In this video, we discuss a step-by-step process for cold calling. Cold calling businesses can be challenging but rewarding in B2B sales. When done right, it opens doors to new opportunities and potential partnerships. To help you navigate cold calling effectively, we’ve created a step-by-step guide that will not only make your calls smoother but also increase your chances of success.
Step 1: Open the Call
The first step in the process for cold calling businesses is to open the call. When you open the call, your natural instinct will likely be to focus on generating a lead and getting a new customer. Try to resist that instinct and focus more on these goals:
- Establish the call: Before thinking about selling your product, just focus on what you can do (or avoid doing) to simply get the call going and established.
- Minimize guardedness: To establish more cold calls, minimize how much of the prospect’s guard you trigger. Decreasing how much you sound like a salesperson trying to sell something will immediately decrease guardedness and objections.
- Buy a short window of time: In order to go through this cold call process, or any cold call process, it can help to buy a short window of time from the prospect.
Step 2: Share the Purpose of the Call
The next step is to state the purpose of your call. And since technically you are a salesperson who is trying to sell something, the purpose of your call could be to:
- Introduce yourself and your company
- Schedule an appointment or meeting
- Learn about the prospect’s needs
- Share details about your product
- Sell your product to the prospect
But since you don’t want to sound like a salesperson, try to avoid saying anything that’s even close to those. What we want to do is spin the purpose of the call in the best way without being dishonest or misleading, and you can use either your value points, pain points, or a customer example for that.
Step 3: Use a Sales Takeaway
One thing that can help with how to cold call businesses is to share a sales takeaway at the beginning of the call with something like:
I do not know if you need what we provide.
I do not know if you are a good fit with what we do.
I do not know if we can help you in the same way.
I do not know if you want to improve those areas.
I do not know if you are concerned about those areas.
I do not know if you are the right person to speak with.
I do not know if it makes sense for us to talk.
Step 4: Ask Good Questions
The next step in the process for cold calling is to ask a few questions. This will not only help you learn about the prospect and get them more engaged in the conversation, but if your questions identify an area for improvement, it will provide justification for closing the prospect on the conversation.
Your pain questions and current state questions will fit well here, as they are very efficient and effective at learning what is going on with the prospect and finding any areas where you might be able to help.
Step 5: Share Common Pain Points
Your initial strategy will be to use questions to identify areas where the prospect might be in pain. But if your questions don’t uncover any areas for improvement, you can go more direct and share the pain points your product or service helps with, and ask the prospect if they have any of those challenges.
Step 6: Introduce Your Product and Company
When working through the process for cold calling, if you identify a reason to talk more, you can begin moving toward closing. But before you do, you want to build a little more interest, and you can do that in this step, where you share some key, more powerful details about your product and company.
Step 7: Close for Next Sales Process Step
The last step in our cold calling process is to go for the close. And remember that we are not closing for the purchase of the product. We are closing for the next step in the sales process, which should be talking more in the form of an appointment or meeting.
We hope this process provides some new ideas for your cold calling efforts!
