A cold call is one made by a sales representative to a potential customer in order to make a connection or sell their products and services. While it may seem like representatives might be dialling random numbers and selling them all kinds of things, that’s not the case. Most don’t realise that it is a targeted call in which the prospective customer might actually have come in contact with the company briefly. The customer may even be part of the specific company or demographic they are targeting. A representative makes the call with the intention to make an initial connection, as a follow-up to a call, or even to pitch a product or a service.
When a representative makes the call, they only have very basic information about the person on the other side, such as their name, number, and address. In some cases, you may even have the company they work at or their job title. When you have such limited information, it is incredibly hard to make a connection with the customer. That is why you need a proper script that you need to follow, be it a telemarketing script or a cold calling script for car sales.
Having a script with you will not only make you more efficient but it will also be easier to make slight changes when you’re supposed to be calling a large number of people. When you call a person you don’t know much about, you cannot predict how they might react to your call. Having some tips handy will help you calm the customers down or manoeuvre them in the right direction. This is why, in this blog, we will bring you some tips and tricks to not only make cold calling easier but also more efficient.
If you are planning on cold calling multiple people, it is important to pick the customers that you know might be interested in your pitch or whatever product/service you are selling. You have limited time and each call requires quite a bit of effort; so, you need to know if your customer is even interested before you actually make the call. Chances are, if you call every single person rather than some targeted ones, you might end up with zero good responses. Simply because you wasted effort with the first few calls and ran out of energy for the other ones, you couldn’t secure a deal.
You need to narrow things down and think about what customers you have had good experiences with. Perhaps it was related to real estate and you used a real estate cold calling script that you specifically designed based on your previous successful customers.
To be honest, you will get nowhere without a proper conversation started. You want to be able to engage people in a conversation before you actually pitch your idea to them. If you start pitching outright without actually developing a connection with the customer, your chances of success are pretty low. This is why you need to construct a telemarketing script, for example, or even an insurance cold call script. It is essential that you have an introductory guideline you can follow to establish an initial connection.
While it is really common to get rejected, occasionally you will meet people that will make the experience of getting rejected even worse. The most you can do is not get discouraged when you are faced with rejection and try turning the conversation in a positive direction by saying stuff like "Sometimes I don't know how I can help my customers, can you please elaborate why you think I can't help you or why you aren't interested in my service?" By doing this you might not change the mind of the customer but you will get insight into the rejection itself which will lessen the brunt of it.
When you initially start cold calling, start with a telemarketing script or a cold calling script. Once you start using your particular script, you will be able to identify which lines turn off the potential buyers and what variations you can make that may work under certain situations. Cold calling is all about trial and error, so don’t be afraid to experiment.
The first impression is always important; try to be kind to whoever is gatekeeping when you contact a particular company. Start with “can I ask you a few questions?" and then ask them who is the correct person they can get in touch with, their name, and their contact, etc. Even gatekeepers are doing their job just as you are so be kind, no matter who picks up the phone.
As I have already elaborated throughout the blog, having a guideline and a script you can follow is essential because once you dial that call, it is already too late to improvise. You must have a prepared outline in mind. Even though a script is essential for cold calling, it is really hard to actually write a script especially if you have no prior knowledge of writing one. It can take multiple tries to even finish one and there is no guarantee that it will turn out well.
All the script templates available online are rather limited. This is exactly where Sale Beat comes in! Sale Beat is a cold-calling software where you can create and save scripts to be accessed during a call, which makes it super convenient. No more keeping tons of paper bundles with you that you might need to sort through during the call. You can also categorise leads and keep a record of your successful calls to access later.
Make your cold calling experience easier with this Sale Beat today!