Successful Cold Calling Techniques

By Niall Devitt


While are some who believe that cold calling is no longer relevant, my opinion remains that if you apply the right approach and techniques, cold calling is still a effective method of generating sales meetings.
Successful Cold Calling Strategy
I recommend a higher quality lower number calling strategy as opposed to most cold calling, which involves high numbers of calls with little of no quality. In simple terms, this means replacing time spent calling with researching and call planning. Another important reason why I personally promote this approach is that making high numbers of unsuccessful calls is in my opinion both a bad use of valuable selling time and morale wrecking.
Pre-Call Planning
Research is in my opinion is the single biggest fundamental to your success during the call. When researching, you are looking for a piece of information that helps you to introduce yourself and product, grab attention and be taken seriously by the prospect. Don't just go with a lazy general company overview but rather look for something specific. While common information sources such as the papers and the Internet can prove valuable, it's often worth digging a little deeper.
Before I call a high level decision maker I am very interested in getting a meeting with, I will call the some of the sales team beforehand, introduce myself and tell them exactly what I do. They often provide me with inside knowledge about the prospect and the business that proves invaluable when it later comes to actually ringing the prospect.
The prospect's attention span will only last in seconds when you call and really good research allows you to quickly give an initial sense that you understand their business. This helps to prolong their attentions and allows you to quickly move from introduction to two-way conversation.
One Objective
Another important consideration before you call is the actual objective; in this case the aim of the call is to secure a sales meeting not to sell your product. Remember if your company believed your products could be sold over the phone, they would have hired a telesales team.
The purpose of this call will be to develop an avenue during the conversation that allows you to introduce a meeting. Timing and information is key, too soon with too little information and you will be trying to force a meeting, give too much information and the prospect may feel like he or she is in a position to make a quick judgement before you have had a chance to demonstrate the full value of your products. Remind yourself before you call; my objective is to get a meeting, no more no less.
Personally even where the prospect indicates that there is unlikely to be any current need for my services, I will often continue to seek out a meeting for two important reasons, one, a meeting affords me a much better chance to develop any potential sale no matter how small the prospect's needs appear to be at this stage and two, a meeting gives me an opportunity to introduce my services so that I will be one of the first points of contacts should the current situation change.
Conversation Flow
Listen to the vast majority of cold calls you can easily observe that the conversation flow is desperately lopsided. Just because the prospect is allowing you to continue to talk doesn't mean that the conversation is going anywhere, more often what's happening is he or she is waiting for you to say something that allows them to easily end the conversation.
Effective communication skills particularly over the phone where you don't have the benefit of observing body language etc. depends very much on their responses. Good questioning technique is the best way to achieve this; 50/50 conversation flows is good but aim to encourage them to give as much information as you can. Again being constantly aware of your objective, when a good opportunity arises to introduce a potential meeting, don't wait to be asked, go for it.
Beyond the Boardroom
Beyond the Boardroom is a leading business development consultancy and training provider based in Ireland. Working in the areas of recruitment, training and sales & marketing
http://www.btbtraining.com
About the Author
Niall Devitt is a training consultant, business mentor and facilitator. With over a decade of experience working as senior sales manager and trainer for some of Ireland's top companies his expertise lies in creating and implementing performance driven sales programmes. Niall is regularly asked to contribute business articles and his advice has been published through the National Press and broadcast on Radio.
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