What is Cold Calling? Definition, Software, and Best Practices

Cold Calling is the practice of contacting a lead who hasn’t shown interest in your products and services ever. This is usually done by sales and marketing professionals through non-traditional methods. The information about those leads is gathered from public records. These are generally phone-based conversations but sometimes can be face-to-face interactions as well. 

The Processes Of Cold Calling

• Conducting research on the lead and the market.
• Using social media as a means to approach them.
• Prepare scripts for each call 
• Scripts consist of an opening statement, and the body contains an overview of the benefits for the customer and what the company will do to resolve the customer’s concerns.
• Deciding the best time to reach the customer. 
• Trying to reach the customers.

Advantages Of Cold Calling 

• You can make a personal connection with your leads, which is not possible by email or social media. This gives you immediate feedback.
• This also prevents you from waiting for your lead’s answers.
• According to research about 82% of the buyers are willing to meet a salesperson who has contacted them through cold calls. 62% of the buyers are willing to speak to a salesperson when they are looking for a solution to their problem.
• 75% of the cold calls end up scheduling a meeting after that or attending the event of that company.

Cold Calling Strategies

• Research the leads before 

The most important thing before making a cold call is to research the leads you are talking to. The chances of a response increase from a person when they are given attention. Also knowing their information beforehand will give you an idea of what kind of questions they are going to ask and you can prepare for those accordingly. And based on the lead’s interests you can suggest their products and services accordingly. You can gather information about the leads by visiting their social media handles or the database stored in your CRM. Use the information to personalize offers for them. 

• Understanding your leads

Your research will help you to understand how you can bring solutions to your lead’s problems. With every customer, there are different interests that will make them buy your products and services. There might be many reasons that the lead may be apprehensive about buying from you. Hence you have to find their particular interest and make them understand how your product can solve their problems. You have to also understand their apprehension and try to resolve it. The initial goal in the sales process is not properly persuade them to buy instead you have to make a connection with your leads. This will motivate them to interact with you later also. Make a connection with your leads by understanding and analyzing their requirements and preferences.

• Interact with your leads on social media

As establishing a connection with the leads is more important at the initial stage of the sales process as discussed earlier. Hence in order to make a connection with your leads the best way is to connect with them on their social media handles. You can see their daily activities, interests, and lifestyle which will give you an insight into their personality, and also you can interact with them there. But make sure that your interaction with them was genuine. This will make your leads comfortable when they will interact with you further and also there is a huge possibility that you will gain their trust.

• Possess the virtues of patience and persistence

In order to succeed you need to inculcate the virtues of patience and persistence. It takes several calls to make a connection with your leads. So don’t get fed up or expect immediate responses with your leads. You may also have to leave messages and voice notes several times to them. Many salespeople give up on leads after hearing several nos however after several nos only they will come to yes. Hence you cannot sustain yourself in the sales field if you are an impatient person. No lead will trust you in initial interactions.

• Learn lessons from rejections

Just like patience and persistence, you cannot survive in the sales department without the ability to accept rejections. Similarly, this phenomenon applies to cold calling also. You should stop taking rejections personally if you do so. Instead, you should make a habit of learning from these rejections and take them as lessons. With every rejection improve your pitch. Understand the reasons why a person has rejected you and work accordingly next time. Take rejections as feedback and accordingly improve your products and services, research techniques, approach, and pitch. Always use rejections to your own advantage. That is the only key to success in the sales department.

• Prepare your pitch in advance

You cannot go to leads without being prepared for what to talk about and which points to put forward. This will make you focused during the entire conversation. You have to prepare according to the particular leads and personalize your pitches according to the individual leads. Don’t just read the same scripts to every lead this would simply go in vain. Research beforehand about the lead you are going to talk to and research about them before this will help you in personalizing your pitch.

• Call at the right time

Doing the right things at the right time makes a lot of difference everywhere. In cold calling also this principle makes a remarkable difference. If you call a working professional during their working hours obviously they won’t attend your call. In the nighttime, they can, or if you call them during weekends the chances of their paying attention increases. To know the best time you have to research your lead’s schedules. You can know about their activities from their social media handles or Google Alerts.

• Focus on the target audience more

Focusing on the target audience more is a very crucial aspect of every business. It is the key to success. Focusing on a wide range of audiences and trying to contact everyone will only waste your energy and nothing else. You will end up calling the wrong people every time. Focusing more on the target audience will definitely give you better results. Where there is more possibility there the chances of success are more. For knowing your target audience you have to do research, study, and understand the customer database. Understand different factors like their geography and demography, and then study and follow their activities. Then and prepare the pitch accordingly in a personalized manner. This will contribute to more conversions of leads into customers.

Best Cold Calling Software

Twilio Auto Dialer for SuiteCRM

Twilio Auto Dialer product allows you to automatically call and auto-generate calls from a list of phone numbers. It also provides the Click to Call functionality in the CRM. The admin can manage multiple phone numbers. Here the user can automatically dial another contact immediately after the Twilio call has been disconnected. This saves a lot of time for professionals as they can talk to their customers and leads without any delay or disturbance. The work of navigating the records and dialing a phone number will be done by the plugin itself. It can manage multiple calls at the same time. This enhances the quality and productivity of their work. It also keeps your conversations safe.

Features of Cold Calling Software

• It also gives an option of default phone no.
• You can also record the conversations and hear them anytime. Employees generally use these recorded conversations to make important notes.
• It has a power dialer through which you can call multiple numbers and view them on the screen and account.
• Other than call centers this plugin is also of great importance in sales and marketing, banking, etc.
• In order to install this plugin you need to have a Twilio account and a number that has a balance.
• It is compatible with almost all modules of SuiteCRM and SugarCRM.

Conclusion

Just like many sales activities cold calling is also one of them where leads are contacted directly by the salespeople. And surprisingly this has a very high success rate if done properly with correct strategies. The ultimate goal of every business is to have more and more customers hence boosting their ROIs. Hence every business should also try this strategy to excel more.