Â
Most salespeople would rather have the flu than do cold calling. Yes, it is true that cold calling can often be awkward, uncomfortable, frustrating and ineffective. However, in many cases, these discouraging negatives can be overcome and even eliminated through the skillful application of a set of proven cold calling strategies. If you would like to discover a cure for the common problems of cold calling, read on.
Recognize the Power of Cold Calling
Sure, we are all more comfortable taking new orders from existing customers who already know and like us. Almost as good is the golden referral from one of those customers that hooks you up with hot lead. Still, are you aware that cold calling is one of the main drivers of sales growth? As a salesperson, you cannot count on your current customer base to help you achieve the ever expanding sales growth targets your company expects from you. Not only do you need new business to grow, but even the best customer retention programs can’t completely protect you from customer churn, which means that without cold calling, your sales volume is likely to shrink rather expand. You simply must develop and implement an effective strategy for identifying and signing new customers if you want to grow your business to higher levels of success. To this end, cold calling is a proven, accepted, and very powerful way to build your customer base, IF you do your homework and prepare a solid presentation that is adapted to the needs of your prospect. So, let’s take a look at who to get started.
Prepare Your Target List
The first challenge faced by many sales reps is how to develop a list of prospects. While your organization or company may assist you in various ways with assembling a list of target accounts, such is not always the case. Even when such help is available, that doesn’t preclude you from finding other profitable opportunities for building the business. Listed below are proven options for discovering new prospects:
Standard Methods for Creating a Prospect List:
The referral method
Consider the above options to be rich fields from which you can mine a handful of very valuable customer "deposits." Every load of gold ore contains mostly worthless sludge. However, when it is refined to identify and isolate the pure gold within, you are ready to strike it rich. You don’t need to convert every name into a customer, you only need to find the ones who are ready to buy what you have to sell.
Developing a Customer Profile
So, who is ready to buy? The best way to ensure that your prospecting and cold calling efforts will achieve maximum effectiveness is to develop a profile of what you might consider an ideal customer for the opportunities and services you would like to offer. There are two ways to do this.
Create a profile of an ideal hypothetical customer. First, make a list of the features and benefits of the products and services you would like to offer. In order to do this, and answer the following question: What value do these products and services provide the customer, and why?
Next, make a list of the different industries or businesses that are most likely to find these value items attractive and beneficial. To accomplish this, answer the following question: What kind of person or businesses want or need what you have to offer?
Building Business with Existing Customers
Here is a great
– and often overlooked – place to look for new business: Why not evaluate your present customer list for opportunities to develop new lines of business with existing customers? The challenge here is to grow this relationship in the form of a consultative partnership, so that the customer begins to see you as a trusted partner who can be relied up to bring regular, long term, valuable solutions to their business over time.Truly, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose by investing in cold calling. Don’t think of yourself as a salesperson interrupting a decision maker to push your services on him. Rather, view yourself as a solution provider who knows that he or she is providing a product or service that will meet important needs, make the prospect’s life easier, and help him succeed. Maintaining this constructive attitude is the first step to cold calling success, and help you find your own cure for common cold calling problems.
Â
Re-Print Permission
This article may be reprinted in it's entirety if the following
conditions are met:
September Sales Quick Tip of the Month – Prove It
One of the quickest and easiest ways to gain a prospect’s attention is to share with them a "proof story" that describes the effectiveness or popularity of your products with another customer or company. The story doesn’t need to be long or detailed, it only needs to supply key information that the prospect will identify with. You should use this story during the warm up phase of your conversation. Say something like, "We have been working with the ABC Corporation (prominent customer) since last year. They were having a real problem optimizing their website to attract motivated buyers (common problem). Three months after we signed them up, our proven strategies helped boost qualified traffic to their site by 125% (results produced by your product). I think we could do the same for you." Now, what customer, upon hearing this, isn’t going to say, "Really? Tell me more."
