We all like to think that our company is unique. In reality, there are hundreds of companies just like your own vying for the same business. Perhaps your product or service offering is different in some way. But ultimately what sets each of us apart is our sales approach. Cold calling, like outside sales, requires an approach that will make you stand out from your competition, get you appointments, and lead to closed sales. Here’s how to use cold calling to differentiate yourself.
System. A systematic approach to cold calling will help drive the success of your team. More importantly, a well thought out and executed sales process will make the salesperson and your organization come across as more professional to the prospect.
Attitude. Don’t think of it as cold calling, think of it as discovery. You are on a fact-finding mission to find out what problems the prospect is having that you may be able to solve. Make the call about your prospect, not about you. Project enthusiasm and energy through your tone and actions.
Messaging. Cold calling is all about messaging. If you don’t sound different from all the other calls the prospect gets, you won’t be successful and the call will end in a hang-up. When you stand out, the prospect will listen. Once they are listening, the conversation turns to uncovering their pain.
Relationship Building. Engaging in conversation with a prospect on the phone, and learning about the prospect’s needs, goes a long way toward generating leads and closing the sale. Being a good listener and building a relationship is key in setting yourself apart from competitors.
Perseverance. You may not get through to the prospect the 1st time, or the 5th time, or many more times thereafter. Even when you get through, they may not need your product or service at that moment. What will impress your prospect is being there when they do need what you have to offer.
Time. Cold calling is not a one-and-done undertaking. Some industries require more nurturing than others. For example, in insurance there are thousands of brokers competing for the same business so it will be necessary to invest more time to be successful. Regardless of the industry, lead generation takes time to nurture, build a relationship, and understand the prospects issues and needs. Your prospect will appreciate the time and effort you have devoted to talking with them.
Without investing in these aspects of lead generation, you will seem like any other company out there, and your cold calling effort will fail.
There are leads, qualified leads and highly qualified leads. Most people don’t differentiate between qualified leads and highly qualified leads but it makes a big difference in sales outcome. When your lead generation efforts involve sharing a lot of information about yourself and your offering, either by phone or online, and little or no information about the prospect is shared, then it’s considered a qualified lead. Companies often put a lot of value on this level of leads but the conversion rate can be less than desired.
The reason that this type of lead is not highly qualified is because the prospect hasn’t had the opportunity to share anything about themselves. A highly qualified lead is generated when the prospect has the opportunity to have a conversation with you, you have the opportunity to ask probing questions, and you learn about their business and issues. This conversation allows you and the prospect to determine whether there is a good fit between you.
Creating qualified leads is one thing, but creating and identifying highly-qualified leads is a procedure that involves several steps working together to move the prospect through the qualifying process. Generating highly qualified leads begins with making a good impression and engaging in a conversation. It involves well thought out, planned and practiced scripting. The goal is to get your prospects talking about themselves and finding out if you are a good fit for one another.
There are several techniques that are used to facilitate the conversation with your prospect. It involves finding common ground to get the conversation started. It includes sharing information about you and what you have to offer. But most importantly it means listening to what the prospect has to say.
Qualified leads will have a lower conversion rate and more effort will be required to convert each lead to a sale. With highly qualified leads a better conversion rate is guaranteed. That’s because highly qualified leads are “sales ready”. Highly qualified leads streamline the sales process and make your sales team more efficient. They are sure to keep your pipeline full and your sales on target.
Sales leaders often have unrealistic expectations for their cold calling campaigns. They expect appointments will materialize quickly. They can lose patience, get frustrated, and consider the whole process a waste of time when this doesn’t happen. However, meaningful lead generation, where you are producing appointments with leads that are interested in what you have to offer, doesn’t happen overnight.
Generally, it takes 8-12 touches with C-suite executives before they pay attention! Then it’s a timing issue. Do they require your services at the time of the first conversation?
There’s more to cold calling than getting the appointment. Here’s what is involved in a meaningful cold calling campaign:
List Clean-up – When you begin calling you will find that some list clean-up will be necessary. This includes weeding out companies that are not a good match, as well as updating names, emails and telephone numbers.
Getting to Know You – Keep in mind that your leads don’t know you. Each time you make contact, you are establishing rapport and building a quality relationship.
Collecting Intel – As you make calls you are probing the prospect and collecting information about the company and the challenges that they are facing. This information becomes invaluable in relationship building and certainly in the proposal and closing stages of the sale.
