Gabriel Sales is a top sales and marketing operations outsourcing company with years of experience in cold calling. Here are ten B2B sales strategy tips for effective cold calling:
- Prepare. Understand the overall goal you would like to achieve with the call. Plan it all out and know what actions you need to take to meet your goal. What needs to happen by the time you hang up? Are you looking to set an appointment? What information do you need from them? What do you want them to understand about you? What do you want the results of the call to be?
- Use your manners. Poor phone etiquette is an easy way to lose a deal before it has even started. Show personality in your voice when you speak to avoid boring your prospects to death. Don’t chew anything while you speak, you want to sound professional, energetic and articulate.
- Sell using a script, but don’t sound scripted. If you are fumbling over your opening statement, you can come off unprepared. You only have a few precious seconds at the beginning of a call to “hook” your client’s attention. Show confidence. Give them a reason not to tune you out.
- Don’t create extra objections for yourself. Good planning on your part, creating a solid opening, can head off objections simply by instilling confidence in your prospect. Make sure everything you say after is as equally planned out. Don’t say anything that does not direct apply to solving your prospect’s problems.
- Ask questions that sales qualify. Have the questions you need answered to sales qualify a prospect prepared ahead of time, and have them in front of you to reference. This is extremely important; in most cases, you need to learn as much about your prospect as they do about you. Good questions lead to better information and more appointments. Order your questions in sequence of priority, and ask them in that order.
- Listen to their answers. This may seem obvious, but listening is key when making a good sales call. By asking the right sales qualifying questions, you can be sure you will get the right answers, if you simply open your ears. Listen attentively to their needs, do not interrupt and wait for them to say everything they want to.
- Do not mistake negative answers for rejections. The two are not synonymous. While an unfavorable response (such as a prospect claiming to be too busy) may be a sign they are not interested, it should not be assumed this is always the case.
- Do not push unnecessary content. Many times, a request for additional information is simply a guise to get off the phone. Don’t let this happen to you! If your prospect asks for more information, make sure you know why. Ask them what kind of information they want; this will increase the odds of them actually reading it.
- Get what you want. Show no fear, be confident and ask for it! Whatever the goal of your call is, the only way you’re going to achieve it is to ask. Just like with your opening, you should have a planned out way of asking for what you want. If your goal is an appointment, set the date and time immediately.
- Show your value. Talking about how great you are rarely impresses anyone. If you want to keep your prospect engaged, you always have to remember the client’s perspective. The best way to show your value is to ask smart sales questions, and then listen to the response and follow up with another great sales question.
For more information on cold calling or B2B sales strategy, please feel free to contact us.
