Cold Calling is Not Dead if You Do This

The following post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga.

In the past days of marketing, cold calling was a respected and typically efficient way to reach out to new leads and drive sales. Cold calling, essentially, is calling a person with whom you have no prior interaction or professional relationship and pitching your product or service to them. As you can imagine, cold calling is a complicated process.

In the past days of marketing, cold calling was a respected and typically efficient way to reach out to new leads and drive sales. Cold calling, essentially, is calling a person with whom you have no prior interaction or professional relationship and pitching your product or service to them. As you can imagine, cold calling is a complicated process.

In recent times, cold calling has developed a reputation among consumers and business people for being annoying and spammy, and as such, marketers and sales professionals have declared it dead. But cold calling isn’t dead. While it is certainly a tricky marketing and sales tactic to navigate, there are some things you can do to ensure success as opposed to blocked numbers and a bad reputation.

First, there are amazing resources like Pipedrive that are dedicated to helping improve sales funnels. They offer cold calling scripts, videos, tutorials, and everything you’d need to ensure effective cold calling, whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned marketer.

There are many resources on the market for cold emailing, but few treat it like the art form that it is and go as in-depth as Pipedrive does. And that’s not all. Not only does Pipedrive get into cold emailing, but it also offers detailed lessons on sales psychology and tactics and sales software that can be seamlessly integrated into your existing business model.

There are also some helpful tips to apply to your current cold calling techniques to guarantee results, such as the following:

1. Do Some Research on Your Lead

A call that goes, “I’m X and want to talk to you about why you should buy our product.” doesn’t sound appealing and is more likely to get your phone number blocked.

Instead, try and do a bit of research about the person you’re contacting. Scroll through their Twitter or search their LinkedIn to find out information about their work or company. That way, you can call and say, “I’m X and I heard that your company has been struggling with data entry solutions. I have something that can help.”

This makes your call sound like a tailored one (which it is) and not a spammy nuisance that blindly targets everyone.

2. Offer Solutions 

One of the golden rules of sales is that customers do not want to feel that they are blatantly being sold to. This is why when selling, especially to a cold lead, you should focus on offering solutions instead of selling a product or service.

After striking up a conversation with the cold lead, discuss the issue they are having and suggest that what you are offering might be able to help them. For example, your approach shouldn’t be “I’d like to offer your cybersecurity products to your company.” but instead, should be “I believe I can help your company better protect its networks and data with some great products.” The latter is more likely to keep a cold lead on the line and could even lead to sales.

3. Ask Questions

People love to talk about themselves and cold calls are no different. In fact, they’ve been in existence for long enough that most people, when they receive a cold call, are prepared to hear someone talk about themselves and their product for a few minutes and immediately say that they are not interested.

This is because cold callers do not engage and talk with the lead but instead, talk to them. The way to get around this is to ask questions about the lead. What are their challenges? What do you think is missing in their business? By doing this, the lead is kept engaged and is also more likely to provide information about their needs that can work to your advantage.

4. The Human Touch

One of the reasons why people think cold calling is dead is because many of us associate it with cold, robotic callers who are clearing reading from a predictable script. You need to go against this to get results by not lazily reading from a script.

While some sort of conversation guide can help to guide your thought process and keep you on track, make an effort to seem as lively as possible. Have a clever quip in between your lines. Make appropriate small talk as you converse with the lead. This will endear you to them and you won’t seem like an uninterested sales agent giving the same lines to everyone you speak with. 

Cold calling might not be the most popular sales tactic these days but that does not mean that it is dead. There are several ways to breathe life into your cold calling technique and achieve results with ease. From asking questions to doing a bit of homework beforehand, these steps can go a long way to helping you thrive with cold calling and drive sales to your business. 

The preceding post was written and/or published as a collaboration between Benzinga’s in-house sponsored content team and a financial partner of Benzinga. Although the piece is not and should not be construed as editorial content, the sponsored content team works to ensure that any and all information contained within is true and accurate to the best of their knowledge and research. This content is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice.