Making a cold call is one of the more difficult things that a salesperson will need to do in their day. You are basically calling someone who is not expecting your call and they are going to be coming from a place where they likely do not want to talk with you. Not only can this make a salesperson have a level of call anxiety, but it also creates a situation where you fail more than you succeed.
That is the bad news. The good news is that there are very small changes that you can make to drastically reduce those challenges and greatly improve your results.
Have Some Type of Cold Call Script
Many people avoid using a and this can be for a couple of reasons. Either it is just laziness and they do not want to put a sales script together, they don’t want to take the time to learn a structured pitch, or they see a cold call script as something that only a junior-level salesperson uses and that they are above that.
The reality is that having some type of cold call script will greatly improve your results. And it does not need to be a complete script of a conversation written out. But at least a list of key questions you should ask and points that you should say will drastically improve your interactions while sales prospecting.
Prepare for Objections
You are going to face some type of objection on every call that you make. And in most cases, they are the same regardless of what you are selling:
- I am busy right now.
- What is this in regards to?
- We are not interested.
- We do not have budget right now.
- We already use somebody today.
- Just send me some information.
Do you know how you will respond to those? Do you have a response in mind that will stand to keep the cold call going? Being able to answer “yes” to those two questions will immediately improve your results.
Have Your Pre-Qualifying Questions
There are characteristics that make someone a good prospect versus a bad prospect. You can develop pre-qualifying questions to determine if the prospect has these characteristics.
When you have this list of questions, you can then ask these on your cold call. This will not only help you to filter out bad prospects, but it will also make your cold call better by making it more conversational.
Have a Call Cadence
When you cold call, one of your biggest challenges is just getting the prospect on the phone. Because of this, you don’t just call a prospect once. You have to have some sort of cadence or rhythm in how you approach calling them multiple times until you get the prospect on the phone.
SalesScripter will help you with how to improve your cold call.