Cold calling is feared by professional salespeople. Yet it is often a necessary component for achieving sales targets and revenue growth. This article puts cold calling in prospective and suggests some consistent steps to insure a higher success rate
Taking the Fear out of Cold calling

“Colds calls” is a term that strikes terror into the hearts of the most seasoned salespeople. If sales professionals experience this cold call reluctance, what about other types of professionals-such as CPA’s, lawyers, engineers, that want to grow their professional services practices but can’t spend all their time on business development? For many charged with selling in addition to delivering their professional services, just the thought of approaching potential customers can cause one to break out in a cold sweat.

What does this fear stem from? Cold call reluctance is usually due to two concerns. First, a fear of rejection and behind that is often a fear of what to say to create interest.

You may be of the mindset that cold calling is an outdated even antiqued tactic in the 21st century. Contrary to what you think or may have read, cold calling has always been and will continue to be a key component of new business development. Networking and referrals from existing customers are important and effective tools to build business but there will always be a segment of high potential prospects that you simply can’t reach through these methods. Would you ignore those prospects? Of course not. That’s where cold calling comes in.

Lets take a closer look at the process of cold calling, which I define as contacting new prospects that are not current customers. These prospects typically have not previously expressed interest in your services.

To begin with, start to think of cold calling in a new light. As a consumer, have you ever received some type of unsolicited promotional offering for a product or service you had no previous experience with? The answer to this question is of course yes. This is an example of “cold calling”, the act of reaching out to potential customers to inform them of a service or product they may have need for. Virtually every first contact with a new prospect falls into the cold call category to some extent –even referrals from existing customers. The purpose of every first contact is to provide some initial information on your product or service to a potential customer, create interest and at some point, a sale. Now lets focus on individualized, one on one, sales type cold calls. This type of contact should always be personalized to the individual contacted.

How can we take the fear out of these initial contacts and, in the process, improve the effectiveness of our marketing or selling efforts? By following a well defined set of steps. These steps will address the two causes of cold call reluctance, fear of rejection and fear of what to say to create interest while helping to personalize the message.

Before conducting this exercise, starts by selecting ten potential customers you believe to be good prospects for your offerings.

Now apply the following five steps. If followed consistently, these will eliminate those fears, will make these contacts less intimating to you and will also increase the productivity of your efforts- resulting in more prospects converted to customers. q Start by developing a short, concise message that conveys your organization mission, products or services and unique value to potential customers. Your goal here is to get the prospects attention and create interest in learning more. Accomplish this by a focus on conveying the successful results experienced by current customers or clients and how those same results can be realized by the prospect you are approaching. Statements of success serve to gain attention and create interest. q Next, target the individual you perceive to be your best contact within the organization. I define best contact as the highest-level individual with ultimate responsibility for that part of the organization that either uses your offering or benefits from its use. Even if this individual is several layers removed from the level that actually uses your product or service, start here and let he/she refer you to someone that reports to them. As an example; assume you sell business risk management services. The user level may be the supervisor of accounts receivables but make your initial contact the CFO. q Personalize each initial contact. Personalization involves the medium and the message. Personalize the message by taking time to learn something relevant about the prospect or the organization she/he works for. Perhaps you can incorporate examples of why current customers buy from you and the value they experience from doing business with you. The medium can be via phone, written introductory letter, and now with the use of technology, via e-mail. I strongly favor the phone over any of the others. Your voice on the telephone is the most personal approach and can convey much more than a passive written document or e-mail communication. q Set a goal for each first contact. Your goals at a minimum should be to establish who the real decision maker is for buying your product or service and to determine potential need for your offerings. Additional goals, depending on outcome of this first contact can include gaining agreement to a face-to-face meeting, agreement to review detailed information on your products or services, and to determine buying cycle or timeline before next purchase. q Conclude the initial contact with an assessment of prospect level of interest. If agreement is gained that the prospect has interest or is willing to consider your offerings prior to her next purchase, immediately establish next steps and a timeline of when to take those defined actions.

Establish your mindset in advance that any rejection you encounter is not directed at you personally. Rejection is the result of either ignorance of the value of your services or simply because your first point of contact isn’t the true decision maker for your offerings. Do your best upfront to target the individual most likely to be a decision maker but do not assume that person is your only or best contact. Multiple points of contact may be required to get the true picture of what the decision making process is really like. Regardless, deal with rejection by refining your message so that your value in the marketplace is clearly defined. Use probing questions about how buying decisions are made in this particular organization to determine the key decision maker)(s).

After contacting all 10 of your prospects, review the outcomes of each encounter. Compile a list of outcomes and for those where you experienced total rejection, analyze why. Did you reach the right person? If you have doubt, set a goal to probe further by contacting someone else in that organization that might have knowledge of or interest in your offerings. If you are confident you reached the right person but still experienced rejection, do some further research on the organization. Look for ways to better customize your message of value here and try again. For the remainder that hopefully expressed some level of interest or suggested a better future time to contact them, set timelines and actions and make a resolution to stick to it. Look back on your plan periodically, as you progress, opportunities will start to unfold. If ultimately, you gain 1 or 2 of these 10 as new customers, isn’t that a significant improvement over today?

About the Author

Greg Evershed has over 23 years sales experience in B to B markets. His consulting practice focuses on assisting clients to develop strategic selling plans and selling processes using business intelligence tools.He also conducts customized sales training programs focused on solution and conceptual selling.