Five Fabulous Tips for Cold Calling

Sylvia Modu presents her 5 tips to help with cold calling and telephone sales.

I remember as if it were yesterday, joining a company that had been looking for people to make cold calls. I was the first one to walk through the door; they gave me a huge box of cards with names of companies and telephone numbers, which nobody had touched in years and now I was expected to ‘cold-call’ these companies and sell them my (new) company’s products.

Was I scared?! Yes, I was but I ended up being the biggest producer of sales by telephone. I eventually grew the team from 1 (myself) to 10 and became the telesales manager. I learned from experience and have since gone on to train hundreds of people in the subject. Here I offer you 5 tips, which you might find useful. You will see that they are very much ‘skills-based’ this time. Next time we’ll look at how to create a positive mind-set to help keep you on track when the going gets a bit rough!

1. GET READY
Preparation is the key to success in all that we do in life – try getting married or taking a holiday without it! First, clean up your list. Make sure that those companies, telephone numbers and people still exist. You can do this by making a call ‘just for a little information’. Next, find a reason to call. A reason to call could be ‘they used your company sometime ago’, or ‘you sent information recently’ or ