1. Do Your Research

Before you even pick up the phone, make sure you know as much as possible about the person or company you’re calling. This will help your conversation flow more naturally and give you a better idea of what they might be interested in. You can also use some of the information to set up a more in-depth call if it seems like they might be interested.

Researching your leads is one of the most important steps in any sales process, so don’t skip it!

Don’t just focus on the company website – look for their social media profiles too. This will help you get a more complete picture and learn about their interests.

You can also find out who the decision-maker is at the company by looking into the public information around them. This will help keep your call personalized and relevant to the person’s job title on the other line.

2. Be Concise and Clear on Your Call To Action

When you’re introducing yourself, follow a simple script so that your potentials know exactly what to expect from this conversation. If they don’t understand how their involvement could help their business, they’re not going to be interested in talking to you. Keep your goals clear and concise so that there’s no confusion on either side.

Be sure also to have a specific call to action prepared so people know what you want from them. Do you want them to visit your website? Request a proposal? Set up a time for a deeper call? Let them know so you can reach your goal.

If you’re following up on a previous conversation, be sure to reference it in your introduction. This can help jog their memory and show that you’re knowledgeable about their business.

3. Don’t Underestimate the Importance of Following Up

Once you’ve set up the call, follow-up is just as important. Don’t let your leads get lost in the shuffle!

Be sure to send a thank-you note after your initial conversation that includes some helpful information for them if they’re interested. You can also include links to other relevant content or social media profiles so it’s easy for them to get in touch without needing your information again.

Follow up regularly if they don’t respond right away, and be sure that you’re providing something of value each time you reach out. If they like what you have to offer but still aren’t interested, maybe it’s not a good fit for their business after all. But you’ll never know without following through.

4. Call Again and Again

According to a study by Gartner, salespeople call on average 18 times before even connecting with a prospect. That means you can’t give up if they don’t pick up the first dozen times.

The more often you call, the higher your chances of a successful conversation with a real lead who’s ready to buy. Never give up on cold calls too easily. In this profession, persistence is key.

5. Keep Questions Open-Ended

To keep your conversation natural, avoid using questions that can be answered with a simple “yes” or “no”. Instead, try to ask open-ended ones so they have the opportunity to share more information.

This will help you stay engaged in the call and gather valuable details about their business needs for later steps in your sales process. You can even use their responses to steer the conversation in the direction you want it to go.

Enlist Professionals

From the tone of your voice to the quality of your script, a lot goes into the perfect cold call. And while you can always practice and improve on your own, enlisting professional cold calling companies(y) is another option that will help you take things to the next level. If over-the-phone sales are important to your business model, enlisting experts will get everything up and running more quickly, and with considerable results.

These are just a few tips to help you land more sales through cold calling. By following these simple guidelines, you’ll be on your way to more successful conversations with potential leads.

Written By, Sierra Powell, Email ID: sierrapowellwriter@gmail.com

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Understand the changes

Buyers whether corporates or individuals have become conscious of social distancing and have been avoiding in-person interactions. They prefer exploring choices and listening to their peer groups and other influencers to meeting a salesperson and hearing a pitch from him or her. If a consumer used to buy some goods from a retailer or consume some service at a favourite place, the habits and preferences are changing. People are shifting to online modes, home delivery or avail at home. If one has to busy something like a house or a car, many have preferred to delay the purchase or buy it through remote interactions. Such changes have been quite significant around the world. McKinsey and Co have published a research report in October 2020 about the changes in consumer behaviours.

Leaders have to listen to their salesforce who have adapted to the new normal painstakingly and are in closest contact with the buyers – existing as well as prospective. They have to see the patterns emerging for their industry and specifically for their company. Accordingly, they need to orchestrate the changes needed in their sales efforts.

Tweak the methods

The markets have shrunk but there is certainly a way to improvise one’s methods and win a larger pie of the smaller market. Traditionally many organisations focused on branding, advertising, supply chain and promotional efforts rather than looking at the possible improvements in selling and its effectiveness. However, in the current context, one has to focus on these two aspects seriously.

