Cold Calling Tips And Strategies
What is cold calling
Have you ever called someone whom you don’t even know? Well, that’s the concept of Cold Calling. Dialling a list of contact numbers and then pitching your product/services. It’s one of the oldest and the most common strategy of marketing but difficult too! Widely used in the telecommunication sector, cold calling needs perfect skills of customer interaction. Apart from telemarketing, it can also involve person visits too!
In this technocratic era, attracting customers through cold calling has become a difficult task. With the success rate of just 2%, facing rude behaviour, rejections, aggression is quite common. This job requires consistency, communication skills and a cool mind! Recent developments in this sector include robocalling which includes pre-recorded messages, used by all the customer cares of telecom companies.
Successful Cold Calling Tips and strategies
1. Clear your purpose
A wrong notion among many that cold calling means finalising a deal in one single call! No – cold calling doesn’t only means selling the product/service. It is more about informing the customer and creating an interest in your company. With the right questions asked and pitching strategy, you can actually sell anything to an unknown person! Apart from this, it is a stepping stone to organise a meeting with anyone or to conduct a workshop/seminar. Thus, it can be well used to develop relations.
2. Finalise your cold calling target audience
Never do random calls like a ship without a rudder. Call any specific companies or individuals who can be resourceful for your product/service. Connecting with the right people is the key to success in the cold calling process. It includes proper research about the company profile, analytics, data and your own needs!
3. Take the help of Social Media
It might happen that the person you are contacting is already connected with you on any social media platform like LinkedIn or Facebook. It is a wonderful way of cold calling if you have already talked to that person on Social media but haven’t talked yet.
4. A dynamic and attractive speech
Talking randomly about your product on a call with an unknown person has high chances of failure. Thus, it is advisable to prepare an awesome speech/pitch that can attract the customer. It shouldn’t be rhetoric but based on facts and figures. With a mixture of logic and some questions, make it more interesting. All this sums up the communication and marketing skills of a person. This is the real task in cold calling.
5. Prepare a Script
Though people say that your reason should be genuine but telling a story would be a nice idea! The story can be cooked up too! Now, it’s not at all suggested that you lie about your product/services or your intentions and make fool of that person. But it is a creative way to engage that unknown person on call for some time.
6. Arrange for a meeting during the cold call
Never forget the real purpose of your cold call i.e to arrange for a meeting. It shouldn’t be asked in a confused way. Just ask for a specific time and venue for the meeting. It is your responsibility to make the full use of this interaction.
7. Call Timings
It is suggested to make the call either early in the morning or late in the afternoon. A survey says that Thursday is the best day for a cold call followed by Wednesday while Tuesday is the worst! You must keep not of the time. Calling during lunchtime or dinner time is highly unacceptable.
8. Practice
The practice is the key to success. it should be highly followed in Cold calling. The skills to improve your communication won’t develop in a day. Handling different type of customers is the most difficult task.
Scope of Cold Calling
One can’t deny the importance of cold calling but due to other better alternatives of marketing, its importance has decreased. Digital marketing and Social Media campaigning are majorly important nowadays for attracting customers. Professional platforms like LinkedIn are more helpful to contact the customers or prospects. Even sending formal invitations through email has more impact than a cold call! But all this doesn’t indicate that cold calling is dead. Even today many companies use cold calling to collect data, check public response, and refine and identify their target audience. A lot of important information can be gained through a cold call which might not be expected from a cold email or a message on social media.
Thus, it can be concluded that cold calling will always have a place while marketing and attracting customers. With proper strategy and skills, one can make the best use of it. It can help land as many customers as you want depending on your communication skills.
