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Cold Calling

Guest post by: Nicolas DAlleva

Article Overview: Cold calling is an important part of generating leads for businesses. This guide to cold calling will help you make the most of your efforts on the phone.

Cold Calling

Cold calling is one of the most difficult, frustrating and challenging methods of marketing. However, it is also one of the most effective ways to get the word out. Cold calling is a direct marketing technique. This technique is used to sell goods or services, schedule appointments, and generating leads. Cold calling is the most basic one on one sales technique available. This form of marketing comes down to contacting someone you don't know, introducing yourself and trying to sell them something. These prospects may or may not want to purchase the goods or services, or in some cases not even understand what the caller is pushing. Cold calling is a very difficult task in the art of sales and marketing. Yet, having a cold calling guide can help the caller succeed in the process. In order to properly make effective cold calls, the caller must be take advantage of every phone call and every minute. To more effectively handle and manage the cold calls, one must follow the three "P's" of telemarketing.

Persistence

The single most important aspect of cold calling is persistence. Success in cold calling means to never give up. Most successful closes occur after the fifth contact. Most sales and cold callers give up after the second attempt. In order to successfully cold call, one must follow a code of persistence. Cold calling is just a numbers game. The success ratio of cold calling is affected greatly by the number of phone calls made. Call, call and call again is a guaranteed formula for cold calling. Even armed with a poor script and a poor list.

Prospects

The success of a cold calling campaign can be tied directly to the quality of the list. So it is very important to make sure that you have the very best list possible. Many people use inexpensive, recycled telemarketing lists to do their cold calling. This is a recipe for failure. These lists are often oversaturated and outdated. The list is a valuable tool that cold callers need to be strong in order for them to succeed. Don't be afraid to spend money on a higher quality list. This usually will more than pay for itself. A bad list is costly, as it eats up labor and brings down office morale.

Preparation

When you fail to prepare, be prepared to fail. The formula for success in cold calling is to develop a formula. The right employees, the right list and the right script combined can make a cold calling project launch into new territory. Cold calling if done properly can make any company a successful sales machine.

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Article Tags: business leads, cold calling, marketing



Related Forum Posts
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: 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


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