I’m not exactly sure why people keep saying cold calling is dead, but I do have a theory… Marketing! That’s right! Marketing! Nothing else could possibly explain why so many people would say something that is obviously working for so many people is dead. Please allow me to elaborate for a minute. Most of us hate to cold call, and to be honest call for call it is not as productive as calling our qualified prospects. In a effort to squeeze additional efficiency out of our efforts most of us have Googled for articles looking for tips to get better, but have you ever Googled in frustration is cold calling dead (587,000 pages) or does cold calling work (1,490,000 pages)? When measured against the 17,900,000 pages for how to cold call it seems like a drop in the bucket, but seriously if you were a trainer or consultant looking to make the easy sale, what pitch would you choose? “I cat teach you how to make better cold calls.” or “Your right Mr. Sales Manager. What you have secretly thought all your life is correct! Cold calling does not work. Let me show you what to do instead”.
Cold calling does work, and I am going to share a few tips with you to be a bit more strategic and efficient.

When I am cold calling, I always start out by making a list of my top 50 companies I am not in but would like to be. Next, I prioritize that list based on a few criteria such as geography, how bad do I want into THIS account, what is the potential return, and do I already have contacts that could get me in. Once I have this list stack ranked 1-50 I take the top 10 and do a little research about the company, industry etc, and create a file for it. Finally, I start searching my LinkedIn network for people I know in those companies to see if I have a friend or contact that is already connected to my key decision maker and ask for a introduction (Yay! Luke warm call!); if not I will search for someone who is close to the key decision maker, and initiate contact with them and work my way to them.

They key to success in cold calling is practice, persistence, and patience. Remember you are not trying to close the sale; you are trying to get the opportunity to make it.

In parting I want to remind you that while cold calling is a highly effective method of gaining new clients and in the words of the great Wayne Gretzky “You miss 100% of the shots you never take!”

-Brad

Popularity: 25% [?]

You have started up and have something business and businesses need. So there you are, with a big pile of ideas, an offering that will take the world by storm…and um….and um…a phone book?

Why do we spend so much time on everything from products and services to marketing slicks, then arm our reps with a list and a prayer? Sure we give them SalesForce.com, some guidance in handling objections, and what questions to ask. We may even hand them some important stories from other users of our offerings and a greeat pitch or two.

What is rare, and we are talking plutonium rare, is actually helping them figure out who to sell to. If you are going to call somone cold, it is impportant to make sure you are adressing the following:

1. They are at the right pay grade. Pitching new ideas means talking to the right person. The CEO does not care about the kind of tape they use in the warehouse, and a purchasing agent does not have the authority to gut the companies computer system. If you pitch to the right person, then the message is heard, if not, well…

2. They work for a company that can use what you sell. Again, you cannot sell packing tape to a services company, well maybe a roll a year. The industry matters.

3.  The size matters. A small business is not going to buy a giant financial planning system, and a corporate giant is going to want to take less risk.

From this study, you can now create a prsopect profile. This profile affords you an opportunity to hone your entry messaging and qualifying questions and tailor them to the ideal prospect.

Once you have managed to figure out the person to talk to, then what to say to them, you are left with the most daunting of tasks. You have to find them.

The tools of our new age, systems like LinkedIn, JigSaw, and SalesConx give you leverage and an ability to find information on these types of prospects. Do this homework and build lists of contacts,  sudenly the room will seem less chilly. If you invest in this excercise, while on the outside things may still seem cool, the efforts will start to show some warm patches ahead.

Popularity: 17% [?]

Anybody who knows me would concur with the statement that I am not the greatest orator in the world. I frequently don’t finish sentences, I am prone to stuttering and I have the unfortunate but frequent problem of forgetting words of the dictionary the split second before I need to use them in a sentence. Cold calling therefore wasn’t a job that I thought that I would have any talent in whatsoever, but which fate and necessity somehow contrived that I would at least try my hand at. Expecting to fail with excessive splendour I was pleasantly surprised to find that in fact the contrary was true and one thing is for sure, I learned a valuable lesson in human sociology from my time in cold calling sales.

