8 Tips to Improve Your Cold Calling Results

8 Tips to Improve Your Cold Calling Results

While cold calling may not be a salesperson’s favorite activity, it is still an effective way to find new, viable leads. In fact, it is a big part of selling today.

However, cold calling is different than it used to be. People are savvy and take steps to avoid these calls in many cases.

If you do get through, you better make a good point as fast as you can if you even want a chance of success.

Building an effective cold calling strategy can be challenging but isn’t impossible. Keep reading for some tips to help you improve your cold calling efforts.

1. Create and Use a Sales Script

If you don’t have one in place, now is a good time to build great cold calling scripts. These should be in place before making any calls.

You will find several benefits when you begin working off a script. The key is to have a well-thought-out script and that is designed for you and what you are trying to sell.

2. Focus on Your Client or Customer

During your first contact with a prospect, be sure to focus all your questions and attention on them. Never try to talk about yourself, who you are, or what you do. Don’t even discuss your company.

It’s important to remember that everything should be about them, rather than you. To be an effective salesperson, you have to focus on client-centered selling.

This is the professional approach to selling something and is only possible when you talk to them about their wants and needs.

3. Embrace and Learn from Rejection

In the world of sales, rejection will happen. It doesn’t matter what stage of the selling process you are in; at some point, rejection will occur.

There are a few ways you can learn from rejection. One is to share with colleagues about what has happened during rejection in the past. You can then all discuss ways to overcome that same issue in the future.

You can also ask “why.” If someone tells you no, politely, why not take this opportunity to find out the reason behind their “no.”

4. Determine Your Objectives

The concept of “smile and dial” is not a sales strategy for cold calling. Before trying to call anyone, you need to take time to plan out what you will say.

You should also figure out what your goal is with the cold calls you are making. For example, do you want to schedule a meeting, invite the person to watch a webinar, or something else?

Put time into figuring out your CTA (call-to-action) before every call, too. Remember, the CTA you use will be unique based on the person you are contacting.

It’s important to remember that cold calling is a single phase of a bigger sales process. The goal needs to be to move the person into the next stage of the sales process.

You can test several objectives to figure out what works best for the service or product you are trying to sell. Once you have figured out where you want the conversation to go and how you want it to end, the route to get there will be much smoother.

5. Don’t Overwhelm Your Prospect

When you make a cold call and talk to someone for the first time, you need to take things slow and easy. Don’t provide so much information that the entire conversation is overwhelming.

If the person is interested in what you say and wants to learn more, you can then provide it. Too much information will cause a sales prospect to be more hesitant to engage with the offer.

6. Use Sales Triggers

Sales triggers are any event that may create an opening to contact a prospect. With cold calling, timing is essential. Some examples of sales triggers include:

  • Changing title or job role
  • New funding
  • Company merger, expansion, or relocation
  • Events or conferences
  • Sector announcements
  • Company hiring
  • New legislation

Each of the above represents a time-dependent data point. When they are discovered, they can make a huge difference between someone interested and getting a hard no.

Also, when you can reference one of the above points when talking to a prospect, it shows them you have done your homework.

7. Keep the Conversation Relaxed

The longer your prospect stays relaxed, the more they are going to open up. If you can keep the conversation relaxed, it will increase your ability to make a sale.

While this may sound challenging, it doesn’t have to be. If you stay relaxed and keep the conversation light, your prospect will stay light and relaxed too.

8. Practice

Even if you use a script, you want to make sure the prospect doesn’t know you are. The last thing you want is to sound like a robot.

Before you begin calling, be sure to practice your script. This should be done until you know it start to finish.

Improving Your Cold Calling Efforts

There’s no question that cold calling can be challenging. However, with the tips here, you can achieve more success with your efforts.

It’s also important that you never settle. You should work to continually improve your efforts, which will help you make more sales.

Are you searching for more helpful business information? If so, take time to check out some of the other blogs on our site. We post often to help keep the latest news available.

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