Cold Calling with Confidence

If you’ve ever felt a little uncomfortable approaching a stranger at a networking event and trying to converse normally with this stranger, you’re not alone. If it’s hard enough meeting someone face-to-face, in the flesh and starting a conversation, it’s only natural that making cold calls to strangers over the phone can also be emotionally challenging.

Whether your title is sales representative, account manager, Territory rep, BDM, or hundred and one other potential business titles, if you’re in sales, you will need to make cold calls at some stage or another.

Now, before you try and tell me that cold calling is dead and that everyone should be using LinkedIn or something similar, let me tell you that cold calling isn’t dead… But if you think it is, you’re probably doing it wrong.

When you peel back the onion of cold calling, I think salespeople typically resist the traditional approach to cold call, where you are trying to push and cajole a complete stranger into buying your stuff. That’s not what modern cold calling is all about.

Does cold calling really work?

Cold calling does work, but, like most things, it’s evolved. It’s unlikely you will close a stranger on the first phone call. However, starting a conversation and seeing if a prospect is interested in learning something that will benefit them is a good first step. Having done so in the right way, cold and warm calling works.

Cold calling should be part of your week’s activities

Suppose you are a territory manager or an account manager. In that case, making time, even if it’s an hour every week (but probably more than that), to cold and warm call prospects in your territory should be something you not only need to do but want to do.

Let’s be real, things change, and sometimes things change quickly. A prospect buying from a competitor might need something that the competitor is out of stock of or doesn’t have. When you warm call them – because you have already had a conversation with them in the past, you might discover that they do need something that you have. Bingo, you’ve opened the door to make a sale.

If you’re a sales manager, then ask yourself how many hours a week each of your sales team make prospecting cold calls? How many are making ongoing warm calls – that is, to prospects your people have ready spoken to in the past?

Would it be too much to ask each of your people to make at least an hour of cold calls a week? And by the way, an hour of cold calls equates to around 20 calls. Out of those, your people might get to speak to 3, 4 or 5 prospects. Imagine the impact of converting is one of those into a current customer?

If you are a salesperson, I will encourage you to start or keep making cold calls. If you’re a sales manager, I want to ask you how important it is your people to find new business opportunities?