Sales reps dislike cold calling, and business owners hate getting them. Can we skip cold calling? NO!
Cold calling is fruitful when done right. Cold calls are one of the dominant parts of the modern sales process, yet they are often overlooked. The future of cold calls is quite unclear. Many find it hard to fit cold calls in a world filled with advanced AI-based sales and marketing tools.
But it is not as it seems. Cold calls are far away from their dead-end and still valid in 2022. So, what is the truth? Is cold calling dead, or can it revive your sales? This article will make a case for cold calling in the modern sales world.
Let’s admit it; most of us hate receiving calls from strangers trying to sell us something! And most sales reps dread making cold calls themselves.
So, is cold calling still effective in today’s hyper-digital world? Or are you just doing it wrong? Let’s find out. Here are nine reasons why cold calling is crucial and how missing out on effective cold calling strategies affects your sales success.
Cold calling helps you find out the prospective decision-makers on the other end. Most companies use mapping calls to find this out. They would simply interact with someone from the company and learn about who manages the issue (that your company solves) at their end and reach out to them for the actual pitch.
You can often figure out why you are not getting the intended response. It is far easier to identify this for cold calling campaigns than cold email campaigns. For instance, if an email campaign is not getting you replies as expected, your best option would be to call the recipients (maybe more than once) and ask why they didn’t respond. That sounds absurd.
Rather if you go with cold calling, you can get plenty of insights into why they’re not interested in your offerings then and there. Cold calling will enable you to pinpoint the problem so that you can take steps to move past it.
An inevitable reason to stick to cold calling is that it improves the overall conversion rate. Besides, it also helps increase your leads and their quality.
Ensure that your cold calling agents have adequate training, the latest cold calling techniques, and advanced tools.
Cold calling enables the newbie sales reps to master their sales pitch in much less time by practising their sales pitch until it's perfect. This live training exercise can also help the sales reps adjust their sales pitch by getting real-time feedback from the customers.
A human-to-human communication with customers will always get you relevant information. And cold calling is an excellent way to build this human connection.
For instance, if you reach out through an email, the prospective customer has the opportunity to ignore the correspondence. Instead, when you call them on the spot — they might be more willing to provide valuable and contextual information.
During this call, you can make a human connection and know the prospect’s personality, choices, choice of humour, and more. It can go a long way toward building an enriching business relationship. An email will never allow you to do this.
Cold calls save time! How?
People not interested in your offerings will directly communicate that to you. On the contrary, emails will never get you the clarity as people won’t reply saying they’re not interested in your offerings.
They’ll just plainly ignore your emails. Cold calling saves you from the hassle of following up on the email you sent gazillion years ago. Cold calling gives you direct access to your target customers.
Many companies that do not care about sales training and upgrading their sales rep’s skills do not get much success through cold calling. Your sales reps mustn’t just read scripts like robots! They must build a human connection with whomever they interact.
Besides, many companies rely on inaccurate B2B data to compile their cold calling lists. Sometimes, the sales reps could be aiming for the wrong target. Ensure that your cold calling campaigns have experienced sales professionals to avoid such shortcomings, and you train novices while onboarding them.
Cold calling might not be the ideal way to connect with prospects, but it does open the opportunity to form new bonds and strengthen your sales department.
For instance, your prospects may not be aware of your offerings — they may have never heard of you or visited your website. But, a business can still expand to a certain extent if the sales professionals are experts at blending in with prospective customers and their cultures. Cold calling, with the right sales reps, seems like a utopian solution.
Cold calling is cost-effective. Well, emails don’t cost much at all. But emails are not equivalent to conversations! Face-to-face meetings, on the other hand, take too much time, travel, and everything else. And you can’t possibly conduct a hundred face-to-face meetings every day.
It is where cold calling and its importance are noticeable. One-to-one calling leads to better quality engagement. It gives you the best of both worlds — conversations to build rapport, learn, and sell for the minimal price of a phone call.
In 2022, cold calling is anything but dead. However, your approach might need tweaking. Prospective customers expect more than a robotic sales pitch without any personalisation.
It is where the skillset of a sales rep comes into the picture. Sales reps must understand the prospective customer’s pain points before picking up the phone. They must enhance a real relationship, provide genuine value, and improve their chances of closing a deal.
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