At the fifth week, the client will receive a letter with detailed information about the seller, together with the time and date of a cold call.
On the day of the cold call, the client will be ready for the conversation, so the chances of a successful conversation increase.
Managers using the strategy agree on having a meeting with a client in 25 to 80% of cases.
Greetings or congratulations on a particular event may precede the cold call. The reason for congratulations may be found using LinkedIn or Google. I usually get feedback on 50% of such cases.
It's important to have a clear sequence of all stages and processes in the marketing strategy. It's no use improvising in such cases, unless you're a fan of nurturing pointless dreams.
Michael Pedone
CEO of an educational company for sales managers, SalesBuzz.com. A basic definition is:
"A cold call is a contact with a potential client who doesn't yet realize that he needs your services or products. The correct question is: 'Should IT sales be the first to initiate the contact with potential clients?'" There are two answers to this question:
● to include only warm incoming leads in the marketing strategy
● to include the search for new cold leads on a daily to-do list.
It's also possible to divide the selling process into several stages by using SDR (Sales Development Representative), BDR (Business Development Representative), and AE (Account Executive) models. Hire new managers who will actively look for new clients. The account executive will be responsible for finishing the sales process.
SDR and BDR models include the search for new clients, meetings, and presentations. Deal closure is not included in SDR and BDR; the primary aim of the sales managers in this model is to search for new clients and redirect warm leads to colleagues from AE. Deal closure is the responsibility of the account executive.
The biggest problem with cold calling is the specialists who speculate about the topic but don't understand how cold calling works. They usually claim that cold calling is dead and the best selling channel is LinkedIn. This strategy may work, but cold calling is still a viable strategy.
Lots of managers start with sales in social networks and make the same mistakes as with cold calling. That is the main reason for bad sales.
Lucas Hamon
CEO of the company offering business solutions Orange Pegs Media. The answer is yes and no.
The cold calls that everyone is sick and tired of should no longer be in business anymore. Especially now, at such a time of rapid technological progress. Your potential clients expect something more creative than just a phone call.
The purchase of a client base, which your managers will work on, has nothing to do with creativity and technological progress.
I've been doing cold calls for 10 years and can honestly say that it didn't lead me to success. Nevertheless, it did help me come to understand that there are more efficient ways of selling.
At that time, the most effective cold-selling instrument was social networks, especially LinkedIn. But today, the tendency has changed as sales managers made the most out of this channel.
Yes, cold calls do work and will continue to work to a certain extent. But successful cold calling is becoming harder and harder to achieve.
That's why I recommend paying attention to inbound marketing. That will turn your site into an instrument for generating leads.
Also, keep track of companies that produce a similar product. You can be sure that they will want to cooperate and that they will be able to find the right direction for communication.
Such cold contact may become the beginning of a marvelous deal.
Adam Honig
Founder and CEO of Spiro Technologies (a CRM system for businesses). You should have all possible marketing instruments available to you.
I have clients who use formal letters and get excellent returns.
Any sales instrument should be tested and measured. Furthermore, you should define the efficiency of each instrument.Cold calling without preceding contacts won't be better than other selling techniques.
You should certainly invest in high-quality cold emails, sales in social networks, and other marketing instruments. These methods prove their efficiency by having a high level of feedback.
Valery Krasovsky
СЕО of Sigma Software (on the list of the 2016 Global Outsourcing 100 according to IAOP). We're not into cold calling at my company. Although, in a certain context, it can be useful.
It's possible to use cold calls in outsourcing, but it's necessary to understand how you define the notion of outsourcing. Today, it's not just the selling of the developers' team. I would prefer the word consulting when we lead the client from the beginning to the end, not just provide him with a team of specialists.
For example, we have recently developed a solution to automate the accounting of fuel bills for SAS, the largest airline in Scandinavia. We started this project from scratch. It is impossible to get such contracts through cold calls.
Big companies choose specialists for their projects, relying on a number of factors. If it's done through tenders, then they often invite those who they already know. In order to work with large, high-budget projects, it is first necessary to have made a name for yourself and be in good standing in the market.
With the use of cold calls, it is possible to sell ready-made solutions or services that the client will buy and can immediately start using in their work, without additional development or insignificant adaptation.
We have a certain target audience of clients that we search for with the help of "cold" calls. They are mostly small companies, as cold calls do not help when working with large companies and start-ups.
Anastasia Novikova
Managing Partner of outsourcing broker NexGenDesign, coach in IT sales and marketing school Conformato, 9 years of experience in IT sales and marketing.
The need to use cold calling depends on the client. You should ask yourself: "What we are trying to get through the call?" "What do we want to achieve?" If we're talking about service outsourcing sales, companies often call and try to sell the outsourcing itself. Usually, such attempts lead to nothing. Outsourcing is impossible to sell in the first call.
If we offer a next action through a call (for example, we invite the client to a webinar or event, or ask about a specific problem) then progress can be achieved. The call will help to make the action faster and move to a next step with the client.
I can share examples from our own practice. We tested cold calls on different audiences. We called big companies in the US where, for many years, cold calls seem to have outlived their usefulness. But, as you know, all new is well overlooked old.
We called large and medium-sized companies throughout Europe. It's often difficult to get through to large companies as they have automatic telephone stations installed and it is not always easy to reach the right person.
In small and medium-sized companies, there's no such automation, but there are also problems with getting through to the right person. Some companies do not use phones at all, especially in the IT sector.
Many companies have now resumed the practice of cold calling. Therefore, it is necessary to return to calls sometimes, no matter what country they are directed to.