Cold calling is tough.
With nothing but a phone number and name, you must interrupt someone's day and try to sell them your product or service.
To make things worse, cold calling can have some of the highest rejection rates and a bad reputation for being a nuisance.
Yet somehow, it’s often hailed as an art to be mastered for successful sales and marketing. The truth is, it's still one of the most effective ways to reach potential customers. It just takes a bit of finesse and strategy.
Companies that make use of cold calling campaigns use CRM software to help organize and execute their campaign. With Myphoner, businesses, start-ups and every freelancer can create and execute cold calling campaigns that lead to more calls and more conversions.
So at Myphoner, we're going to cover everything you need to know on cold calling, and how to effectively get better at it to dominate your company's sales goals.
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Let's review the basics quickly: A cold call is a sales call made by a sales rep to someone who doesn't know about their business yet. You must take them from "cold" status to "warm" by introducing your brand and cultivating their interest in your offering.
A warm call, in contrast, would be calling someone who has actually heard of your company and service from a previous interaction.
By cold calling, you have the opportunity to introduce yourself and your product or service to a potential customer. We'll primarily focus on phone sales calls in this article since it's the most common.
Myphoner can easily organize a team of agents and allows you to conduct more cold calls in a day. That allows your business to get more leads which can lead to more conversions.
Using the platform’s easy-to-read dashboard, you can monitor each cold calling agents on your team. From there, you can get real-time feedback and make on-the-fly adjustments to your cold calling campaign.
As an example, let’s say that you want to make 2,500 cold calls in a day and you have a team of seven agents. With Myphoner, you can monitor the progress of each agent and see which ones are reaching more leads. From there, you can quickly make the needed adjustments to refine the campaign and get better results.
After we talk a little about the value of cold calling, we will explore the many ways that Myphoner can help you make the most of any cold calling campaign.
Cold calling is one of the best ways to get in touch with people who would be interested in your product or service but might not know about it. But with all the easier marketing alternatives these days, why bother with cold calling anymore?
Here's a shortlist on why successful sales teams still do cold calling:
Related: When To Use Cold Calling In Your Sales Strategy
Now that we've established why cold calls are worth your time, let’s quickly go over some of the don'ts when it comes to cold calling. Because knowing what not to do can be as equally important as knowing what to do, as it may save you from costly mistakes.
Cold calling makes most people cringe, but it doesn't have to be that way. When done right, cold calling is an effective strategy for reaching more prospects and fueling your sales pipeline.
Here are some of the most common mistakes made when cold calling:
Many common cold calling mistakes can be solved by better organizing how your cold calls are made. That’s where Myphoner’s Power Dialer feature comes in. When you use Myphoner’s Power Dialer features, you are able to really supercharge your cold calling campaigns and get more leads in less time.
Power Dialer is designed to automate the entire dialing process. As an example, Power Dialer features an Auto-Dialer Initiator which cuts down the time that an agent normally uses to dial up the next call. Let’s say that you have an agent that gets dropped into voice mail on 20% of her calls. That could eat up as much as an hour of her day. With the Power Dialer feature, the system will automatically drop pre-recorded voicemail and send your agent to the next call.
Power Dialer’s Voicemail Drop is one of the smartest ways to turn a “lost call” into a potential lead. When your agent gets dropped into voice mail, the Voicemail Drop system leaves a pre-recorded message with a callback number. This gives your agent a second chance to have contact with the lead.
One of the best ways to boost your cold calling campaign is to be able to help your agents when they are live with a lead. With Live Monitoring, you can listen in on any call. There is also a whisper feature that allows you to interact with the agent while they are on the phone with the lead.
Finally, Power Dialer is easy to set up for your remote agents. You can onboard your agent with a computer, internet browser, a working internet connection, and a headphone set with a microphone. We find that many remote teams get better results using MyPhone’s Power Dialer features.
Okay, now that we have the common mistakes out of the way, we’re ready to go over the best cold calling tips and become a better cold caller to secure more sales.
In the past, cold calling was often seen as a way to quickly trick prospects into purchasing something they neither wanted nor needed.
If that's how you view cold calling, you need to update your outlook for the 21st century. Today, salespeople focus on identifying and meeting customer needs, and they know a cold call is only the first step.
Face it: no one will listen to your spiel and decide to buy your stuff that very same call. Maybe 1 in 10 000. Plan a series of sales calls and take it slow to increase your chances of conversion.
