Top 10 Tips For Cold Calling Success (part1)

At some point or other every sales person has to cold call. Whether it’s ringing totally new clients, chasing leads, gaining referrals, networking or following up on a conference card handed in it’s not something that many salespeople are that comfortable with.

Being able to cold call confidently, professionally and effectively will not only open up more potential business for you it will also allow you to feel more in control of your own destiny and much more empowered. Here are my top 10 tips for cold calling success…

1. Plan and prepare your opening statement.

The more individuals I train the more important I think this is. I have made tens of thousands of calls and listened to far more. Whether cold or indeed warm calling the biggest problem by far is lack of client engagement. This can be down to several factors but by far the most significant is a failure to plan and prepare a decent opening statement.

An opening statement needs an introduction, a hook (what’s in it for client) and a bridge to your questions or your close. Without these it’s impotent. Make sure that the benefits you offer are a) really benefits and b) relevant to the person you are speaking to and not just you! My top tip would be to imagine your self in your client’s shoes and then ask, “What will this call potentially do for my business and why should I care?”

2. Get into the right state of mind and expect success.

Unmotivated people to not make good salespeople. Let’s face it, who would buy off someone who didn’t appear to believe it themselves. When I train teams I am constantly amazed at the number of salespeople who pick up the phone expecting rejection. It doesn’t seem to matter whether they are making cold calls, customer care calls or follow up calls … only a small percentage of top performers absolutely expect success.

Attitude and mindset are infectious. Clients know within seconds whether you are congruent with your message or not. I once did a verbal survey with my clients asking them why they bought from me in the first place. The overwhelming (and surprise at the time) answer was, “It felt like the right thing to do!”

Expecting success is a crucial part of your success.

3. Know WHY your need to do this.

On a day to day basis most of us forget WHY we are doing certain things. We find ourselves cold calling because we have to or because we are told to. If you want to make change in your cold calling habits then it is going to require some commitment, some focus and some persistence. The best way of leveraging these attributes from your self is to ask yourself, “Why is cold calling important to me? What does it do for me? How does it link to my goals and my dreams?”

When coaching individual sales people on teams I can usually tell who will act and who will not and it’s usually down to whether the individual has a need or a want or not. Holding your self to a higher standard is hard if you have no reason to so spend some time and work our why cold calling is important to you right now.