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Cold Calling Techniques

Guest post by: Alen Majer

Article Overview: These cold calling techniques can improve your results. And remember, cold calling is not a goal. It's the first step in a winnowing process, so naturally you'll find some "chaff" along the way. But with every call, you're expanding awareness of your company's brand and products, and you've introduced yourself so you're no longer a complete stranger. You've planted a seed that might some day grow into a customer.

Cold Calling Techniques

Clammy hands? Blank mind? Have you become an expert at creative avoidance? No one actually looks forward to cold calling, yet it's a necessity for successful selling. Happily, there are some simple cold calling techniques you can use to become much more comfortable, move past your fear and enjoy the positive results you want.

These cold calling techniques can really help:

■ Acknowledge your anxiety. Even professional athletes psych themselves up, put on their game face and focus only on desired results.

■ Be prepared. Know exactly how each prospect can benefit from doing business with you, how your company and products can improve their operations or bottom line. Talk with current customers to learn how they've benefited to get ideas and examples.

■ Assume prospects are interested. Unless you're merely opening the phone book and blindly selecting numbers to call, you're making appropriate contacts. They just haven't met your company or products yet, so it's a teaching opportunity for you.

■ Anticipate objections. You can be a hero by helping resolve problems or allaying concerns about pricing, budget, timing, usage, etc.

■ Pretend you're speaking face-to-face.

■ Speak normally. Know the points you want to make, but let your personality show. People buy from other people, and they prefer to do business with people they like.

■ Stand up. Your voice will sound better and you'll be less tense.

Don't overdo it.

Set yourself up for success, by scheduling short cold calling sessions - say, ten calls or 15 minutes - and rewarding yourself after each session. Rewards should be something you really like, such as calling one of your best customers to check in, reading for a few minutes (limit the time) about sales tips or market trends, even tapping into a short podcast or video.

Short sessions and frequent rewards make cold calling manageable and focus on the positive, energizing you for your next round of calls. Get up and move around between sessions, too, because stretching improves blood flow to your body and your mind.

These cold calling techniques can improve your results. And remember, cold calling is not a goal. It's the first step in a winnowing process, so naturally you'll find some "chaff" along the way. But with every call, you're expanding awareness of your company's brand and products, and you've introduced yourself so you're no longer a complete stranger. You've planted a seed that might some day grow into a customer.

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Article Tags: cold calling script, cold calling techniques, cold calls, how to cold call, sales scripts



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Re: Cold Calling - As long as people are out of jobs, you'll probably have a lot of people who say they want to work for straight commission, but if they don't get paid fairly quickly, they usually move on. We've run into that and went through about 500 people (whose resumes looked really good) until we found about 3 good resellers. People just don't want to work for anything. Or they do a good job getting the business but don't do the follow up necessary to make the sale......so they move on thinking they need money NOW. Our business requires all cold calling as well. It's really tough for people to perfect that but there are a lot of good books out there. On is Cold Calling Techniques, by Stephan Schiffman
Re: What to avoid when cold calling? - At the time of Cold Calling we should avoid price increases for products and unavailability.
Re: How to develop sales contacts? - Everyone has the right idea here. Depending on your business, there are different techniques that you could use. For consultants and sales heavy businesses, there are three tactics that I have found especially useful in my business: 1. Attend Networking Events 2. Cold Calling 3. Referral Program 4. Affiliate Program (most successful) The affiliate program was successful for me, as I hooked up with a franchise consultant, and he gave multiple unit businesses that needed my credit card processing services. I highly suggest you hook up with a sales partner, and give him a cut of the monthly revenue.
Re: Direct Mail Postcards - Post cards would be really expensive to send from Japan...but one way to advertise that is not expensive from overseas is by Cold Calling using cheap VoIP equipment. I know Japan has a really good internet connection, so as long as you are willing to stay up late, it might be an option. I cold call from Thailand far, far away from any city using a CDMA wireless internet connection and have had pretty good results. I find tho, that cold calling works best for business 2 business (b2b), rather than b2c products. --matt
Re: Bad SEO techniques? - There are few more techniques which also known as the Bad SEO Techniques or Black Hat SEO Techniques. Such as: - Relying on keyword metatags - Purchase Links (From Spamming or blacklisted sites or doing purchase links on high level for site marketing) - Horde Page Rank: This is one of my favorites, because it's one that most webmasters don't understand yet. This is because it changed over the past year or two. The concept people have in their mind is that page rank is a key part of site rankings and linking to other sites "leaks page rank" from your site. However, the world has changed. - Swap Links: Another oldie, but not goodie. Search engines want links to represent endorsements. Swapped links represent barter, and they are trivial to detect. Don't swap links for the purpose of building page rank. It's a waste of your time - Implement duplicate content - Use Session IDs on your URLs - Use lots of Javascript - Implement your site in Flash


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