Seven Tips to Improve Cold Calling for Lead Generation
In spite of the fact that in the past pushy salespeople and poorly trained marketers have tarnished the image of the phone, I still believe that reaching out via phone is a very effective lead generation tool.
Studies by leading marketing research firms like MarketingSherpa show that 92% of B2B buyers are open to cold calls if the sales person is relevant. However, to ensure success, cold-calling needs to be part of a holistic lead generation strategy.
How to Get Started:
To truly use phone calls as an effective lead generation strategy, I recommend you create a specialized sales development team within the sales or marketing group or hire a firm that specializes in teleprospecting. Make certain that your cold-calling is aligned with other ongoing marketing and reputation-building activities.Teleprospectors must be smart, articulate, engaging and organized. Their training should focus on making them a consistently productive and sustainable extension of the selling effort.
The phone is the human touch of your lead nurturing program and thus every opportunity including cold calling to a potential customer should be treated with great respect. Each time you pick up the phone, whether it be the first call or subsequent calls, it’s important to create value by giving your prospects useful information in digestible, bite-size chunks.
Steps for Improving “Teleprospecting” Performance:
Step 1: Sustain the calling – be in it for the long haul. Teleprospecting works best if it’s long term and consistent. Don’t pressure your prospects to make a decision on the first call. Take your time and follow-up with more information. Listen to what they’re asking and if you don’t know the answer, let them know that and follow up again with them to provide them the answer
Step 2: Make every call count - Teleprospectors should never terminate a call upon hearing the targeted individual is not available. Imagine taking time to be helpful to the assistant or updating and verifying your database by working to share information for this source. Always ask if there is an alternative decision maker available as well.
Step 3: Throw away the scripts: Telemarketers use scripts. Teleprospectors use call guides. Scripts leave little room for conversation. Call guides are strong outlines to perpetuate conversation with areas to be discussed and questions to be asked. They must be built with flexibility and assume variable outcomes while still staying on message and promoting key relevancies to the customer.
Step 4: Respect the Executive Assistants - Don’t view the EA as a barrier to initiating dialogue. Executive assistants can occupy a significant place in the sphere of influence, not to mention the boss’s ear. Don’t treat them as lesser and don’t be afraid to develop a relationship with people titled “assistant.”
Step 5: Always be relevant and über-informed - When you’re making a call the worst thing you can do is to call someone and know nothing about them. You must have a sound working knowledge of each potential customer and the company and most importantly, the issues they face and how your product can help solve them. This personal interest goes a long way in establishing meaningful dialogue.
Step 6: Gain opt-in - When you are speaking with a prospect it is proactive to request permission to e-mail subsequent helpful information. More often than not, the answer will be in the affirmative, which provides another building block for staying in touch.
Step 7: Always follow-up - It is crucial that you follow up in a way that is precise in terms of promptness and relevancy toward your prospect’s needs. Keep in mind when you follow up that you also need to ensure you do so in the manner requested. If they decline a follow up phone call, but ask you to email them then make certain you do so.
Teleprospecting is a much more rewarding way to reach out and initiate contact with prospective clients. By providing engaging and meaningful conversation you are also building the bridge to a much longer relationship. In sales, a bridge always enables taking another step toward a client/customer relationship.
Related post:
10 Lead Generation (Prospecting) Tips for Sales People
Here's some other blogs that focus on the using the phone to generate leads:
Art Sobczak's Telesales Blog
Inside Sales Experts Blog
Inside Sales Telesales Tips Blog
Life in the Telebusiness Trenches
Wendy Weiss ~ The Queen of Cold Calling
Comments
This is a great post!
Posted by: coldcloser | April 14, 2009 10:03 PM
Timely reminders here of some of the fundamentals. Balance tenacity with respect and ensure consistent activity levels.
Thank you Brian for the contribution and also to Edward Williams III of Cold Closing University for the link.
Posted by: Shaun Gisbourne | April 16, 2009 10:26 PM