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One of the lost art forms is cold calling a prospect. Years before the social media, and the advent of the modern internet, picking up the phone book directly locating the warmest leads, used to be the thumb rule for sales. Primarily, cold calling is considerable waste of time, for those who don't actually need that product or service, you end up pitching them over the phone. A lot of strategy, and planning is required to choose the right words. 90% of cold calls result in rejection, and sometimes corporate constantly hearing no over and over.

A considerable amounts cold calls result in leads with qualified prospects. Investing quality time in finding the right prospects matters. Crafting cold call strategy that works best for your sales effort, needs a plan, and usually doesn't happen just over a single call. Not all salesman are good talkers, but this does not have to be a painful experience, to repeatedly hear a "No". But, the goal here is to locate a qualified prospect, listen to yourself to the product features, and pitch the best solution to your leads over the call.

It is well advised to do a considerable amount of research, as a part of the qualification process in sorting the leads. The challenge is to match  the customers challenges in their organisation, with a product or service that solves their problem. This feature is more akin to persona, and design thinking strategy, which helps understand how companies face one list of common problems. A genuine opportunity to winning a prospect, is piquing their interest in your product, in a position of enabler that you help your target audience get what they want.

Sales touch points

Making the right connect with the business owner on his problem, like solving the operating costs, reducing the risk, safety measures,  compliances, generating more sales, increasing web traffic, all counts as startup scaling problems. A lot of startup owners, neglect the lost art form of cold calling, hoping everything simply digital.

Personal connect matters. Did you know 123greetings was acquired by intel, for a considerable sum of money? Interpersonal relationships matter a lot in sales. Most salesmen, hope marketing department would be entirely responsible for making the first contact.

Take the lead. Grab the phone and make that call. In total you won't be spending more than a few hours to research your prospects. Mapping your prospects with product offerings is the next step. Making the call, when scheduling an appointment would be your goal, end of the day as a pre sales cold call.

Here is a good example .

Hello dear prospect, my name is sam, from ZZZ Accounting. I was reading about your blog post which indicated are quite interested in cutting down costs for your organisation in the long run. Our company saves clients on an average of 35% in accounting, taxation and compliances. I thought we might meet some time to discuss how we can help you on the same.

Here is another example

Hello Cheryl,  I am …  from ABC Corp. We just put together a new app on how playing games with your dog can significantly reduce stress, specially for adults with answer it disorders, and I thought you might like this product. We based this product on more than 15 peer-reviewed scientific researches, hollow switch conducted within the last 5 years, and this has few cool visuals as well. I would love to consider sharing it if you like. Would you like to have in person demo?

At the end of every cold call it is quite important schedule a meeting at a set time and place. Is important to put all these details in a detailed email, and I agree for more involved discussion. I hope this post finds its relevance with new generation of salesmen, and hopefully revive techniques to do better in sales.

Get good at cold outbound. Keep hustling folks.