COLD CALLING DO'S AND DON'TS - Beard Marketing Solutions

beardmarketingsolutions.com

COLD CALLING

DO’S AND

DON’TS


Cold calling. How does it work? What does it do? Does

it still work? How we can do it better, and what goes on

from there? I have been doing sales for a little over 20

years, both in-home sales (door-to-door sales), as well as

over the phone and digital marketing.

We want to make sure you’re successful when you are

going out and gathering clients.


Does It Work?I get asked this question quite a bit. When you think

about it, conventional wisdom tells us that the Jordan

Belfort way of aggressively cold calling like they did on

“The Wolf On Wall Street” has gone away. I don’t disa-

gree with that. 20 or 30 years ago when those wall street

guys were just cold calling people, they had different

technology. The buyer’s behavior was different. Trust

was easily explained over the phone because that’s how

people were used to doing it. However, recently with

everybody moving out into the digital marketing age

and the internet to make those buying decisions, selling

in a cold call at first glance might not be the way to go. It might seem obsolete, which is why I am not surprised

at all when I see on comments Facebook, YouTube, or I

get emails, that cold calling is dead and buried.


I, however, disagree. I think cold calling is not dead just

yet. I honestly believe that there are winning aspects

that can happen via cold outreach. It definitely will help you in this new relationship era that we’re currently in

right now. With that being said, you must know how to

do it for it to work for you correctly. So I’m going to break

down the current state of cold calling, how you guys can

either do it yourself or hire a sales rep, and that cold call-

ing can be a positive outreach.


The BreakdownLet’s look at numbers for the cold calling. Here is where

we get scientific about it because the debate about to call or not to call is the question of the day. It comes out

to be a fierce one. So let’s check out the significance of cold calling in 2018 to 2019 to 2020, and if it continues

being where it needs to. Marketingcharts.com pub-

lished both in October 2018 and in October of 2019

almost the exact same percentages. Referrals in 2018

rounded the top off at 77% of the top methods for sales.

Number two, however, was cold calls on the phone at

46%. Number three was group sales.

The webinars that groups like WP elevation, Mavericks,

and other groups hosted had 39% for reaching pros-

pects and selling. 30% went to trade shows, and 29%

went to social selling, which would be your Facebook

and your Instagram. 23% went into email campaigns,


13% went into drop-ins, where you stop in and talk to

somebody about doing their marketing or whatnot. 8%

went into the other category. The other category of 8%

hasn’t changed much between 2018 and 2019, which

leads us to believe that overall the selling aspects have

not changed. So the big takeaway that we should take

from here is that although cold calling does have its

bumps and bruises, the people that tell you it’s dead

have not told you the whole story.

Making calls. Doing those calls consistently has got to

be one of the top things when reaching out to people

and is essential to your sales. Reaching out to the warm

leads, the cold leads, everything… it all happens on the

phone. Now another surprising fact is that cold calls are

what 77% of buyers have responded positively to, along

with an email from a prospective vendor in the last 12

months. So taking those two workings together, cold

calls are still alive. Does cold calling work? Does cold

email work? Those are actually two different questions,

but they still overall have the same response factor.


What we are seeing in the industry right now with our

Done For You program that has our cold callers, cold

callers we train, or just other cold callers we work with,

we see people closing about 25% of unqualified leads over the phone and over 50% of qualified leads…50%. That is huge when you’re talking about digital market-

ing, where the conversion rate is so much lower than

conventional marketing. 25% to 50% is enormous when

it comes to unqualified and qualified leads.

Now I’m not gonna say that cold calls convert better

than a referral or even necessarily some digital market-

ing. However, you have to look at the variables that are

in there, to see how your cold outreach is going to work

and see what really happens to it. Because if you don’t

have a high-quality list, are those calls going to happen

for you? This is why most people think cold calls are

dead.


Remember, the majority of B2B decision-makers be-

lieve that sales reps are unprepared for sales calls.

This is another reason why it fails. You have to get your

people prepared. They’re not ready and they don’t know

how to do it, so they get very anxious and scared of that

cold call. So make sure that they’re prepared and have

done their training. Because if they’re not, that failure

falls on you as the owner of the company. So you need

to figure out the best way to train your sales teams. Then the reps can do better on their phones, have

better lists, have better equipment, systems, all of that.


Make it workInstead of saying, “Why will doing cold calling work for

me,” you should ask yourself, “How do I make cold call-

ing work?” Because 92% of customer interactions will

happen over the phone. Phones are still very valuable. If

you want success, set your sales rep up for success, and

do not give them unrealistic quotas. Keep your quotas

realistic. That allows them to crush it. Okay?