We have to invest efforts and time in raising the capability of our salesforce. Secondly, we need to listen to all their inputs, work upon those inputs and evaluate the ideas and suggestions put forth by them. This is critical because the traditional methods need a change now; moreover, these changes have to be in alignment with the changes happening in the marketplace. For example, the consumer value proposition might have to be tweaked and the salesforce needs to know the revised value proposition so that they can leverage upon it to secure more sales.

There could be opportunities for discovering new markets. For example, hotels and restaurants have faced serious challenges due to a severe decline in demand for their services. Some of them have innovated a new way of engaging with their customers, taking orders on the phone and through various Apps, serving food and beverages at the customers’ doorsteps. This new segment has suddenly emerged and has helped them generate some revenues. Similarly, the market for video conferencing has skyrocketed; the same is the case for various other e-commerce platforms. Companies that did not have a strong e-commerce channel, have built their own or tied up with other forces in the market to sell their wares and generate revenues.

Companies that relied on walk-in customers or B2B selling methods such as in-person meetings have to discover new methods of delivering a similar experience to their customers through alternate channels such as video calls, phone calls, apps, direct mails and digital advertising.

Time to integrate and innovate

As long as the pandemic stays alive, well-being will continue to remain significant in every setting we walk into. Organisations have to recognise this and weave it into their practices. Salesforce being the face of the organisation must feel proud of their belongingness to their organisation and as a result, they deliver superior service and excellent value to the customers. Sales will naturally outperform!

This is the time to strengthen the social and emotional capital in the hearts and minds of the employees. Leaders have to integrate these into their day to day running of the business. And at the same time, they have to innovate ways of engaging with their workforce and developing them in the context of remote-working.

Leaders hold the key to boost the morale of the salesforce, raise their capabilities, reinforce their tools and improvise the methods which ultimately yield lasting value for the customers.

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Firstly, it’s preparing for it. I must be sure that I qualify to win this and I need it. This is the first step where I have a sense of purpose and am self-confident. Then the next step is to get into the other person’s shoes and think ‘why me’. What could convince the other person that my thoughts and actions are beneficial for him or her?

I have seen many people going wrong in this step. We go on describing what we can and who we are. More often than not, our pitch is standardized, a copy-paste version of the previous pitches and appears as pure as the technical specifications of a phone or the composition of a medicine.

We forget that all these information could be an assault on the other person and turn him off! It doesn’t matter to him who I am, what I think and what I am capable of. What matters is the needs and thoughts of the other person.

It is easier said than done. It requires a lot of practice and preparation to give priority to the other person. Hence, it’s critical that we discover the needs and thoughts of the listener. We can do this by  knowing more about the listener – his background, his context and his priorities. Our speech and our pitch note needs to be prepared keeping all this research in mind. The battle is half-won if we prepare this well. Our idea needs to be packaged in a way that appeals and interests our target audience.

Secondly,  striking a rapport with the target audience makes life easy. Several times, a buyer obliges the seller in buying the product and rejects competing offers. Again it is not easy but can be done well by practice. One has to make a genuine attempt in knowing the other person and finding some common ground such as areas of interest or a reference or education or the place one lives at or the companies one worked in. This builds trust and comfort for further interactions.

Last but not the least, it’s the tool that one uses to make the pitch. Most of the times, it’s a pdf or a ppt that people use to support the pitch. In the anxiety of packing all the information into the slide, people make it crowded and suffocating. What becomes further boring and impact-destroying is when they read the slides point by point. Experts recommend that pre-read can be circulated well in advance while the presentation can be merely a few pictures to describe the story. The pictures could be images, charts, a few numbers and fewer bullet points. For special occasions where the stakes are high, it is advisable to gather specific visuals, audios and videos to build a multi-media presentation that can support the story-telling. And, it’s important to note that most speakers cannot hold an audience beyond 10 minutes.

Hence, ‘why you’ should be a story that lasts less than 10 minutes and addresses the thoughts in the mind of your target audience. The story needs to be told after a level of rapport is built with the listeners. It’s an art that could take a lifetime to master!

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