‘’Less than 1% of cold calls lead to a sale.’’
Why does this happen?
The most common mistake or rather issue here is that a few sales reps are conducting the process of cold calling in the wrong mindset, ‘’63% of salespeople say cold calling is what they dislike most about their jobs.’’
The common reason for such an issue is simple, ‘’In 2007 it took an average of 3.68 cold call attempts to reach a prospect. Today it takes 8 attempts.’’
We are living in 2021 and your prospects who are the modern prospects of today are aware of who you are and what you do, what their concern with you is, ‘how you can help them?’.
Did you know that ‘’57% of C-level buyers prefer that salespeople call them.’’
This is the truth and this article will rightly prove that cold calling is what your brand needs especially if you’re working in the Saas industry.
If you’re working in the Saas industry, this article will prove helpful to you as you will receive the keys to cold calling success that can help your brand growth.
Let’s get started.
Let’s understand this better with an example:
Adam is a prospect and he receives a call from a sales rep. The sales rep’s tone gives Adam the impression that the call is about sales. He immediately fades his interest and tries to move away from the call. He says things like, ‘I’ll call you later’ and ‘Not interested’ without the sales rep even completing the statements.
Adam then cuts the call and puts that number on the blocklist or spam folder.
CLARIFICATION: This is a myth because had the sales rep engaged with Adam for the purpose of understanding what Adam’s needs are and how the tone of the conversation would be in a genuine helpful manner, the call would have continued for long.
The only reason why cold calls are being considered as annoying is for the simple reason that the calls being made are prioritized over making a sale rather than hearing what the prospect has to say, ‘’What do buyers want from sales pros? 69% say, “Listen to my needs.”
Let’s understand this better with an example:
Picture yourself being a sales rep. there will be thousands of potential prospects who will come to your website. You will need to cater to all these leads and will come to a clarity that even if you’re engaging with 10 leads, there will be at least 6 of them that don’t match the ideal lead profile you’ve set.
Would you still contact them?
CLARIFICATION: This is a myth because when you are aware during the engagements that certain leads are not the ideal ones for your brand and a few of them cannot add value to your business, you wouldn’t waste time to engage with them.
Instead, you would continue your engagements only with those leads that have shown their interest or are interested to learn about what you have to offer.
Hence such leads are small in number which means your lead engagements are not multiple they are valued sales actions being conducted.
Let’s understand this with an example:
You are on call with a prospect say Sally who is angry for the fact that you weren’t able to reach out to them on time. Sally is yelling and not keeping calm, but you are going about your rehearsed speech in a monotone.
In such a situation, wouldn’t Sally then consider your brand as a less empathetic business and spread the word?
This is a common human activity that will take place and even more now since the business world is going digital.
CLARIFICATION: The only way to solve this problem is to change the way you conduct your cold calling. When you are aware that you have an angry prospect over call, the main focus here should be to calm them down, to hear them out, and once they remain calm, you then speak to them about their needs.
In such scenarios, the bad reputation of the brand is reduced
When you send emails, you need to understand that though you’re sending them in bulk, you won’t be aware for a time period whether your prospect has received your emails or even opened them. With cold calling, this isn’t the case.
CLARIFICATION: As stated earlier, when you are aware that you’re engaging with the right leads, only those leads will be contacted. You wouldn’t be contacting the 100 leads that have appeared on your website.
Out of that maybe just 20 would be genuine leads and it’s obvious that you would cater to them first.
The great thing about cold calling is that it lets you be aware of the prospect’s availability so that you never miss out on them.
This again holds the same meaning as stated above. This only happens when you don’t have the right data in hand. If you are aware that you have 100 prospects and despite the engagements you’re unaware of who is the good lead, that is when you’re wasting time.
CLARIFICATION: You now have multiple vendors in the market that are selling efficient sales solutions in the form of effective tools so that you can conduct your sales action better.
There are tools such as CRM, automation, and more that make it easy for you to filter the good leads from the bad so that your focus remains on the right one.
When your mindset as a sales reps falls like the below list, this is bound to happen:
CLARIFICATION: If you follow the above mindsets, the way you engage with your prospects will not help you achieve the keys to cold calling success. This is for the simple reason that your purpose isn’t matching the prospects. The day you change this, the way you engage with prospects too will make a difference.
What started as a door to door sales journey, has now become advanced in what it does. Despite the business industry going digital and everything taking place online, the fear of not being able to conduct or rather manage it well has brought many brands under the doubtful light.
CLARIFICATION: The truth here is technology growth has introduced unique and convenient solutions for sales reps like you. The use of automation, CRMs, callback solutions, live chat, and more has sparked an easy route for sales to take place. All of these tools are user friendly and will take time to adapt to daily practice.
If you wish to succeed in sales in 2021, going a step further will give you the results you wish to achieve.
Now that we have the myths around cold calling clarified, let’s move forward to help you understand what we mentioned at the beginning of this article.
Also Read : What you need to know about Sales Automation in less than 10 minutes
The Saas (Software as a service) industry is undoubtedly growing for the ultimate truth that prospects are investing in what they require.
The Saas industry operates with prospects where they sell their products online and the prospect will invest in the product it chooses.
The payment to works on a monthly or yearly basis as per the convenience and usage of the prospect.
Despite all this, the Saas industry can increase its sales figures if it starts to implement cold calls as a technique of lead generation.
Let’s understand this better with an example:
Mark runs an online store and is aware that he needs a good communication medium where engaging with leads can take place smoothly and quickly. While scrolling online, he witnesses our solution Limecall, which can also make an impact on the leads generated while serving the job of becoming a callback solution.
