Cold calling is a great way to generate business leads. Though it can be quite stressful and discouraging to place outbound calls to parties whom may not be interested in what you are selling, the sales advantages outweigh any possible damage to your ego.
Although often derided as stressful,
discouraging, and annoying ? cold calling can be an effective way to grow your business and tell people about your company. Cold calling gets a bad reputation at times, usually because people misunderstand its purpose or are not doing it correctly. By taking the time to get it right and following these steps, you can make cold calling work for you.
Cold Calling is a Numbers Game
Regardless of what you are selling, you need to keep in mind that most if not nearly everyone you call is not going to be interested in your goods or services. Your success rate with any calling list is further hindered by other things outside of your control, such as reaching voicemails, disconnected numbers, and busy signals. For this reason it is important to call many people and call often. If you have a list of 500 or 600 contacts, it might help to break it up into smaller, more manageable blocks.
Call a hundred people before lunch and another hundred afterwards. The next day, if you''re feeling up to it, try and call 300 contacts over the course of the workday. Your response rate is probably going to be roughly the same regardless of how many people you call, but a 2% success rate means more sales with 300 calls than with 100 calls. Of course, you can always play with changing your pitch slightly, calling different parts of the country, or targeting different groups of consumers or companies.
Remember: Don''t take it personally
Getting rejected dozens and dozens of times can take a toll on your self esteem. This is only natural, but you should try to remind yourself that it doesn''t matter. You are not being rejected as a person, it''s just business and you should continue to make calls with the same enthusiasm as before. If you sound confident, people will be more likely to listen to you and more likely to want to buy what you are selling. As for the people who have no interest, remember that is fine too.
Be respectful and polite to everyone you call whether they are interested or not. Your reputation is very important and you should be professional on the phone, even if it''s only out of common courtesy. At the same time, it is alright to take comfort in the fact that you don''t know the people you are calling and will probably never encounter them again. There are plenty of others out there you can call who may be interested. Your job is to keep calling until you get a hold of them.
Mix Things Up and Find Out What Works
If you call a hundred contacts and not one is the least bit interested, you should stop and ask yourself if you need to change your approach. You should also consider what, on a normal day, the response rate is for a list of calls. A good idea might be to use a different script or call from a different list. Oftentimes a change as simple as calling contacts in a different time zone will yield better results. This is not much of a surprise considering that people are more or less willing to talk to someone on the phone depending on their mood, which is dependent on the time of the day to some extent.
Becoming good at cold calling requires your time, patience, and persistence. If you talk to salespeople who are veterans at cold calling, they will tell you that over time you develop a sense about what works and what doesn''t. After a while, you will hone your skills and become more adept at changing your pitch and approach depending on the caller. People have many different personalities and communication styles which, as a result, mean they make decisions in myriad different ways. By understanding and reacting properly to these differences, you can achieve great success at cold calling.