Cold calling did and still does give me a cold sweat as it does a lot of people, because most of us have a fear of rejection. We assume that the next person we call is going to be verbally abusive and demeaning to our character, we think of the worst case scenario where the response is cursing, indignation and a slamming down of the phone – all of which is a personal attack on our character. As with every type of fear, this exaggeration is what paralyses us to avoid action, but the truth of it is that your fears are never what they seem.

I will say this; I have never had as many long and enjoyable conversations with people that I did not know as when I was cold calling. Never would I contemplate spending an hour on the phone with someone that I will never meet – but I did, and it was a rewarding experience. In fact, the majority of people that I spoke to, even the ones who did not want to be sold to, or who were busy were courteous and nice. Yes, there were a few, who were rude and hung up, but when that happened no earthquakes materialised, nor did I curl up in a ball and cry with hurt. You see, in general, most people are quite nice. I know this contradicts with what you see on the news and in the newspapers, but that is how I see it. Most people are perfectly decent human beings, and don’t want to shout and scream and sacrifice effigies in your likeness for interrupting their very busy lives.

Us humans are social animals and want to form relationships and that is what cold-calling should be about – forming relationships. Relationships of all kinds are based on mutual understanding, trust and dialogue. Through the telephone there can be nothing but dialogue and finding the mutual understanding and trust between callers is based on good old social skills that we as a species have developed over millennia. The majority of connections that I made were a lot down to being a friendly sincere person who was willing to talk. Incidentally, when I did stutter, I found in some cases this turned out to be an icebreaker – you see, with the fear that every cold caller has in making a call there is someone who fears getting one. The majority of which are allayed of their fear when they realise that they are speaking to a human being.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Does Cold Calling Work for Professional Services?
In his landmark book “Managing the Professional Services Firm”, leading professional services guru David Maister labels cold calling as a third-tier “desperation” measure.

Can Maister be wrong? Certainly the vast majority of professionals intensely dislike cold calling and are more than eager to accept the many pronouncements that “cold calling doesn’t work”.

But the reality is that many professional service firms and sole practitioners have used cold calling very successfully to grow their practices.

For example, the firm where I began my career, Gemini Consulting (and its predecessor United Research) fuelled its phenomenal growth in the 90s primarily through cold calling. It used a dedicated “Strategic Executive Relationship Building” team to place calls with senior executives to get meetings for Gemini’s business developers – and it worked exceptionally well.

So the question should not be “does cold calling work?” – but instead “when does it work?” and “how do you make it work?”.

When Does Cold Calling Work Best?
Cold calling in professional services is almost always geared towards getting a meeting with a prospective client. And it will always be, to some degree, a numbers game. While it makes sense to make the call as warm as possible, and to try to target calls to people most likely to be responsive to what you have to sell; there will always be a huge element of the unknown. Most importantly, the key variable is whether the person you call will have a need for your services. And the more pressing the need, the more likely you will be to get a meeting.

That means that cold calling will be more suitable for some services than others. If your service is one that target companies are likely to need most of the time, or if the time that they need to use it is “visible” from the outside – then cold calling is much more likely to be a valuable tactic than if not.

For example, if your expertise is in helping companies to reduce the cost of their external purchases then most companies will have an ongoing need for your services – unless they have just completed a similar programme. In contrast, if your expertise is in helping companies identify acquisition targets – that is a service that fewer companies need, and those that do only need it relatively infrequently.

A cold call for the first service is much more likely to result in a receptive audience than the second. In fact, the chances of reaching a potential client with a pressing need for your services (without the benefit of insider information to guide your targeting) is so unlikely in the second case that it would normally render cold calling economically unviable (although in this case, for high value potential clients, it could be the initial step in an ongoing “nurture marketing” campaign to get front-of-mind with the target client when they do come to need the service).

Another example of a service suitable for cold calling is where the “trigger event”* which drives the need for the service is externally visible. For example, if your service is post-merger integration, or advising companies on recent legislation changes – these events are usually visible to the service provider from outside the prospect – and so can be used to guide the timing and targeting of a successful cold calling campaign.

In the case of Gemini Consulting, the service offer was “solving a ‘red issue’ via business transformation”. The ‘red issue’ was the business problem that kept the executive awake at night and business transformation was a holistic twist on the prevailing hot topic of re-engineering that most companies in the 90s were interested in. The Executive Relationship team did enough homework and were business-savvy enough to be able to identify a number of potential topics that the executive might be worried about – and to engage them in a brief discussion about those topics.

