Sales Prospecting Perspectives

5 Important Tips You'll Need To Be Successful At Cold Calling

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At times it can be difficult for us to sum up the keys to success for any of our new hires that walk into the door here at AG. The goal during their first week is to get them a general sense of the basic traits required to consistently attain their goals. Like any other well run organization I've worked for, we recognize that it's also up to us to provide the infrastructure to ensure a reliable lead volume from the team.

Here are 5 key areas we’ve found that can help to drive consistent performance from your campaigns.

1. Set your goals- All too often inside reps don't set specific call goals for themselves. If your call output is erratic, then most likely the amount of opportunities you're going to uncover will be as well.
2. Scrub your lists- It's wonderful to have a list to call on, unfortunately if you are not taking the time to scrub off customers, prospects currently engaged with sales reps and leads with incomplete or inaccurate information- then your reps are going to make a ton of unnecessary dials. I've never met anyone who enjoys list scrubbing, but think of how much more efficient this will make you in the long run. Two hours of scrubbing could save you a few days of wasted calls and most likely prevent an angry response from a sales rep wondering why you cold called a prospect they've been negotiating with for a month.
3. Have a call plan- Come up with a plan to communicate with your prospects. One call and one email a week will not generate a response. Our research tells us that you need to touch them at least 6 times before you generate a response. I recommend a consistent use of phone, email and outlook invites to get their attention.
4. Be prepared- Otherwise known as pre-call planning. Do a little research on your target company and if you have a little extra time get a little background on your prospect through Linked-in. Doing a little extra research should help to warm your call up a bit more.
5. Be resilient- Guess what, most people don't want to hear from you. You will get blown off. Remain focused and follow tips 1-4 above and you should see a significant increase in your lead conversion.

We can all get caught up trying to pinpoint our lack of success with our campaigns. Some of us place blame on the folks making dials while others feel it has more to do with the marketplace or service you are calling on.  While the steps above can’t always guarantee your success, it can at the very least give you a true sense of the quality of the people you have on the phone and if your campaign is actually hitting the mark.