We spend a lot of time cautioning our clients that cold calling doesn’t work as a stand-alone activity for your sales people. Only 1% of cold calls actually result in meetings and 90% of B2B decision makers don't respond to cold sales outreach.¹ And, you’re paying your sales people A LOT of money to do something that does not yield results. 

But then, here is another statistic; 55% of high growth companies – who experienced a minimum of 40 percent growth over the previous three-years – stated that cold calling is very much alive. Companies who said cold calling is dead experienced 42 percent less growth than those who said it was alive.² How can cold calling be both dead AND alive? 

The answer is that when used properly, cold calling can be very effective. So effective, we have it in virtually every marketing plan we write. Finally, we love to see cooperation between sales and marketing because when sales and marketing teams work together, companies see 36% higher customer retention and 38% higher sales win rates.³  Here are our tips on how to use cold calling effectively.

Tip #1 –   Combine cold calling with marketing (all at the same time)

Integrated marketing plans run multiple activities at the same time on different channels and we find juggling that level of activity yields the highest number of leads. An example of an integrated campaign is running an email campaign with search engine or social media marketing plus promotion on social media. Layering in cold calling also boosts results and speeds them up. For example, with one client we got a 150% increase in leads with the marketing campaign when we used cold calling as an additional tactic. All other pieces of the campaign were the exact same. While we know this isn’t a proper sample set to be considered definitive, we are confident we get better results when we cold call.

Tip #2 - Have a great script

We have said in our blog and other areas of our thought leadership that it’s a negative experience to receive a sales call after you have downloaded a piece of thought leadership. But what if it wasn’t a sales call? What if the script was changed to offer something else of value? This is the importance of a script and knowing what to say and when to get your best result. Your script should show that you have a solid understanding of your potential customer and their problem and that you can solve that problem. 

Also, think about the common objections you receive and have a plan and a script to manage those. Your marketing team can help you craft messages that work, while remaining on brand and reinforcing the key messages that are in the campaign.

Tip #3 - Use technology to cold call

Why pay a sales person, when you can license software to do your cold calling for you? Or at least build in more efficiency. There are many automation tools to help you become more efficient at prospecting and they involve the use of software. Some software we recommend are:

1. Close.io - leaves pre-recording voicemails so you can jump to the next call.
2. Growbots - an all-in-one outbound sales platform that covers both prospecting and prospect outreach.
3. Five9 - does predictive dialing to increase your connect rates.

There are many, many more options, depending on where you would like to gain your efficiencies. Many of the software companies offer script writing and other services that your marketing team can also help with. 

For some additional tips to improve results in your sales and marketing, listen to our webinar on maximizing results. If you would like help from the experts in a different kind of marketing company, please contact us.

 Sources:

1. Hubspot
2. Peak Sales Recruiting
3. Hubspot