This blog is on some of my cold calling tips, both for planning and execution. We still employ cold calling for many of our accounts, often in conjunction with email and social outreach. Cold calling may not be for everyone, but we have found it to still be a valid tactic. One of our recent success stories includes cold calling tips and email outreach have helped us close $500,000 in new revenue over the last year with 50 hours a week of effort. Here are my cold calling tips.

Return on Investment

How much does your solution sell for? How much margin is available? What is your cost of sale? Calling can be a higher cost then email or other digital marketing tactics. It is important to understand these things so you can plan and then evaluate if outbound calling is right for your business and that you are getting a good ROI.

Automation May Not Get You There

Most of the engagements we work on have an email component to our outbound targets. Typically, there is a sequence with a number of emails. Some emails do get responded to and other targets engage with opening or clicks.  One of our tried and tested cold calling tips is to build off email campaigns. Targets can be prioritized based on the engagement with your emails.

Focus on the Right Targets

The key is to make sure you are laser focused on the right companies and contacts for the phone calls. Calling companies that are not your ideal customers means more time spent with little chance for return. I had a company calling me about uniforms and leaving messages. They caught me live one day and I explained that we were not the right target and they removed me from their call list. If they had done their research correctly, even just looking at our LinkedIn company page, they would have seen we would not likely need uniforms and that we have 5 team members.

Be Prepared

Have your CRM open and information ready. Understand enough about the business to be able to focus on what could be important to them. Has there been past interactions or have they interacted with email? Be prepared so that you can maximize your time on the call.

Book the Next Step

The goal for most companies isn’t to close the contact on the cold call, but to move to a next step. That next step is usually a discovery meeting and or demo. Have your calendar open and see if you can agree on a time and then send a calendar invite.

If you are interested in talking about more cold calling tips and how they can help your outbound sales efforts, please reach out to me.