Essentially they did enough to pique the executives interest to secure a meeting with a partner/business developer who was then able to question the client face-to-face to identify what their ‘red issue’ really was – and to position the firm as being able to address it. So the service being sold was general enough that – as long as an issue or big problem could be found – a meeting could be secured.

Alternative Approaches to Cold Calling
Another key determinant in “When Does Cold Calling Work Best?” is the effectiveness of alternative marketing and sales tactics.

Referrals and networking can often be a more effective method than cold calling in identifying a warm prospect and gaining the credibility to secure a face to face meeting. But for many firms and especially sole practitioners who are essentially in start-up mode with no established customers or referral network, they are often not a viable option.

Similarly, public speaking and article writing are two highly effective marketing techniques for professional services – but both have long lead times; and are not a viable option for those who don’t have the skill or experience in speaking and writing to make them work.

So sometimes, cold calling is the only viable option to gain short-term sales.

How Do You Make Cold Calling Work?
With professional services, the target client often does not fully understand the depth of their issues and challenges. And because of the intangible nature of professional services; they find it difficult to properly evaluate and establish your credibility as a supplier. So when selling professional services it’s vital to enter into a dialogue to explore the client’s problem to help them discover its true impact and causes. And it’s vital to demonstrate your value, credibility and trustworthiness to the client during the selling process – otherwise they will not build up the confidence to allow you to “take care of their baby”.

Unfortunately, cold calling itself does not inherently help with these factors. Simply calling up to ask for a meeting does nothing to identify the clients problems and their impact – and does not demonstrate value, credibility or trustworthiness to the client.

The cold-calling approaches which work best for professional services are the ones which do allow these two factors to be addressed.

So an effective cold call will be one which:

• Delivers value to the client in the call itself – or more likely offers immediate value from the meeting to be arranged (for example, discussion of a relevant research study, case examples from similar clients, or details of upcoming legislation changes affecting the client)
• Allows an exploratory dialogue about the client’s business challenges to take place which both qualifies the client (allowing them to “hold their hand up” to express interest) and allows the professional to role-model what it will be like to work with them in future: insightful questions, good interpersonal skills, modesty, candour, etc.
• Gives the client confidence that the professional can be trusted – for example through subtle third-party referencing or simply the way the professional handles themselves throughout the call

For these reasons, it is usually more effective in the professional makes the cold call themselves. A highly skilful telesales person – as in the case of the Gemini Executive Relationship Building team – will be able to position the value and qualify the client – but an interaction with them will not help inform the client what it will be like working with the professional as much as talking to the professional themself will.

Of course, if the professional has a poor telephone manner, or a real phobia of cold calling; then they won’t do a good job of this either – and so it would be best to leave it to a third party. And sometimes the skills of a third party – who is used to cold calling for a living – can outweigh the specific knowledge and capabilities of the professional themselves. But even then, they need to be not only skilful at cold calling, but also knowledgeable about the firm, its clients, and its services – and able to leave “the right impression”.

Warming Up the Call
In addition to the way the call itself is handled, the more that can be done beforehand to make the call “warm” the better. This could include:

• Using your existing client and contact base to at least make a connection to the target client
• Researching the client and their company beforehand to identify potential business issues that might be of interest
• Sending relevant thought leadership material in advance to establish credibility – and maybe even getting them to call you
• Calling other people in the company as “entry points” to get their opinions (for example to confirm or reshape initial hypotheses about the client’s top business issues) and get a referral to the client themselves
• Working positively with the client’s gatekeeper to ensure a “positive mention” when the call is set up

The Importance of Attitude
Another key factor in making a cold call a success is the attitude with which it is made. Professionals sell mainly to senior executives – but senior executives hate to be “sold to”. A professional who makes a call with the need to sell uppermost in his or her mind is likely to trigger defensiveness in the client. Paradoxically, a professional is much more likely to make a sale if they make the call with an objective of finding out if a client really needs their services, and if so of beginning to form a productive business relationship.