Calling a stranger can naturally cause a bit of anxiety. But when you're nervous, you may find yourself rambling on with your spiel, tripping over words, and using a bit too manyums and uhs. That's why it can be a good idea to prepare a cold calling script (that you can continuously refine) if you're one who tends to choke on their pitch.
There is controversy over whether sales scripts are useful tools. It's important to remember that you shouldn't mindlessly read off a piece of paper. You'll come off fake, manufactured, and careless.
The real purpose of a sales script is to force you to think through what you want to say. Once you have a sales script you're comfortable with, you can use it as a jumping-off point, rather than following it word for word, regardless of how the conversation unfolds.
Practice your call, use names strategically, and develop an effective tone of voice before you dial the first number. You might also want to record yourself so you can replay your introduction to ensure you're confident without being overwhelming.
The best cold calling tools like Myphoner also feature call recording capabilities that allow sales professionals to go back and study their interactions with prospects and refine their approach.
Once you're ready to start contacting sales leads, take the time to create a supportive environment for a truly successful cold call. For example,
It would be wonderful if we answered the telephone every call, but that's not a realistic expectation. When you leave a voicemail, remember that it's your opportunity to capture your prospects' interest, which may motivate them to take your next call.
Decide on a structure for leaving a voicemail that's short, but not rushed. In the message, introduce yourself, briefly describe the value you can offer, leave contact information, and make sure you're smiling!
Don't turn your cold calling into an exhausting marathon. Take a five-minute break after each half-hour to get up, stretch and clear your mind. It's also a good time to congratulate yourself on the progress you're making in sales lead generation.
With Myphoner’s integrated time tracking, sales managers and executives can see how their agents are spending their time on cold calls. This arms management with powerful data to help their sales teams optimize their time and day.
The best cold callers are relentless in their pursuit of a sale. If you don't hear back from a prospect after leaving a voicemail or an email, it's perfectly acceptable to follow up with another call or email.
With cold calling software like Myphoner, never forget follow-ups again with predefined and personalized emails ready to be sent to your selected leads. This way you can keep in touch to keep the conversation fresh in their minds and schedule a closing call in the future.
The only way to get better at anything is to practice. The more you cold call, the more comfortable you'll feel and the smoother your calls will go. Cold calling can be frustrating, but it's also an extremely rewarding process when you land a new customer.
Nailing the art of cold calling is arguably one of the most difficult sales skills to master, owing to a slew of variables that influence a rep's success or failure. So on top of those seven tips on how to cold call effectively, below are the best cold calling techniques that really work during a call:
Relatability. A surefire way to get your call prioritized is by establishing a "me too" rapport with gatekeepers. Your service exists because you once faced the same problem they're facing right now. Show that you care about your prospect's success, sympathize with the challenges they face, acknowledge and express interest in solving their needs.
Selling with a sense of urgency. One trick to better closing is by drumming up a sense of urgency when the gatekeeper picks up your call. Ask about an issue plaguing their business and offer a customized—but digestible—solution that they can take to higher-ups. It's very easy to sound overly pushy and desperate with this effect, so knowing how to do it properly is priceless.
Wading through gatekeepers. Closing is easier when you're dealing with the right decision-makers. But, usually, there are gatekeepers like assistants and secretaries diluting your message and outreach efforts before it touches the director.
Relevant questioning. A meaningful, personalized, and actionable conversation comes from asking the right questions. Though having a question list on standby is best practice, whipping up open-ended questions in a cold call from context is an invaluable skill that will help you learn about the prospect more deeply and keep them engaged.
Persistence & objection handling. The art of persuasion is not about getting your prospect to say "yes." It's about saying "no" in ways that leave the door open for you. The key here is to have a consistent, personalized approach that fluidly reacts based on the context of each call while not being a nuisance. This way, they'll be inclined to give you a second chance, and eventually a third.
Knowing when to give up. On the flip side, if a prospect isn’t showing interest by the 6 or 7th call, it may be time to stop bugging them. The last thing you need is for people to publicly brand you as an annoying and pushy company that can’t respect customers.
Making cold calls can be a daunting task, but if you follow these tips, you'll be well on your way to becoming a cold calling pro. And don't forget to have fun with it – after all, selling should always be enjoyable!
Cold calling is one of the most common techniques used by business professionals to gain new clients, but it's also among the most difficult skills to master.
You've got the tips, you know the skills, so how do you actually go about creating one? Here are a few basic steps that you can take to start your cold calling process.