He heads to our website and sees that is an option where he can get on a call with our team to understand better. He gets connected in less than 28 seconds and starts to interact with our team members.
By the end of the call, Mark is convinced that he could use Limecall to grow his leads better.
The result of this example:
All it took was one call for Mark to understand how we at Limecall can cater to his needs. He was able to understand better how Limecall functions, what our callback solution can do for him, and more.
Imagine if this similar situation of cold calling took place for your hot leads?
Don’t you believe that it can make an impact on your online purchases and lead conversion rates?
You don’t have to do much, just follow the right cold calling actions.
To help you get started, we have covered only the ones that will guarantee work in your Saas business favour.
You want a successful cold call to take place more often, retain your prospect’s attention for long over the call. This is one of the toughest things to do for the simple fact that not all your cold calls can go beyond ‘i am busy, call you later’. Here is the dead point for the sales rep like you to understand that you might have missed a potential prospect.
However, this can be tackled well, if you take care of it well. We have covered the top tips to help your prospect retain longer over a call with you:
1. Ask questions-
Don’t just ask any random question such as how is the weather or would you like to hear more and all. These are easy questions that can give you the possibility of the call ending. Instead, ask questions that can give you a better understanding of the lead such as
2. Keep the engagement tone empathetic
When you’re speaking to your leads, most times your tone would lack the empathy feeling you require. Empathy lets you understand what the other person is going through so that it can help you communicate better. When you apply such factors, it helps your leads to be comfortable with you and continue with the conversation.
The best way to sell to your prospects is by understanding about them. When you do this you’re making your cold calls one step easier.
As you’re aware that when you conduct cold calls, it becomes tricky to conduct a conversation and go further on with it. What happens when you have your prospect’s data in hand?
You can conduct the following actions over call:
If you think that by just listening to your prospects is enough to win them over, you might have to rethink. The reason being while listening is a great way to learn about your prospects, talking to them can help you make a sale.
See your cold calls as a medium to sell your call, you’re portraying to your prospects why this call matters and why they should retain their attention. This can only be done when you’re speaking to your prospects.
The number one keys to cold calling success are to be a natural. If you’re going to use your sales pitches as a script to read over the call, that cold call will be a failure. You want your prospects to understand that you want to help them find their needs and provide them with the best ways and solutions for the action to happen.
This can only take place when you treat your phone calls as genuine ones. This can happen when you start to use your sales pitches as a guide and not as a sheet which you need to speak word to word when communicating with your potential prospects.
To make a sale, every cold call needs to be of value. You are not calling a prospect to waste their time or yours. Every cold call needs to hold value and be valuable. The best way to do it is to engage with only those leads that are hot and warm. Cold leads require more nurturing which is why getting them to become a warm lead will require other marketing activities to be conducted.
Your cold calls will not be perfect in a day’s time or month’s time or even a year’s time. To excel in cold calling, all that is required is for you to practice and keep doing that. Follow up with your peers, get trained regularly, listen to cold call conversations you’ve conducted, and keep learning.
When you do this, you’re achieving the keys to conducting efficient cold calling.
Now that you have the tips to get started with, just like there are multiple of your peers who have witnessed the keys to cold calling success as well. Learning from their opinions will not only help you conduct efficient cold calling but also give you the confidence to get started right away.
We have covered the premium ones for you.
An online article shared the insights as follows:
1. Steli Efti, Founder and CEO of Close, stated:
“When selling on the phone, oftentimes sales reps don’t understand how to structure a call. If you don’t have the right plan going into a sales call, it’s going to be much harder to close the deal. Every sales call, from a cold call to a closing call, should follow a pre-planned structure that is meant to optimize the likelihood of a desired result.”
2. Dean Moothart, LeadG2 Director of Client solutions, stated:
“share relevant content that positions you as thought leader and then follow up. Sending your target contact an email before you call can help if it’s written well. Don’t send a generic email. Use the information you uncovered … and include links to relevant thought leadership content (blog articles, white papers, eBooks, etc.). It is even better if you are the published author of this content. This will help you position yourself as a subject matter expert in the eyes of the prospect and not just a run-of-the-mill salesperson. Who doesn’t want to talk to an expert who has experience solving their business problems?”
3. Marc Wayshak, Founder of PipeRev, stated:
“The best TV shows and movies out there don’t sound scripted at all—but in fact, they’re very tightly scripted. The same is true for effective cold calling, “What we want to do is make sure that we’re focusing completely on that prospect, and not using any wasted verbiage. When salespeople make calls that are not scripted, they’re all over the place, the call takes forever, and the prospect is completely uninterested. So script out the entire call.”
4. Adam Honig, CEO and Co- founder of Spiro Technologies, stated:
“Look them up on LinkedIn to see if you have any connections. Google them to find common ground to talk about. Maybe even search their Twitter or Facebook profiles to get more background information to form a connection. Find that personal, human touch to build immediate rapport. Just hitting them up with the standard blah blah isn’t going to work.”
5. Mark Hunter, a sales speaker, trainer and consultant, stated:
“The buyer never ends the discussion or hangs up on you when they’re doing the talking. You get them talking by sharing information that you think they might find interesting. Lead off by engaging them with something from a macro perspective – an industry perspective – to get them talking.”
Cold calling isn’t dead and it won’t be because it is still considered to be an efficient technique to capture leads.
The proof?
The tips, the stats, and also the experts’ opinion are all proof that 2021 is also the year for cold calling to still be applied.
Now that you have everything you need to get started with, we would like to hear from you.
What is your opinion of this article? Did you find it helpful? Which cold calling technique will you apply first?
Share your answers with a tweet.
, February 1, 2021, LimeCall Team
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