Do’s and Don’tsWe are going to talk about the dos and the do not’s of

cold calling. One of the first things that need to happen when you do cold calling is to make sure they’re warm

leads. Gone are the days where a cold caller could

pump out 200, 300, or 400 calls a day. Don’t do that to

your sales reps. Do not do that to your callers. Just set up

your callers to be successful and let them do a quick

warm-up process. How do you warm them up? Search

for them on LinkedIn. Look at if they’re Tweeting or is

there’s somewhere else the CEO posting. Is it Face-

book? Is it Instagram? Learn something about the com-

pany and person you are calling.


Do let your personality shine. I’m a very personable

person. I love talking to people, especially on the phone

and I let that show. I buy into what I sell, and because I

buy into it, I’m very happy. I’m not awkward and robotic.

I’m very warm. I have that personality, and it helps

engage your prospect. It goes a long way to crack the

jokes. Let them know that you’re not just going to try to

sell them.

You want to get to know them. You are sowing the

seeds of a relationship. Here are some starters you could

use. “I notice that in X city, you guys just had a big storm

come through. How is everything over there? Do you

guys have a lot of damage?” Number two. “Man, it is so

cold outside right now. I am surprised you made it to

work. But then again, we’re from the Midwest, so we’re

used to – 30 below as you know.” Things like that. Anoth-

er great one that I love to do is, “What are you looking

forward to right now?” Kind of get that rapport going

and keep it open.


If you’re talking to a CEO, another one I love is, “Have you

read any really good books lately? I’ve got to say I’m cur-

rently reading Pitch This. I’m really enjoying those. Is

there something that you could recommend for what

you’re doing?” It segues it into a discussion, which again

removes that uncomfortability.

Now we’re going to go into a don’t. Do not let your sales

reps or yourself freestyle calls. I am a big believer that

you do not need to be robotic, and that you shouldn’t

sound like you’re reading from a script. However, you

need to have a guideline for the call to follow. You have

to have an approach for your calls. That way, you can cut

down a little bit on the “uhs” and the “ums” and other

filler words. You’ve got to have some sort of a script. You don’t have to follow it word for word, but it has to guide

you to where you need to be.


Don’t keep them on the phone for too long. They’re

busy. You’re calling them out of the blue, and you’re

breaking their routine. Your whole goal should be able

to get a meeting booked in as little time as possible. You

want to get your product or service into that prospect’s

hands as quickly as possible. So don’t call them multiple

times. Try to get them in one, maybe two calls. Don’t go

much past that. Make sure that you have an email ad-

dress so you can send them relevant information on

your service and whatnot. That will get them in your

email list even after the call is over.

This is not a numbers game, so do not treat it that way.

You will never win. You will not be successful. Back in

the day, you used to be able to pop out 200 calls, and

you could really nail it. But cold calling is not a numbers

game anymore. You have to make sure that they don’t

feel like they’re just another call to you. Brian Tracy, who

is a sales expert, has recommended frequently pausing

and taking your breaks.


In doing your calls, allow your prospects to tell you their

story and their problems, and include them in on their

pain points without you just punching them through a

funnel.

Do make sure you send a follow-up email. Sending a

thoughtful email shows that you’re committed to your

product. Make sure you reach out to the ones that want

to make appointments. But make sure you reach out to

the ones that are on the fence or might’ve just said,

“Hey, look, I don’t, I don’t know if I want to move forward

or not.” Give them information, let them read over it and

think it over. Make sure you have some templates de-

signed out for it. You can build one and or use some-

thing like Infusion Soft, Close.io, things like that. Make

sure you have these templates set up. That way, you

don’t have to sit down and write messages from scratch

for every email.


Another big don’t is don’t freak out because something

doesn’t work correctly. You are going to stumble, and

you are going to fall. So don’t freak out and don’t feel

like you’re not capable of doing this. All right? I’ve got

one more do because I love leaving things on a positive

note.

Do make sure you leave a voicemail. I have seen so

many people who call me to make a sale as the CEO,

and they don’t leave a voicemail. I don’t call them back

because I don’t know who they are. And the way I view

it is if you don’t leave me a voicemail, then I’m honestly

not going to call you back because it wasn’t that impor-

tant for you to leave a voicemail. Leave them a voice-

mail. You want them to feel encouraged to call you or

connect with you. Because some of these guys are busy,

so make sure you reach out and leave a voicemail.


If you think cold calling will work for your company, or if

not, let me know why. I’d love to hear from you, and we

enjoy helping you guys. So if you have any questions on

cold calling or cold emailing, hit me up. Let me know

because I want to know how you’re going to approach

your cold calls for Q2, Q3, and Q4 of this year in 2020 and

moving into 2021. I think that cold calling has definitely changed. So leave a comment below, and I will catch

you guys on the flip side.

GET IN TOUCH!

Phone: 920-629-7387

Address: 4701 W Custer St. Suite 101,

Manitowoc, Wisconson 54220

Email: [email protected]

© 2020 Beard Marketing Solutions. All Rights Reserved.

COLD CALLING DO'S AND DON'TS - Beard Marketing Solutions

Documents

Transcript of COLD CALLING DO'S AND DON'TS - Beard Marketing Solutions