Cold Calling Techniques

Cold Calling Techniques: Cold calling has evolved from a standalone blunt prospecting activity into a tactic that when combined with social selling and data is a powerful customer recruitment method.
Not every business can rely or wait for inbound marketing to produce enough leads to grow revenue, so more outbound sales tactics need to be implemented, to reach out and engage potential customers.  It may surprise you but 1000’s of buyer meetings and webinar attendance have come about as a result of “cold calling techniques”, in fact the success rate of cold calling is improving not declining.

Cold calling techniques

Cold calling is NOT DEAD but it has evolved.

The reason for the improvement in cold calling success is that it has become more data driven, more targeted and blended to work with social selling and social media. Cold calling techniques now form part of a planned sales prospecting strategy and not just a numbers exercise. Remember that selling is fundamentally about conversations and commitments. Cold calling has a big part to play in starting conversations with prospects.

So, the goal of cold calling is for salespeople to have meaningful conversations with various customer profiles and adapt their value proposition to the unique situation of each prospect.

Cold calling techniques needs to help accelerate the essential learning needed by buyers, so that they can “move” to where they need to be, rather than where they are today. It’s about breaking down the prospects status quo and current thinking.

Cold Calling Techniques – Rapport Building

Personalized. Asking highly specific questions shows genuine interest in the answer (and by association, the customer).

Unique. A discovery question should be a little unexpected and intelligent, it will return a more honest answer — and honesty breeds intimacy.

Appropriate. Even though the question should be surprising, it shouldn’t make the prospect feel uncomfortable. Avoid anything that could be seen as out-of-bounds. Make it a positive orientated question.

Example “I was reading your companies blog, your CEO stated that [direct quote], how will this affect your business moving forward?

To wrap up, cold calling techniques should make engaging a prospect should feel like a tennis match. Carefully use of data, insights, news, information and social selling will provide the path to call the prospect, get them to listen and talk. If selling is fundamentally about conversations and commitments, so is cold calling.