Cold calling and cold emails are two tried and tested ways to get in touch with potential customers. Whether you're looking for potential clients by phone or email, there are pros and cons you should consider.
How To Make Your Cold Call Successful
The cold sales call is a tedious and unnecessary task, but historically it has been one of the most effective tools for sales professionals. The very mention of the call may be enough to turn some prospects off, while others find it frustrating.
Chepyha advises his clients to start the conversation with an aimless conversation about the weather or something that doesn't seem important in order to avoid a sales pitch. He advises keeping conversations short and sweet so your questions can be answered.
One of the many benefits of cold calling is the fact that it's 100% predictable; you know exactly what a prospect is going to say next, and you have great responses to each question. When I ask my primary question to a prospect, I know what potential answers are, and I know how to answer them each and every time.
Kraig Kleeman, a cold call expert, shares his thoughts on the benefits of cold calling.
According to the speaker, one of their clients calls every CEO in a list of companies with the word "chief" in their title, with an average market value of $40 billion. "We can get a 26% conversion rate out of 100 outreach attempts because we do not get responses," he said. The speaker is saying that roughly 26 out of 100 people from these targeted companies will meet with them.
The issue with cold calls is that people usually hate being on the receiving end of one.
"It's hard to get people to respond to marketing materials, so don't send them unless they ask for them first," he said. "People run away from unsolicited sales calls. You need to ask your leads before sending them anything."
Rather than cold calling for sales, Kleeman and his clients come up with information that will interest people who are in the market for a product, then call them to encourage them to join a 15-minute meeting on those topics. During these meetings, sales reps can learn more about buyers' needs and start building relationships.
Sellers need to be educated about the true needs of their target business marketplace and align their content with those needs. Building trust with your audiences is one of the most important tactics to use when trying to sell a specific product or service.
Not having a lot of experience at cold calling can be stressful, especially if you're afraid to fail.
Iain Chepyha said, "We are self-sabotaging in protecting ourselves from the failure of cold calling. Even though we do it all the time, we don't understand how to make it work effectively, and this is what causes problems for people."
Ben Drake shares some alternatives to email.
"It's not so simple as a yes or no," the man said. "You don't know how people will react to what they read or if they even read it."
The Science Of Sales Pipeline Course Is Exactly What Grows Your Business,
Get a creative backup plan in time for when everything falls apart.
- more deals
- bigger deals
- with better conversion
- in less time
The incredible, scalable cold email
Unlike cold calls, cold emails allow reps a lot of opportunities to send out emails and not go out on traditional calls to do so. Cold email marketing equips sellers with a scalable strategy. Sales teams that have limited resources do well with cold emailing.
With 1,000 emails a mail merge, you can send them faster than making cold calls. If your email list is well-tailored and you have responses to these emails, it doesn't matter how many emails you send since every email will be received by a targeted audience.
Morgan said it is important to remember you are trying to start a conversation, so do your due diligence before submitting content. The science behind outreach: it's not about spamming; it's about building a conversation.
In today's competitive market, it is vital that you incorporate strategies that can stand out from your competitors.
Software should feel personal and thoughtful. It should be targeted, if not at a specific person, at a persona. (Morgan believes in building comprehensive buyer personas).
Dottie takes a sample of 10 to 15 leads to do research on and then determines the best template for each lead. If it's relevant, we can scale to thousands of templates based on the same audience.
Most email campaigns should target a response rate of between 10-35%. If the response rate is less than 10%, something is wrong.
Asked about cold calls, Morgan responded by saying there isn't much downside to being good on the phone--most reps will be forced to speak with their customers at some point. However, as people become more reluctant to pick up the phone, many reps are less and less interested in cold calling.
What's The Best Way To Manage Cold Calls And Emails?
Despite calls or emails being seen as opposing, neither should be used in isolation, and call and email sequences are usually used together in sales campaigns.
"It's not either/or. It's both/and," he said. "The truth is that the best scenario is not either/or. It's both/and."
As they always say, people need to see what's available and choose based on their personal preferences. But whether it is publishing content or marketing, businesses should always focus on converting as many prospects as possible into customers.
"Know your audience and make sure what you're doing is optimized for them. Take what works, triple it and make sure they continue to work," she said.
The Difference Between Cold Emails And Cold Calls
It is important for reps to respect their prospects' time by acknowledging upfront that a cold call can be an interruption. Chepyha advises sales reps to write in clear, concise language and focus on explaining how their product or service will benefit the prospect.
"Every time you call somebody on the phone, whether it's your mother or your best friend or your worst enemy or a complete stranger — it doesn't matter who you're calling — you're always, always, interrupting them." Every time someone calls us on the phone (whether it's mom, the pizza guy, or that co-worker who can't make eye contact), what do we say? When we're about to start this conversation with a new person over the phone, we want to establish rapport so they know we're interested in them—we want to know why they called. The speaker says that we need to acknowledge that "right at the beginning of the call."
Sales calls and email marketing aren't about the person calling; they're about the person you're talking to. Sales reps should try to get prospects talking about their needs and not just talking about the product they sell.
Call prospects up to eight times with Chepyha, and email eight times to get maximum success. Emailers should contact their prospect eight times for the best response rate.
If you don't have a persuasive script, or if you are just simply sending bad emails, no one will respond to your emails. Unless you're interesting and add value that's relevant to the person, people won't be interested. When it comes to calls, email outreach, and other less pressing subjects, if your project is worthwhile, it will get their attention. Your goal should be to solve their problems or help them make more money.