Awareness – While you have learned a lot about the prospect and built rapport with them, the prospect may not be experiencing the pain that is required to make a purchase at that time. If there is no need, there is no sale. But with regular contact over an extended period of time, you will be top of mind when there is a need.
Recycle – It takes several touches before the decision maker is paying attention but it’s a delicate balance between staying in front of prospects and not becoming a nuisance. You start by working your list over a 4-week period. After some time without contact, the list is worked again. We recommend the entire process is repeated three times a year.
You can see how lead generation could be considered a sales cycle all unto itself. Impatience is quickly dismissed when the quality of the leads and appointments is realized.
Bringing Sales Teams & Cold Callers Together Produces Greater Success.
Many sales organizations have a team of cold callers who feed leads to the sales team. Often the leads or appointments are simply handed over from one team to the other. Your cold calling efforts will be more effective and provide added benefits when you bring these two sets of people together. Collaboration between cold callers and the rest of the team is critical in order to get the most out of your cold calling campaign.
What is needed to make cold calling a successful part of your sales process? It is critical for these two teams to meet to:
Discuss first time appointments and opportunities
Share key information about the prospects
Classify hot, warm and cold leads in the pipeline
Identify and address any issues concerning the process
Review objective and outcome metrics
It is detrimental to view your cold calling team as a separate silo in your sales and marketing organization. They need to be privy to any discussion about sales strategy, various marketing materials and campaigns, and any market intelligence.
The lead generation team contributes a great deal to the entire effort as well. Cold calling is like a new sales team building a book of business. There will be a lot of information garnered from this effort that can be used in the sales process even when an appointment is not set at that time.
The outset of a cold calling campaign is the time when objectives are discussed, when changes are made to the scripting and when kinks in the process are worked out. An in-depth weekly review ensures that nothing is lost in the mix. As the campaign progresses, it may suffice to meet on a bi-weekly basis.
A lead generation campaign builds over time so success takes time. In addition, its success depends on the complete engagement of your cold calling team with your entire sales organization.
Cold calling is an opportunity to probe, build rapport and set the foundation for a long-term relationship. This involves improvising, asking probing questions and reacting to what the prospect is saying. That said, you still need to start with a script. While you don’t want to read it, you do want to use your script to prepare for the call.
A well written script will:
Remind you of what preparation needs to take place before the call begins
Break down the call into steps so you know exactly where you are in the process at any time
Provide ways to encourage conversation and get the prospect talking
Help you avoid leaving out any questions or areas of information that you need to cover
Give ways for probing the prospect to get to their pain points and other critical information and keep the process moving forward
Provide reminders for critical pauses in the conversation
Provide different call to action scenarios to maximize the outcome of the call
When cold calling, you absolutely want to be sure that you have a natural sounding conversation with your prospects. The only way to do this is by internalizing the script. Internalizing means incorporating within oneself as conscious or subconscious, the steps, questions and cues that you need to cover. This can be accomplished by knowing the script inside and out and making it part of you. The way to do this is by practicing.
What you don’t want to do is read a list of questions. Approaching the call in this way lacks the impression of genuine interest in what the prospect has to say, and your prospect will quickly lose interest in continuing the process. Reading the script will result in hang-ups, getting less information than you need, or the prospect will blow you off, either in a nice way or not.
Customize your scripts to address your particular circumstances and goals, and to address the information known about the prospect. This process of customizing and internalizing scripts is proven to be an effective approach in fulfilling your ultimate goal: setting sales appointments.
We all like to think that our company is unique. In reality, there are hundreds of companies just like your own vying for the same business. Perhaps your product or service offering is different in some way. But ultimately what sets each of us apart is our sales approach. Cold calling, like outside sales, requires an approach that will make you stand out from your competition, get you appointments, and lead to closed sales. Here’s how to use cold calling to differentiate yourself.
There are leads, qualified leads and highly qualified leads. Most people don’t differentiate between qualified leads and highly qualified leads but it makes a big difference in sales outcome. When your lead generation efforts involve sharing a lot of information about yourself and your offering, either by phone or online, and little or no information about the prospect is shared, then it’s considered a qualified lead. Companies often put a lot of value on this level of leads but the conversion rate can be less than desired.
Cold calling is an opportunity to probe, build rapport and set the foundation for a long-term relationship. This involves improvising, asking probing questions and reacting to what the prospect is saying. That said, you still need to start with a script. While you don’t want to read it, you do want to use your script to prepare for the call.
