It is likely that you, people on your sales team and your prospects will take a week off sometime during July and August. Perhaps a few will take 2 weeks. But does that mean you should stop cold calling during the summer? The impact of suspending or delaying your cold calling campaign will be far reaching.
In terms of business activity, the summer months may seem a little quieter. However, suspending cold calling, will impact sales results for months to come. Here’s why.
You lose the opportunity to set-up an appointment at any time. There is no particular day or time that is better or worse to reach out to a prospect.
By suspending your cold calling campaign, you will lose the momentum of the campaign. A cold calling campaign is a combination of initial calls, emails and building rapport. Interfering with this process will set you back, possibly to the beginning.
You may lose the rapport you had established with prospects.
You now have a gap in your sales funnel. Without a constant flow of prospects to your sales team, there will be a lag in sales in the coming month or months.
By suspending cold calling efforts, you have increased the length of your sales cycle. You may have initiated contact in June but with a lapse in effort, those prospects won’t be closed for months.
When your sales team isn’t working on high-quality warm leads, your revenue generation efforts risk becoming stagnant. It will be harder to close a prospect who doesn’t have you top-of-mind.
When lead qualification is not a priority, sales cannot be closed effectively. A lapse in cold calling creates a roller coaster ride in profit and loss.
When you take sales for granted, that’s when sales fall short. It’s never a good idea to suspend cold calling efforts because it will have a ripple effect on the entire sales process, revenues and profits.
Often cold calling success is measured simply by the number of appointments made with relation to the number of calls. Some look at cold calling as a panacea for lead generation and expect an appointment for every call made. This is thoroughly unrealistic. When cold calling is done correctly, several levels of value are intrinsic in every call, even if an appointment is not obtained.
Cold calling:
Provides an opportunity to be in front of the prospect, even if at the time of the call the prospect was not experiencing the pain you could address.
Engages with the decision maker, nurturing your relationship with them.
Provides value to your sales process by adding indispensable information garnered from the conversation with the prospect.
Serves to clean up your list. No matter what your source or how recent you obtained the data, 20% of your information can be out of date.
Saves time and expense by eliminating unqualified leads in your database
The mentality that every call must result in an appointment or that a certain volume of appointments must be met loses site of the greater purpose of cold calling. Cold calling is the foundation for getting sales off the ground. Without cold calling, companies would find themselves without a consistent flow of appointments, without the information they need to take sales to the next step, and without the relationship that is needed to close the sale.
Don’t lose sight of the bigger picture. When your cold calling efforts don’t return a certain volume of appointments, the call campaign was far from worthless.
There is a misconception that cold calling doesn’t work. While this has been a topic of this newsletter in the past, it is important to note the data that specifically applies to appointment setting.
It is generally quoted that that only 1-2% of cold calls actually result in a meeting. However, there is strong evidence to the contrary, highlighting the effectiveness of cold calling in today’s B2B market. The reality is that 78% of decision makers have taken an appointment or attended an event as a result of a cold call.*.
The reason most cold calls fail is simply because they’re done wrong. If you want your team to attain this level of lead generation, make sure they are following these cold calling strategies.
Set a schedule. Allot time on a regular basis to do your cold calling. The more qualified leads you want in your pipeline, the more frequent you will want to set aside time to cold call.
Be prepared. Research your prospect before you get on the phone but don’t overdo it. You want to garner enough about them to have a conversation. Over-researching will cause call reluctance which will most likely result in voice mail. Take a minute to check them out on LinkedIn, Google, their website…and then make the call.
Be persistent. It takes an average of 8 – 12 attempts to reach a C-level prospect. Most sales professionals stop at 3 attempts. A big mistake.
Ask for permission. At the outset of a call, once you have reached the prospect, ask for their permission to continue.
Set the right tone. The goal of a cold call is to engage a prospect and set up a meeting. It’s about making that first connection, not closing the deal. Be confident and relaxed. Be mindful of not only the words you use but the tone of the conversation.
The success rate of cold calling largely depends on the approach taken. Cold calling gets a bad rap when these simple tactics are not followed. If your organization does not have the time or expertise for successful cold calling, One Of A Kind Solutions is here to help.
Whether you are pounding the pavement to get in front of prospects or on the phone to set appointments, you are familiar with the term ‘gatekeeper’. This is the person whose job it is to screen calls or visits to the decision maker. These skilled individuals make it very tough to get through to the decision maker unless you incorporate the right approach.
Always start at the top. Before you get started, know the name of the decision maker that you want to reach. Aim high. Managers often won’t make a decision without upper management’s approval.
Keep the right perspective. The gatekeeper is not an enemy; but they are also not your friend. They are just doing their job – managing the demands on the decision makers time. They are trained to keep salespeople from getting through the gate.
Have the right mindset. Clear your head. Visualize yourself as someone who would be put through. Remember that your conversation with the decision maker is the most important call that they will get today.
Have the right tone and approach. Whether you get through the gatekeeper has a lot to do with your tone. Be direct and business-like with an expectation that you will get through the gatekeeper and connect to the decision maker. It could go something like: “This is Jeff to speak to (Decision Maker’s name). Is he/she in?”
Do not pitch the gatekeeper. By selling to the gatekeeper you are setting yourself up for “thank you, but we are not interested”. Many salespeople make this mistake but it only ends in shutting you down.