Cold Calling Works for Professionals – If you do it Right
In summary: cold calling may not be suitable for every professional service firm – but let’s be clear: for the right firms, at the right time, and done in the right way; it can be a huge driver of profitable growth.

* For more on Trigger Events see Craig Elias’ SHiFT Selling Blog

Popularity: 19% [?]

If there is an upside to being an insomniac it is opportunity to watch endless infomercials that allow you to loose weight without doing any work, just a few minutes only a few times a week, and you can accomplish what professional athletes need hour to accomplish. A lot like the ads and e-mail sales people get from gurus telling them how they will make tons of sales without “ever making a cold call”!

The reality is that if you are in B2B sales, you will have to make cold calls!

People give all kinds of reasons why they don’t want to cold call; top on the list is “fear of rejection”. Sorry don’t buy it, the average rep closes one of every 5 or 6 prospects they engage, roughly 16% – 20%. The average rep that has a systematic process cold calling has a similar hit rate; in fact many of my clients are converting 20% to 25% of the cold call conversations to appointments or sales calls. I never hear a rep say they don’t like to do proposals due to a fear of rejection.

How is it that it is not as bad being rejected by someone you have worked with for several weeks, someone for whom you have utilized resources and time for, strategizing and acting for the business, only to end up with nothing at the end? Yet someone who you spend three minutes on the phone with, say no thanks, and it’s the end of the world.

The difference is how the reps see things and what influences that view. Most of it is on a purely emotional level. Lets’ take a look at a couple of key areas that can be easily overcome.

What people emotionally believe their prospect base to be triggers their urgency to prospect!

If the pipeline looks full, well there is a lesser need to prospect, cause “look at all the things I have to close”. The question is what is the pipeline full of? Or as we are known to ask “What’s in Your Pipeline?”

Along with this is the fact that most reps do not have a true systematic process for cold calling like they may have for other parts of the process. A major reason they have success in the later part of the sale is the fact that they have a system a process or both. This gives them a sense of confidence, direction and resolve to execute the sale. The fact that they do not have the same for cold calling leaves them with a dread, and the knowledge that without a system/process they are likely to fail. If failure is inevitable they will not want to do it, in fact they are afraid because they know they will fail. No one wants to fail, and it is easier to avoid than to fail.

If they had a process, they would be focused on executing and dealing with both the upside and downside accordingly. But without a plan, a process or a system, there is only the dreard of failure, which ultimately people will do many things to avoid, including signing up for a “never cold call again” promise. Just like the overweight insomniac who has a basement full of ab flatteners, thigh squeezers, butt busters and more.

Popularity: 17% [?]

For many in sales, cold calling is the most dreaded portion of the selling process. But you can improve your cold calling effectiveness if you focus on strategies to improve your outcomes.

Here are four tips for improving your cold calling results:

1. Schedule it.

Too many sales professionals leave cold calling as a task to be done only when they “have time.” Since salespeople often don’t “make time,” cold calling often gets overlooked until the prospect funnel is nearly empty, and then it’s too late…you’re going to miss opportunities because of that blank section of your funnel. Keep cold calling on your front-burner. Schedule it like any other appointment, and don’t be too quick to let other things take precedence over your cold calling “appointments.”

2. Create a goal.

Haphazard or random cold calling without a clear goal is less likely to yield results than a when it’s done with a clear and specific goal in mind. Your goal may be the number of dials in any given period, or the number of talk-to’s in any given period, or some other measurement, but define what your goal is and a time frame for that goal, and you’ll achieve better results.

3. Record a dozen cold calls.

If you live in a state where the law allows the recording of a phone call (and your prospect is in a state where the local laws allow it), record twelve calls, then sit down with a notepad and paper and listen carefully to each call. A recording is the only way you can achieve a third-person perspective on your calls. Identify what wasn’t working and what was working. Take special note of your prospect’s reactions to your approach. Did they react the way you thought you did? Or differently? Sometimes a recorded call will sound very different from the way you remember it. Your goal is to identify opportunities for improvement by listening to your content, your vocal presentation, your pace, your volume, and dozens of other variables. To fine tune your approach, you need to know what you really sound like to your callers, so get out that recorder or software and press that record button.

