5 Sales Prospecting Techniques for Cold Calling

Unlike interaction via email or social media, speaking to a person allows your sales agents to build rapport with your prospects and form lasting relationships. Besides, a phone conversation allows you to learn valuable information about a prospect’s pain points that can later be used to further your overall sales performance.

In this article, we’ll take a look at some of the most important sales prospecting techniques that will make your cold calls more effective and help turn your prospects into loyal customers.

Research Your Prospect

Since you need to establish a connection with a potential prospect as soon as possible, your sales agents must have some talking points and ice breakers readily available.

You can find information about a company by browsing its website and social media accounts or by simply plugging its name into your preferred search engine. According to LinkedIn’s survey, 74 percent of sales professionals use LinkedIn to collect data, so that would be a good place to start.

The information you should gather:

• Contact’s first and last name
• Position/role in the company
• Some personal info that can be used as an ice breaker or to build rapport
• Company name and industry
• Location
• Technologies they use to conduct business
• Problems they have faced and how your product or service might help to overcome them
• Their short-term and long-term goals and how your company may help to achieve them

When you prepare for a conversation, it feels less like a cold call and helps your agents begin to develop a relationship with the prospect before making an offer.

Choose the Right Time to Make Your Calls

Knowing when to call maximizes your chances that someone will pick up the phone.

But when to make a cold call? As a rule of thumb, early mornings (8–9 a.m.) and late afternoons (4–5 p.m.) are considered particularly auspicious, with late morning (11 a.m. — 12 p.m.) being another popular contender. Be mindful of time zones if your company operates internationally.

Regarding the day of the week, a study found that Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best for sales calls.

You can leverage the power of sales prospecting tools to analyze the call answer rate and determine at what times your prospects are most likely to answer your call.

Finally, make sure you’re using a local number when making cold calls. It greatly increases the credibility of your call, since prospects might be reluctant to pick up calls coming from outside their region.

Apart from skyrocketing your response rate, a local number will also make it far more likely that prospects will call you back.

Actively Listen to Your Prospect

When your prospects feel respected and heard, they'll be happy to continue the conversation. This is a quick and easy way to build rapport and allows you to learn more about your prospect.

Active listening means that you know when to speak. A study by Sales Hacker showed that top B2B professionals speak only 43 percent of the time.

But active listening is more than just staying quiet. Repeat back the details your prospect has shared and ask them to further elaborate. Also, give verbal cues that you are listening and ask questions that dive deeper into the topic being discussed.

Save the pitch for another time and start building a relationship with your prospect.

You can do this by giving your prospect only the information that addresses their pain points or helps them achieve their business goals. The research you conducted earlier will be crucial here.

By actively listening and showing your prospect that you understand their needs, you will start to earn their trust and lay the groundwork for making a sale.

Be Prepared: Objections Handling and Cold Call Scripts

Cold call scripts offer your agents information on your products, services, prospects, FAQs, likely conversation scenarios, and whatever else you might find important.

But make sure to add a bit of personality to these scripts; otherwise, your agents will sound like a robot.

Also, include a list of the most common objections your prospects might have to reject your offer and how to handle them.

Detailed and well-prepared cold call scripts help your agents prepare for any contingency that might arise during the call.

Use the Right Tools

Cold calling tends to have an abysmal rejection rate. To increase the total number of conversions, leverage the law of large numbers and make more calls.

Although a study by ringDNA showed that a sales agent should call at least 60 prospects per day, the average salesperson normally manages to make around 35 calls per day.

A predictive dialing tool can help to greatly increase the efficiency of your sales team. Furthermore, routine wrap-up tasks can largely be automated by using a call center solution integrated with your CRM.

By removing the need for scrolling through endless contact lists, logging calls manually, and filling call reports, you can boost the number of calls you make in a day and give your agents more time to focus on what is important — the call itself.

Conclusion

Although it may seem somewhat outdated at first sight, cold calling is still an exceptionally effective way of prospecting for new customers.

Remember to always do your homework before making a call. The more you know about your prospect, the easier it will be to build a relationship between them and your company.

Always make sure you call at the right time and keep the focus on your prospect. Allow them to speak and show them that you understand their needs and pain points.

Looking to get started? Try using adequate software solutions on AppExchange to increase the efficiency of your sales team and maximally optimize your sales process.