How to make cold prospects warm customers?

Hi Helen! I respectfully urge you to immediately stop “reaching out to targets you don’t know to generate an initial meeting.” Meet about what? Why? With whom? Simply because you want a meeting the prospect should agree to such a meeting? Most unlikely!

In business, introductory calls are entirely valid. (Not sure why some folks believe they are not.) However, on an introductory call, a request for a meeting is entirely premature. So upgrade your call strategy! Refocus your introductory calls on establishing credibility, then viability, then desirability. Make the calls about THEM, not you! Leverage your combined marketing … phone, e-mail, webinars, etc. … to the hilt. Then, when you do secure a meeting, it will have substance and a much greater likelihood of success. Because sales’ time and prospects’ attention are so precious, meet only with viable prospects who are excited about meeting.

Helen, this is a question that inside sales teams all over North America grapple with. There are some good answers so far - and in addition, I would just stress:
1) you really need to have succinct, clear, value-focused messaging. What that means is that within seconds be able to show you understand their business issues and simply work to get a longer conversation at a later time - build trust, add value, and be focused on them, not you and your "great company, your long-winded title, or bland filler that tries to build rapport.
2) change of any type takes effort, so even if someone called me to offer what I already purchase but for less money, that is not enough for me to stop what I'm doing and change. Typically we are not selling based on price, happy to say - yet it takes work to learn how to set your business apart and to succinctly convey that in a short amount of time.

Hi Helen:

When you receive a referral introduction, your sales prospect wants to talk to you. You arrive pre-sold, shorten your sales process, and convert that sales prospect to a client more than 50 percent of the time. There is no gatekeeper. Referral selling is hot, and you get your sales meeting every time.

So don't bother with cold calls. It's a huge frustration, waste of our valuable sales time, and the results are dismal. Instead, tap into your referral network. Ask your current clients and your colleagues to refer you. Then ask how you can help them.

Check out How To Bypass the Gatekeeper http://www.nomorecoldcalling.com/bypass-the-gatekeeper/

Cold calling has the lowest percentage success rate of all sales activities and so I always advise against it - never cold call is my mantra.

But, some organizations require it, and their reps are forced to do it, and in those situations I find myself training on: "How to cold call - if your boss makes you."

And in that situation I think the best route is to stop calling people at random and begin compiling a list of target companies, find out who their decision makers are, find them on social media, and begin the process of connecting. I find myself doing business with - as well as becoming friends with - people I've met solely through social media. Even if you do ultimately pick up the phone and make an old fashioned cold call, it's not all that "cold" if you already have a connection with the person on some level.

Once you've got a nice network built and have made enough sales to build a solid client base, then you can move toward working solely off of referrals like Joanne said.

Be human
Speak their language
Tell a bigger story

Selling is about people having conversations. When you reach out to someone, whether through a referral or just on your own, you need to quickly and concisely communicate to them that you understand their business and are interested in partnering with them to help them achieve their goals.

Be human - Use your personality to relate to them as another human being

Speak their language - Prove to them that you understand their business by knowing enough about it to have a meaningful conversation

Tell a bigger story - It isn't about you getting your meeting. It is about the end game when you have partnered and how it helps them.

Hope this helps

Prospects buy in their own time for their own reasons. Anything you do that tries to change that will usually result in refusal and rejection. Because of the discomfort that makes them feel, most of them will not take calls from you again.

However. a very small percentage will make appointments when they are not ready to buy or specify your type of products and services. That results in a lot of work and very low closing rates.

The first step in your prospecting process should be to turn a fairly large number of cold-calls into prospects who will be glad to take future warm calls from you on a regular basis. Done properly, that results in favorable front-of-the-mind awareness for you. So, when they are ready to buy, you are most likely to get their business.

Helen,

Some additional insight which follows on to the points made by Michael. The objective in these "first contact" situations should be to establish yourself and your firm as having a distinct point-of-view regarding the prospects business challenge(s). This makes it about them, not about you as Michael stated.

Forrester has found that 65% of buyers will award business to the company that sets the buying vision. To do this, the initial contacts must answer the question "why change" to help establish why a company should do something different. Only when you have credibly established this vision should you begin to address "why us."

This requires alignment between Marketing and Sales to insure that the company messaging, sales tools, and training all set you up to first set the buying vision with credibility and then establish your solution as the only one which addresses the need you've established.

I agree with the original messages of avoiding the cold call but if you have to cold call, here are some tips:

There are good marketing techniques to get a cold prospect into a warm prospect. A cold prospect is someone who does not accept your phone calls. A warm prospect is someone who is willing to take a phone call or a meeting. For larger organizations, this is usually the responsibility of Marketing.

One technique is the 7 point touch. If a target sees your name or company seven times over an appropriate period of time, you have a good chance he will pick-up on the eighth time. This requires valuable emails, mailers, and follow-up calls at an appropriate rate. You do not want to bombard him with this technique but slowly introduce your company and its value. We have found this to be extremely effective.

There are many sales techniques to move a warm prospect to hot prospect. This is moving someone who is willing to take a meeting to someone who is interested or realizes a need for your product or services. One of the techniques is the elevator speech. Every sales person should have this memorized. This is a 30 second speech which clearly spells out your value to a target listener. The goal is to peak their interest to realize a need and desire for more information. This is where many cold calls fail. They spend too much time introducing themselves, their products and services hoping the client will realize a need.

The second step is to ask questions and listen to client. The directed questions allow the prospect to realize a gap or need for your product. This is the second point of cold call failures. Allowing a prospect realize a need for your product is 10 times more effective then you trying to sell them.

The third step is to leave them wanting more. Don’t overstay your welcome. You intrupted their day with a cold call and took up their valuable time. Ask for a second meeting where the prospect will have more time to review your product and how it will solve his requirements. This is dependent on your product and services sales cycle. If this is a one call close sales cycle, then this step may not apply.

I hope this helps!

Add value. Robert Middleton had one adding value technique of sending several articles each a week apart. Better if you were the author of those articles. Then he suggested sending a word processed letter referring to the articles and setting an appointment time to call. When the gatekeeper asked if the sales lead was expecting the call, the salesperson could honestly answer yes. Several client and colleagues have used this tactic and have secured first time appointments with a 40% to 75% success rate.