Strategies for Successful Cold Calling Today
5 Tips for Successful Cold Calling Today
Strategies For Successful Cold Calling: How to Engage Prospects While Cold Calling in a Digital Era
Many sales representatives hear the words “cold calling” and groan. In fact, according to these statistics, 63 percent of sales reps list cold calling as the single worst part of the job. What causes such an aversion to the practice? They’re still thinking of cold calling in the traditional sense. (Make a call. Get hung up on. Repeat.) For success with cold calling today, sales professionals need to adapt their practices to the current digital environment. With that in mind, here are five strategies for successful cold calling today:
5 Tactics to Increase Prospect Engagement When Cold Calling
1. Adapt to the New Cold Calling
Cold calling, like so many sales tactics, has evolved over the years. That means gone are the days of picking up the phone and blindly reaching out to a prospect. Cold calling today is much more about doing your research beforehand and implementing the overarching strategies that work with today’s buyer.
The first important step to successful cold calling is realizing this. The practice has changed, and your strategy needs to as well. If your tactics haven’t evolved, you’re setting yourself up for a lot of wasted time and effort—and a lot of hung up phones.
"You need to lead with tangible, relevant, genuine value. By pointing out a buyer’s challenges and laying out his or her desired outcomes, you can then position your product or service as the means to reach those goals."
2. Lead with Value
It’s become a bit of a sales mantra at this point, but to have success with today’s buyers, you can’t immediately start rattling off the features and benefits of your product or service. You need to lead with tangible, relevant, genuine value. By pointing out a buyer’s challenges and laying out his or her desired outcomes, you can then position your product or service as the means to reach those goals.
This approach is even more important with cold calling because you have no preexisting connection or relationship to rely on. If you lead with product pitch, that prospect will immediately disengage. If you lead with value, though, you have the opportunity to quickly and effectively establish the trust and credibility that can help push that prospect to the next stage.
In a cold call, amplifying quickly is also important because that prospect won’t be willing to offer you a lot of time. You can smooth that amplification process by bringing value immediately to the conversation.
When crafting your messaging, make sure your value and insight are always framed through the lens of story-telling. This is impactful and engaging and helps the prospect more fully imagine himself or herself in the situation you’re describing.
3. Be Aware of Shifting Needs, Priorities, and Challenges
Buyers today have different needs and challenges, but this isn’t an isolated shift related to the pandemic. Buyer priorities and the way they interact with the sales cycle are both constantly in flux. (Just check out this article that spells out some of the ways the buyer’s journey has changed and evolved over the years.)
Be constantly aware of these changes, and adapt your strategy to accommodate. This applies to any ideological approach to selling, whether it’s implemented in cold calling or engaging with the C-suite.
"When you approach cold calling with a strategic mind-set, you not only increase your odds of it producing positive results but you ensure the system is repeatable and scalable."
4. Have a Strategy
Like every aspect of a sales strategy, your cold calling efforts shouldn’t be random, disorganized, or siloed. There needs to be an overarching framework and strategy that dictates how you cold call, when, and what prospects to target.
When you approach cold calling with a strategic mind-set, you not only increase your odds of it producing positive results but you ensure the system is repeatable and scalable. This way, if you’re onboarding new sales professionals, you don’t have to start from scratch or utilize trial and error to arrive at success.
5. Warm Up Your Cold Call
There are so many resources at the disposal of sales professionals today. From email to social media, there are countless opportunities to learn more about your prospect before picking up the phone. (This can include gathering information about the individual, as well as the company and industry.)
Utilize these resources to determine what kind of challenges and pain points they’re likely experiencing. This can help frame what sort of information is going to end up being most valuable to that buyer. Gather all this preliminary information before moving on to the next stage: initial outreach.
In this phase, you can actually send a LinkedIn message or make another form of contact. This can build a preliminary connection before escalating to a phone call. Just remember to frame every stage of these conversations from a position of value. Don’t start with your product or service, or you’re going to shut down engagement with the buyer before you even start.
Interested in learning more strategies for successful cold calling in today’s selling landscape? Watch our on-demand webinar, Cold Calling in a Digitally Enabled Environment.
Have other questions? Feel free to reach out. We’re always happy to help!