With more and more technology at our fingers tips, salespeople can often forget the art of cold calling. With our generation preferring iPhone, Chat, and video meetings over simple eye contact, 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 build with two people having an actual conversation. And believe it or not, people use to do that on the good old telephone.
Because we are spending our days online, engaged in digital strategies and new forms of communications, we forget that people still use phones, for actual conversations. Every business and customer that you are trying to connect with still has a phone, one that you can call.
At SalesEvolve we still believe in the art of the cold call and encourage our staff to pick up the phone and get dialing.
Here are some tips to make cold calling great:
- 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 and 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.
- Remember that first call is very unlikely to close business. Studies have shown that a typical sales cycle requires 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 objection handling statements that were written for somebody else. Without understanding your business and your people, these programs will fail to produce the results you seek. At SalesEvolve, we focus on getting to know your business, your products and sales reps first. Once we know you, then we 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.