Take control of the conversation. The gatekeeper will ask certain questions to disarm you: who are you, where are you from, what are you selling, is the decision maker expecting you. Break the pattern. Pose questions to the gatekeeper such as, “I’m not sure (decision maker) is the right person to talk to, can you help me?”
Always ask for decision maker’s email. Ask the gatekeeper for the decision maker’s email address. Send the decision maker information by email. Then when you call back and the gatekeeper asks you what it is in reference to, use the follow-up to the correspondence as the reason to speak to the decision maker.
Never leave a message with the gatekeeper. Your first preference is to leave a message on voice mail for the decision maker. If that is not possible, leave your name and number with no detail (not even your company name) with the gatekeeper. Follow-up with an email to the decision maker with a subject line: Message with Receptionist (or use their name) and “a curious message”. Raise their curiosity so they will call you or take your call. Don’t give your company name or sales pitch.
Keep your goal in mind. It’s important to get through to the decision maker. Don’t give up. To reach the decision maker by phone directly, ask the gatekeeper when the best time is to reach the decision maker. Or vary your calling times – try calling before 9 am, after 5 pm or during lunch hour.
Practice, practice, practice. Take these techniques to heart, learn them, practice them and test them. Try variations until you find the one that works for you. Do it often so it is sounds natural.
Most salespeople see gatekeepers as barriers to getting appointments. The right training, approach and attitude can change all that.
Last issue I talked about the importance of uncovering your prospect’s pain and the value that it brings to your sales process. In this issue, I’ll be sharing how to uncover that pain. Talking about your products or services isn’t going to earn you loyal customers. You need to be proactive towards understanding their concerns and constraints.
Listen more and speak less. There’s a type of sales rep called “Crocodile Rep”. They have a big mouth and small ears. They do most of the talking and conclude the discussion without understanding the prospect’s pain. Always listen to your prospects before engaging them.
Ask open-ended questions. The best way to have successful sales discussions is by asking open-ended questions. The primary aim is to get them speaking about their business, and prospects generally love to do that. This strategy will keep you from overselling and help you build a great bond with the prospect.
Dig a little deeper. Uncovering just one problem may not be enough. When there is a pause in the conversation, nod in agreement or say you understand, but also give them another opening to continue the conversation. Use some of these probing questions to get the prospect to expand on the pain.
How did you resolve this issue or is it still a concern?
Tell me more.
Is there anything else?
How would resolving this issue feel?
Talk like them. Use your prospect’s language when talking about pain. This technique can go a long way in building trust with your prospect. Show them that you take them seriously by using their language and terminology.
Don’t answer questions too quickly. Take note of how your prospect asks a question and then think for a moment about how to best respond. If you answer too quickly, the conversation may end and you won’t get the information you need.
Discovering your prospect’s motivators means getting your prospects to talk. Try conversations that let your clients take the lead. Then listen and discover.
Identifying pain is a key component in the sales process. There is no sale without pain. Uncovering your prospect’s pain has value to the sales process in several ways. It helps you build trust, establish a relationship and build rapport and provides insights as well.
Build trust. Ask the right questions, and you’ll build trust, uncover opportunities and cement your relationship as a trusted advisor. Ignore the pain, and you’ll become known as “a salesperson”.
Establish a relationship. To sell effectively, you must uncover customer pain points. This shows your interest in them and their business. Without doing so, you miss the opportunity to establish a mutually collaborative relationship with the customer.
Rapport. Equally important, buyers who believe that their pain is clearly understood will be more willing to share critical information throughout the buying process and will work harder to understand the solution being presented.
People buy based on emotion. People may justify a purchase intellectually but what makes them say yes is emotion. Uncovering their pain gets them to think emotionally and can make the difference between making the sale or not.
Differentiation. Without this critical information, sellers often stumble to differentiate their value when the potential customer is formulating a buying decision.
Gain customer’s perspective. When the seller doesn’t take time to uncover pain and discuss the implications of that pain early in the sales cycle, they lose the opportunity to understand what is truly important to the customer.
Relevance. Without understanding the buyer’s needs, the sales conversation usually focuses on product features and functions, which may or may not be relevant to the buyer. Unfortunately, product functions that are not tied specifically to customer pain can make the solution sound expensive and off target. At this point, the conversation quickly degrades to one of price and pricing discounts.
Pain-Solution Correlation. Without uncovering business pain, there is no means to formulate a solution that will address that pain. Without a meaningful solution, there’s no sale.
Whether you are pounding the pavement to get in front of prospects or on the phone to set appointments, you are familiar with the term ‘gatekeeper’. This is the person whose job it is to screen calls or visits to the decision maker. These skilled individuals make it very tough to get through to the decision maker unless you incorporate the right approach.
Last issue I talked about the importance of uncovering your prospect’s pain and the value that it brings to your sales process. In this issue, I’ll be sharing how to uncover that pain. Talking about your products or services isn’t going to earn you loyal customers. You need to be proactive towards understanding their concerns and constraints.
Identifying pain is a key component in the sales process. There is no sale without pain. Uncovering your prospect’s pain has value to the sales process in several ways. It helps you build trust, establish a relationship and build rapport and provides insights as well.
