Cold Calling Secret

How often do you have people interrupting your day with a phone call so they can sell you something you don’t even want to buy? How good did it feel to finally hang up on them when the call was done?

Now imagine you’re trying to sell your product or service to a potential customer. You pick up the phone and you’re ready to dial their number but you don’t know what they could be doing at that very moment. You would hate to be that annoying telemarketer that you don’t even like to hear from. What’s the best way to cold call your potential customers?

Today I’m going to teach you three powerful cold calling secrets that will help you close more sales and land more deals.

Cold Calling Secret #1: Avoid Cold Calling

The first secret is you want to avoid cold calling. You see, how customers buy is as important as what they buy. Their frame of mind before they make a single purchase from you is extremely critical.

Imagine this: someone interrupts you at the mall while you’re walking to your favourite store. A voice at one of those booths is calling, “Try this free sample!” Someone is interrupting what you’re doing so you pretend you didn’t hear or you walk away because you don’t want to buy anything. You especially don’t want to buy from someone who is bothering you. That’s what happens when you cold call people.

Remember, people love to buy but they hate to be sold. We want to think we are making the final buying decision.

Watch this video about the three secrets of cold calling.

When you’re cold calling someone you don’t have a prior relationship with, you’re trying to build trust in a very short period of time.

The problem is, when you start off by doing that, they start off by not trusting you. They don’t like you. They’re skeptical. It’s very difficult to use your phone skills to overcome all of that.

Yet, some corporations and industries are still driving their business with cold calls over the telephone. Even today, when we mostly communicate by text message, we still hear from telemarketers.

I believe when it comes to telephone calls, the telephone itself is a great conversion tool, but it’s a horrible lead generation tool. Randomly calling people from a phone list is not the best way to find interested customers.

When it comes to lead generation, you’re better off using marketing and other tools to generate the leads so all you have to do is have people put up their hand and say, “I want to learn more about this.” Then you get them on the phone.

That’s better than using the telephone to cold call and interrupt people to see if they will put up their hand. If they’re interested in what you sell, they’ll say, “You know what? I want to learn more about this.”

If you do have to cold call, you don’t want to just cold call. You want to turn it into a warm call.

Cold Calling Secret #2: Do Your Research

Before calling someone, do your research first. Find out their first name, their industry, and profession. If you’re a B2B selling to companies or businesses, research LinkedIn profiles and social media to find out a little bit about the person before you call them.

Don’t just call them and say, “Hey, is this John Smith?” The minute you say that, it’s a cold call. They won’t want to talk to you and they’ll make excuses to hang up.

What’s worse than saying their full name is saying, “Hey, how are you doing, sir?” Immediately, they won’t have time for you. That’s a question they’ve heard many times from cold calls.

If you don’t have a prior relationship with them and you have to cold call them, then call as if you’re getting back to them instead of calling out of the blue.

Cold Calling Secret #3: Get Inbound Calls

You want to set up the call in such a way to get as many inbound calls as possible instead of outbound. You want your potential customer to be calling you, instead of you calling them.

Times have changed and with social media, and different platforms and technology, there are a lot more things you can do to qualify prospects before getting on the call.

I use marketing, branding, and social media to generate the leads and interest first, so that when they book a time, I know that they have already put up their hand and they want to know more. The prospect is already pre-interested, pre-qualified, and pre-motivated.

More importantly, the prospect scheduled a time on their calendar. It’s not an outbound call, it’s an inbound call. When I call someone, I don’t know what they could be doing: taking care of their kids, doing housework, or driving. I don’t want to interrupt them.

I want their full attention during the 30 or 60 minute call. If I’m doing B2B closing, it doesn’t matter as much as B2C. I want their full attention when they view my presentation. If I don’t have their attention, I won’t be able to make that sale.

Now you might be wondering why inbound calling makes such a big difference in your sales results. When you’re making warm calls, you’re not selling a product or service. You are selling trust. By the time they have booked a call with you, they already know a bit about your company and what you do. They are interested and they want to know how you can help them.

When you call them, you are the salesperson. When they call you, you are the expert.