4. Practice.

Rehearse your opening line or other facets of your calls over and over again. You must sound natural and comfortable, but you’ve also got to reconfigure ineffective verbiage. Often, salespeople who don’t make sufficient effort to rehearse end up winging it, and for the vast majority of sales professionals, winging it does not yield superior results. A well-crafted interaction will give you the opportunity to shine while your competitors are stumbling around during their calls to your prospects.

Popularity: 10% [?]

I have to admit the thought of cold calling sends shivers down my spine… I don’t think it’s the thought of having to sit in a cold room… or the thought of sitting in a refrigerator… or even having to sit in the open ice desert of Antarctica making calls that send the shivers down my spine. It’s the thought of having to make calls to unsuspecting and broadly unappreciative prospective customers that does the trick.

Antarctica could probably claim to be the largest desert in the world. It is a cold, barren, lonely place. Only penguins, fur seals, mosses, lichen and algae survive for any length of time… and it is probably the intelligence level of the algae that many of the unappreciative recipients of the cold call associate with the cold caller… which makes cold calling as comfortable as the isolated and hostile environment of Antarctica.

To survive the delights of Antarctica you need to make it a warmer place to be and that’s no different to what you need to do if you want to survive the delights of cold calling… unless of course you are a penguin. Penguins delight and thrive in the cold barren hostile environments… but then who wants to be a penguin… apart from smelling of fish you could be nothing more than fodder for packs of hungry seals. So, perhaps cold calling is looking to be a bit friendlier than it once was!

So how do you make cold calling warmer? First of all less is more. Less calling, more researching… Antarctica is now home to 4,000 people all doing researching, so they survive the cold and therefore researching must keep you warm… Okay… it’s one of my more tenuous links… but the point is a serious one. Research your customer… find out what issues they are addressing… link what you do to help solve their issues. Do your research and you have something specific to talk about… you are also opening the conversation with something of interest to your potential customer… their business issues. You are no longer talking about yourself, but you are talking about them… it’s getting warmer!

Having researched your prospective customer’s business issues and developed an approach that shows you can help, you now need to find someone to talk to. This is often as difficult as finding what to talk about. I think we all know that calling at the top is the best place to go… but you are often faced with the gate keepers… large cold mountains that are impossible to get past… and the only way is go above them. So here’s a tip I picked up in my past, can’t remember where from, but it works. First but a share, you only need one, in the company you are targeting. Now call investor relations, explain you are a shareholder and you wish to talk to the company secretary. They have to talk to you… you are a shareholder… there will be no cold large mountains blocking your way. Explain that you have some concerns about… business issue x… and you want to know what they are doing to address the issue. The company secretary will not be able to answer your query, they will have to pass you on to a high ranking officer who can. You now have direct access from the top to the person you need to talk to. The company secretary has suggested that you call director y… they have to take your call. Now it’s over to you and your skills.

Take the route I have suggested and I assure you your cold calling environment will be a lot warmer and friendlier place to be… but remember… fortes fortuna adiuvat… fortune favours the brave.

Popularity: 9% [?]

There are very few professional sellers who enjoy the cold call. If you are the one in a thousand who actually can’t wait to dial a stranger’s number and try to convince her to do business. .. . then this article isn’t really for you.

This article is for those who have tried cold calling – hey you aren’t afraid! – but have dismissed it as a poor return on the time invested. When your job is to develop business you’ve got to call strangers, so the question isn’t whether or not you should make cold calling a part of your strategy – you must! – but to figure out ways to make it more worthwhile.

To get a better return on your investment when making cold calls you must first understand that those people on the receiving end hate the cold call as much as you do. They hate it because the time spent talking to those who cold call is usually a waste of time. They end up hearing elevator pitches that sound the same as everyone else’s or they’re compelled to spend time educating the caller about the way they do business.

So, the way to make the cold call more effective is to make it less painful for the recipient. Here are three few tips for doing that:

1) Do your research before you call. This is not the time to ask about “needs” or “pain points”

2) Find a legitimate business reason to call and tell them what it is early in the call

3) Mention common associates. If you seem like less of a stranger you’ll get more of a shot.

There are many more ways to make the cold call less painful for the recipient but I hope these three tips will help you be more effective this week!

Popularity: 11% [?]