of business, services, products, etc. It is very important to know who your ideal customer is as you gather your leads. Knowing who your ideal customer is ( Average age, gender, ethnicity, etc. ) will help know how to contact them, what time to contact, how to pitch your product. You get the idea. If you are cold calling non-business people, then chances are your ideal customer is still using a landline meaning they are probably rural and above the age of 50. Keep these points in mind as you find leads for your cold calling sessions.
Hardware
So, you have your leads and script-in-hand ready to start calling. Here is the thing, if you plan to contact a bunch of folks in a short amount of time, then you really need to consider your equipment. It is very hard for me to see you being successful at cold calling if you are using a single-dial / manual phone, and yes, this includes Skype, Vonage, or any of the VOIP apps out there. I mean those are great if you are just playing around. Once you really get serious about cold calling, you might want to invest in a call center application like Callhub. These platforms allow you to setup multi-channel inbound and outbound automated calling campaigns, thus allowing you to contact a massive amount of people with absolute control.
Voice Broadcasting using CallHub