In a world, where 90% of your business interactions happen via call it becomes most difficult to begin the conversation when it comes to relying on the outbound marketing strategy i.e. cold calling. Cold calling is one of the stressful tasks that let you indulge in constant rejection and indifferent attitude of prospects that you try to convert into customers. However, the right script and your determination can go a long way to re-define your sales process with ease, confidence, and beneficial results. Here we go with our input over cold calling that will definitely assist you in streamlining your sales cycle.
Sorry, I am busy
This one is the hardest to deal with, as you may have encountered more than 60% such busy bee in your day-to-day cold calling schedule. Let me share my secret to turn such busy leads into interested prospects.
Show them you have something valuable that’s worth their time.
“I understand our discussion may not be a top priority right now, or perhaps you don’t see the value. However, several people believed the same thing before getting into a brief discussion with us. Just give me your two minutes and you will be thrilled to learn more benefits of (your product/services). I promise the ROI of our 2 minutes discussion will be totally worth it.”
Here, you’re keeping time above anything and acknowledging their busy schedule while briefing the next step towards a quick call with you. Usually, two minutes are enough to make an informed decision as worth it.
A little research on LinkedIn can go a long way
For salespeople, LinkedIn is the best mentor for them. Before calling, shed light on the available insight about your prospects and make your prospecting a cakewalk then:
Use such opening lines to make your script appear as part of a thesis rather than just a cold calling.
- I notice you used to work at [PAST COMPANY], how did you find the culture there?
- Good to know that one of my friends also went to [UNIVERSITY], what did you study there?
- I see you’ve risen through the ranks from SDR to account manager at [CURRENT COMPANY], how did you get noticed by senior management?
Know prospects better by asking questions
Apart from the information available online, it is evident to know the complete story of prospects’ nature of the business, sales/marketing strategies and other minutest details. Once the introduction part is done, build some rapport with the prospect and gather as much information as you could get by asking questions:
- What are the biggest challenges that you face in your sales?
- Is your sales team using any tool and solution to help you with X?
- What was the deciding factor to hire new SDRs at [COMPANY]?
Enrich your buyer persona with such qualitative insights into the prospects’ business and fill in the knowledge gap to provide a feasible resolution that would eventually resolve their pain points.
Follow-up on voicemail
In the age of instant messaging, voicemail has become a thing of the past. But a soldier is trained to be prepared for war in every situation. Use this script to follow-up once you leave a voicemail to the lead:
Hi [NAME], I hope you get the time to listen to the voice mail that I sent last week. This is regarding XYZ (briefing about your product/services) and thought I’d see if now would be a good time to reach out.
Just a reminder, we [State your value proposition]. I’d love to show you how you can generate [RESULT].
Would you like to schedule a call to learn more?
In this case, you will purposely remind your offer twice – first via voicemail and secondly via email. The next step is to take ahead into your usual cold calling script.
