Cold Calling is when you make a telemarketing call to someone with whom you have never had any previous contact….a cold contact.
Many companies cold call from lists. These lists can be purchased from a number of List Brokers and Businesses. You can easily source lists of people who fit the criteria for your average client. So, although these lists will cost you, you will save time by only calling people who are best for you to market yourself to.
Before you call anyone though, you must “wash” (or “scrub” in the U.S) the names. Washing the list makes sure that you do not call anyone who has registered their name on the “Do Not Call Register.”
The Do Not Call Register allows residents to make sure they do not receive Telemarketing calls. Large fines apply to anyone who ignores the Do Not Call register….so wash your lists prior to making that first call! As you can imagine, when you are calling someone who has never heard of you or your business, who probably has never thought of using your product or service and who is not expecting to hear from you…..well, let’s just say you must have a campaign plan!
But here’s the truth…Cold Calling works!! It not only works but it brings in a lot of extra revenue for the businesses that do it well.
Top Cold Calling Tips
Before you even think about picking up the phone….
- Make sure you have good quality names and numbers to call.If you can, don’t waste your time calling people who will never be your clients. For instance, if you are selling investment property, why waste time calling people with no income, no deposit saved and no equity in their own home. Instead you would source a list or leads that contains your target audience.
The only time I believe you can afford to waste time calling people who may not be suited as your clients, is if you have not paid for the list or leads. In this scenario, the money you saved on leads can be spent qualifying your clients by the telemarketer.
- Have an action plan. I have mentioned before that telemarketing can be your whole sales process or it may be only a part of it. Particularly with a cold call, you need to expect to make more than one call to sell the majority of products.
You may like to incorporate a mail-out, a customer survey or even a face to face visit with a client into your sales process. Figure out what works best for you. For instance, if we stay with the property investment company, we could do the following:
- Telemarketing call to do a Customer Survey. This will help us to qualify the customer and build a little interest in investment property without ever trying to sell it.
- Second Telemarketing call a few days later to thank client for taking part in the survey and offer them a free gift and information visit from our Advisor. Book appointment in the next few days for advisor to go out to see them.
- Advisor goes out to visit with client in their home and does presentation to sell idea.
You can see in this example that we have used an initial cold call to get contact with a potential client and that each step along the way is a gradual progression.
If you would like to read up on a basic sales process that you can apply to any sales environment…click here… So a plan is important. Figure out what the aim of your call is.
- Once you know the outcome you want from this initial call, write a script for it.
Click here to see information on why we use scripts and how they work….and here to see a Telemarketing Script Sample. This will give you some more direction on putting together a script that works.
Now you have done the planning…. let’s pick up the phone.
- When making a cold call we need to first and foremost sound confident and assumptive….assumption that the customer will be interested goes a long way towards having a customer who is interested.
- A cold call is not that different to any type of Telemarketing Call. You need the same skills.
For information on Listening Skills, consumer behavior, Telephone Techniques and Good Communication Skills….
You must gain instant rapport with your customer. We do this by matching and pacing them.
For more on building Rapport…. click here Cold Calling more than any other Telemarketing call is definately a process of working the numbers. Be prepared to make a certain number of calls to get a good result. The number of calls needed will vary from Telemarketer to Telemarketer, depending on their skill on the phone.
Keep good statistics on your calls and you will soon see what your numbers are.
If for instance you need to make 10 calls to get a good result, then so be it. Now you can either work harder i.e. make more call or work smarter i.e. work on your skills to get that conversion rate down.
And finally, I’m sure you can see why I will offer this last piece of advice…
- Don’t take rejection personally. You will have to work the numbers when you cold call which means you absolutely will get rejection.
Let it go!
It is not about you personally so you should not treat it as if it is. Rejection over the phone needs to slip off your shoulders like water off a duck’s back!
