Mention the word “cold calling” and people often get cold feet. Even for me, the prospect of calling up someone and pitching you to them something is too daunting of a task. It typically requires a lot of courage — and a script that I’ve practiced several times.
Cold calling goes beyond phone calls; it also includes email or in-person visits. Email I do so much better because I don’t have to talk to the person and find the right words to explain myself. Rejection also seems softer through email; not receiving a response is much better than hearing the words “NO” in your ears.
But cold calling is still one of the most effective ways to win deals and form partnerships that can push your business forward. Hotmail was created when former Apple engineer Sabeer Bhatia cold calls venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson about a free email platform. Same with Netscape when Jim Clarks sent an email to Marc Andreessen.
Business 2.0 magazine in an article entitled “Firing Up Your Cold Calls” has some very interesting and practical tips on how to improve your cold calling strategies:
1. Call when the screeners (secretaries, assistants) are out – the ideal time to talk to the decision maker and busy executives would be just after daybreak or after dinnertime. They would still be at work, but their assistants and minders would have already left. Yes, the timing is unconventional, but if it could put you on the phone with the person you need, then that’s the thing to do.
2. Engage the gatekeeper. Because you can’t always call before or after 9-to-5, chances are there will be times when the secretary or assistant will answer the phone. Charm them or disarm them with unexpected one liners. Make them think of you as a person not as a nuisance.
3. Find something – anything – in common with the person you are cold calling. Sometimes it takes a little digging to get the response you want from the company you want to do business with. An example given in the article is about a vendor trying to get in touch with the head of an asset management company. Since his calls or emails are not returned, what he did was to find other executives in the company with his same last name, and sent that person an email. Pretending to be a long lost cousin may not always work, but it sure can get you the exec’s attention.
4. Buy before you sell. You have to first know the needs of the company you want to sell to, even to the extent of doing market research about that company. If you are able to zero in on what they need, and articulate it to them, you stand a greater chance in getting at the exec’s door.
5. Be a little unprofessional. Even well-rehearsed scripts can sound, well, scripted. Your pitch may sound professional, but your calls are not returned or your emails deleted. The example given in the article showed the head of a nanotechnology company who have been calling the HR head at Kmart for the last 6 months, to no avail. Finally, he called and simply left the message, “Hey Dante, throw me a bone!” — and got a call back within 5 hours! Unconventional sometimes work, I suppose.
6. Learn to love striking out. The word “NO” will not kill you. Don’t be discouraged by it. You will always get a “no” somewhere somehow. But sooner someone will say “YES” so just keep prodding along until you improve your batting average.
I like the article because it gives a fresh dimension to what I often read about cold calling. Some of the tips are unconventional, but hey, whatever works, right?
Read the full article from Business 2.0
I work with a Hosted CRM application provider the focuses on the inside sales space (InsideSales.com). Our entire application is build and designed to help sales reps (not necessarily telemarketers) effectively sell over the phone. This includes cold calling. I agree with the masses, cold calling is not fun. If done effectively, it can generate effective and somewhat cost effective leads. However, I have found that leads generated by cold calling are on average between 2x to 4x more expensive that a company or sales rep can generate via the web (if also done effectively). This is not the whole story though.
An example:
We have a customer that uses our system to power dial a list to generate leads. They were able to generate around 1 lead every 1.5 hours. Considering the cost of employees, systems and overhead, they were paying around $100/lead. From the web (using PPC, SEO, and lead providers) they were paying around $20/lead.
This seems pretty straight forward, go with the web leads. What’s more, the cold call leads seemed to be less qualified than the web leads. The web leads generated actual buyers. The leads generated from cold calling identified companies that were at the beginning of the interest cycle. Thus, in the short term the web leads closed better and seemed more effective.
However, they saw an unexpected reversal of value in lead sources. Even though the web leads were smaller opportunities and they closed faster and more often. The leads generated from cold calling we very targeted to the industry and size that that worked for this customer. This customer began to close deals greater than the sum of the smaller deals that came from the web from the same time frame. So in the end, cold calling generated more revenue and held its own compared to web leads.