In the past cold calling has been used in the first step of the process. A salesperson would get a list of untargeted names (usually purchased) and check off the names until they reached someone who was willing to meet with them in person or on the phone. This philosophy followed the theory of probability: for every 100 calls made, 1 person will agree to meet.
While this may get some appointments, you can surely agree that there is a lot of time wasted following this practice!
The salesperson can send the cold email to the decision-maker and that person will either respond, forward or delete the email. If the cold lead is interested in learning more, they can provide a time to take the next step and meet, naturally being more receptive and more attentive to the meeting.
Essentially, this process turns the “cold” in cold call to “warm”.
When a lead takes action with your email, they are engaging with your (or your brand). Since they’ve engaged, these leads are no longer cold, right?
With cold email, you’re after a response, not a sale. If the contact opens the email, great. You can send them a personal follow up email. If they reply or click on the resource offer inside, they’re ready for a warm call.
Cold Calling Success Strategies
So how do you reach this happy medium and utilize the “new” cold calling? Let’s look at a few steps you can take to make the most of your cold calling efforts:
1. Create a targeted list of prospects: This goes without saying. Naturally, you would want to drill down to your target prospect as specific as possible. To start searching for qualified prospects, the best place to start would be on social media. It will depend on the business you are targeting, but most likely you will find your prospects on LinkedIn and sometimes on Twitter. To do this, you’ll need to understand the needs and pain points of the businesses you are serving. Then, you can begin to search those industries and job titles to make connections with decision-makers.
2. Use a combination of strategies: Inbound marketing tactics (and tools) do have a place with the cold calling process. After verifying the prospect email address with a tool like Any Mail finder, for example, after you have sent your cold email, use email software that can track if your prospect has opened the email or not. Once you see that the email is opened, you can make a follow-up call. Using this intel, with a tool like Close.io, for example, you know that the email has been acknowledged and it won’t be a surprise to hear from you. Keep in mind that calling a prospect that has never heard of you or your brand is never successful. You can use other inbound strategies such as content sharing on social media, as well as targeted Facebook ads. This will make sure that they have heard of you when you make that call!
3. Do your research: Once you have your target customer established, you will want to do your research. Focus on the industry, location and the title of the decision-maker in the buying process. You may also want to search social media platforms for recent blog posts, comments or shared content on their feed. By doing this you will learn more about them and be able to focus more on their issues at hand. At a minimum, it helps to ask better questions and determine lead quality.
