As B2B marketers and business owners, one major challenge to the ongoing business process is the continuous need to generate leads via cold calls. Cold calls are simply introductory calls to prospected customers by a company’s salesperson to involve them in the purchasing process. While many people believe that the era of cold calling is over in this generation of automation and AI, it is not the case! Out there in the market, there are numerous Fortune 500 companies, including giants like Twitter, Uber, etc. that rely on cold calling for acquiring customers and generating revenues. Cold calls should be treated as calls that help you convey the message your company wants the world to know. This way a salesperson can establish and introduce the total aspect of the business.
Effective Cold Calling Tips in Modern B2B Sales
1. Sales Script and Sales Call Script
Sales script has long been in practice but modern business owners say it eliminates the ability to improvise answers on live calls. However, on the contrary, sales scripts help a salesperson think really hard and deep into the business aspect and then jot down points in order to pitch the offerings. Making a sales script brings structure and clarity to the ongoing call and when the entire team uses a sales script, the approach is clearer and implementing a process is easier. It is crucially important to create a sales pitch that sounds amazing on the call and is effective in initiating the sales process.
Salespersons should personally understand the emotion of the customer and be ready to raise curiosity, learn about the client’s needs, discover price sensitivity and schedule the upcoming steps.
2. Structuring Sales Calls
Sales calls are essentially important when it comes to B2B businesses. No matter which one it is, cold calls or deal-closing calls, it should have a planned, well-versed structure that helps a salesperson elevate the chances of customer acquisition. The major points that should be included are:
- Making an introduction
- Asking relevant questions to the client’s in order to provide the exact offering
- Delivering the SALES PITCH!
- Catering and managing objections/obstacles
- Ending with CTAs
- Overcoming common challenges
3. Avoiding Early Pitching
The most simple mistake salespersons make while indulging in cold calls is to pitch their solutions very early on in the conversation. Before pitching in actually, a salesperson should fully understand the client’s business requirements and what they need. Of course, you are here to sell, but B2B salespersons should construct the pitch and figure out the right moment to showcase the offerings to the clients so that it fits the client requirements and they end up buying it. Early pitching can be a negative business practice.
4. Captivating Customers
Sometimes it is in the nature of a salesperson to capture and entice the customer’s attention. However, every time a salesperson cannot be sure as to how to captivate his client’s interests – here’s how you can:
- Knowing the fact that most of the time the customer is not paying attention.
- Highlighting the defining points of the pitch.
- Limiting to just 3 highlights.
- Constant use of the client name
- Taking small breaks in between to help the client’s mind wander back to your pitch
- Eliminating the fear of failure
5. Avoiding multitasking during the Sales Calls
Multitasking during sales calls and especially cold calls can be a real turn down! It can take away the salesperson’s ability to focus and deliver the best solution to his clients. There are many negative effects to this:
- It disturbs and breaks down the conversation flow.
- Difficulty in understanding what the client requires.
- Salesperson is more on a suboptimal state.
- Difficulty in recovering from the bad sales call.
6. Cold Calling Funnel Metrics and Benchmarks
The outbound phone sales approach is essential in B2B modules. Increasing the lead acquisition numbers depend on making strategic improvements in the cold calling approach. Some of them include:
- Looking at the entire cold calling funnel and keeping everything in check – the leads you have, the calls made, the entire reach rate, and the deals closed.
- Improving the reach rate. Try calling every sign-up within 4-5 minutes for increasing inbound leads.
- Keep the reach rate benchmarks at 20% or higher.
- Target to close benchmarks at 60% or above.
- Constructing an effective voicemail.
It should be the prime concern of salespersons to ensure that the voicemail is crisp, clear and yet gives the full picture. Don’t sound like you are selling something.
7. The 3 Questions!
Before involving yourself in colds calls, a salesperson should always cater to three questions – Why? What? and How?
Salespersons should never make the mistake of thinking that a client call is anywhere equivalent to closing a deal. The ‘Why’ should state as to why the cold call is being made. This would establish your reason and the pitch. The ‘What’ states something that is set to be achieved via the process. The ‘How’ states the methods set to accomplish the task. This will give the salesperson the ability to correctly plan out and deliver solutions to the clients.
While there are many other strategies to improve in-house cold calling, some of them require assistance while other just need a smart brain to understand and improvise.
Shall be back with another set of tips!
See ya!
Get started with your B2B eCommerce store and gain a competitive edge in the market!
