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Cold Calling Tip: Turn a Cold Call Into a Warm Call

Written by: Peter O'Donoghue

Article Overview: If you use the telephone to generate new business, and you should be, then you need to know how to turn a cold cll into a warm call. This fantastic article will show you how.

Cold Calling Tip: Turn a Cold Call Into a Warm Call

I am a huge believer in using the phone as one of the greatest ways of developing new business. I am a practitioner and advocate of hundreds of ways of prospecting and business generation but very few of them have the instant power to make connections via the phone.

Cold calling consumers, however, is archaic, and will soon die a death. Business to Business calling, however is extremely powerful and will never die out. The key to being succesful is to turn your cold calls into warm calls. A warm call is one where the person on th eother end of the line will welcome your call and will want to talk to you. You have done your research and have a valid reason for the course.

In awarm call, the prospect has some sense of familiarity with you and will be more open to a discussion. Your objective, then, is not to make as many cold calls as you can, but to turn as many cold calls as you can into warm ones, thereby increasing your chances for success before you grab that phone.

There are many ways to turn a cold call into a warm call:

• Reference a common problem or issue in thir Industry
• Reference a common problem or issue you know the comany has
• Reference a common goal that the company or Industry has.
• Reference an article, white paper, conference or contract that is relevant to the company
• Reference someone inside the prospective company.
• Reference someone outside the prospective company.
• Reference common customers.
• Refer to a flattering story in a newspaper or magazine about your company or the prospect's company.

If you do your research there are many ways to open doors and tuen cold calls into warm calls. One easy way is to think about what would catch your attention and get you interested in having a conversation with caller?

If your concerned about the time it takes to do this amount of research then there are two great ways to stay in touch:

• Subscribe to a decent market intelligence service tht screens information for you
• Sign up to google alerts. If you haven't come across it yet then you need to google it. Google alerts will send you targeted emails every day or once a week based on any search terms you set up. This is one of the greatest sales aids available to businesses that has been developed in the last 30 years. Use it!

If you are doing any type of telephoning or telesales in your business then remember to turn your cold call into a warm call.

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Article Tags: advocate, believer, business generation, cold call, cold calls, common goal, consumers, doors, familiarity, grea, hundreds of ways, instant power, li li, new business, objective, prospective company, ul, valid reason, white paper conference



Related Forum Posts
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: 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: Cold Calling - Cold calling is an extremely difficult job to do and unless one learns that being told no by people is not a direct refusal aimed at the cold caller but at whatever is being sold, it can be very soul destroying work to do. One needs to have absolute confidence in themselves and a pretty thick skin. MichelleJ
I answer my phone - when I worked in the Call Center we had to say "Good XXXXXX, Andy speaking, How may I help you?" imagine saying that over and over again. It kind of sticks with you. It's been a few years now but I've kicked off "How may I help you?" part.


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