1. Research your target market. This is the most important step in any cold calling strategy, it'll help you better understand who you're trying to reach and which messages will be most effective. Without proper research, you can't personalize messages or target the right audience—so you'll be wasting time and money on deliverables for little return.
2. Select the right kind of contact information. You can purchase contact lists of potential prospects from vendors all-over, but it's important to vet the list for accuracy. It can be risky and unreliable since the data may not be up-to-date or include qualified leads. Make sure that you're sourcing contacts with the right suppliers, and reach out in the best way possible—maybe they're an email-over-LinkedIn person.
3. Prepare personalized messages. Using a generic message will not produce the desired results, as most prospects will see through it and will be uninterested in speaking with you. Personalize your messages by addressing the prospect by name, describing how you are familiar with their company, and highlighting the benefits of working with you.
4. Make calls at the right time. The best time to make a cold call is during the afternoon like before lunch or toward the end of the workday on Wednesdays and Thursdays. But remember that it also depends on your target audience; prospects in one industry may have different work hours and call-time preferences than others. As you make your first dozen calls, keep an eye out for the best response times and even ask prospects for their preferred dates and times to be contacted. Over time with more data, you’ll learn the best periods during the day to call your prospects.
5. Be prepared to leave a voicemail message. Bringing back tip #4, if you can't reach someone directly, try leaving a message with your name and information about the benefits of your product or service to try and secure their interest. And if they don't return your call within 3-4 days, you can shoot some more follow-ups (95% of all converted leads are reached by the sixth call) before calling someone else. Different industries can have different limits, we’ve found that the number typically ranges from 6-20 at Myphoner.
Related: Yet another "Five steps to get started with cold calling"
One of the biggest challenges in a cold calling campaign is getting the right lead list to the right agents. . This is where the Myphoner Lead Routing comes to the rescue. With Lead Routing, you can reduce a day’s work into a few minutes and route thousands of leads at the push of a few buttons.
As an example, let’s say that you want to send West Coast leads to agents who live in the West Coast of the United States. Using the segments function on the Lead Routing feature allows you to filter your leads by geographic location and send out the right leads in seconds.
Overall, this allows you a better chance of converting your leads into sales. In fact, you can execute Lead Routing in a number of ways. You can route by geographic location, income, past contact, and more.
Lead Routing not only helps the manager of the agent team, but it can also help the agent organize her calls. For instance, the agent can organize calls by their contact history with the lead.
By organizing leads a certain way, agents are better able to set up a strategy for closing more leads. This could lead to much better results over the long term.
Finally, Lead Routing will allow you and your team to complete more cold calls. When both your manager and the agent have a more efficient way to get more calls completed, they are bound to get better results. This goes a long way to increase sales productivity.
Perhaps one of the most important parts of a cold calling campaign is the ability to measure its effectiveness in real-time. Myphoner makes it easy to see how each one of your agents is doing in real-time. In fact, you can measure each agent by a various number of metrics.
Some of the metrics that you can measure include how many calls are being made per day, how much time an agent is spending on a call and how many conversations are executed each hour. Managers can even add or remove metrics to allow them to focus on what is most important.
Whether you are just starting out or you have a growing team of agents, Myphoner makes it easy to monitor both small and large teams around the world, in real-time.
In fact, Myphoner is unique in that it not only allows you to be better organized, but it can also help increase sales performance.
Cold calling isn't for everyone and may not be the best method to market your products or services. It can be a frustrating experience—if you aren't prepared, don't have a strategy in place, or are trying to push people when they aren't ready for it.
The key is preparation through targeted research and personalized outreach, without being pushy. With some practice and the right cold calling software by your side, you'll dominate your space in no time by closing customers left and right.
Discover how call management can improve your business communication and customer experience. Learn different routing systems and best features. Choose wisely!
Cold calling is not dead, but it’s not easy either. Get motivated and keep your spirits up with us.
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I'm an entrepreneur and web developer. I've built or helped build a handful of startups.
I strongly believe in dedicated software that solves one task, but solves it really well. During my experience as an internet entrepreneur, I never found that software for cold calling, so that's why I decided to build Myphoner.
I'm very proud of what Myphoner has become, and I'm dedicated to doing everything I can to make it stay a success. That's why I greet all new customers personally and always read and reply to the feedback I get.
Simple lead tracking solution through a unique cold calling workflow.
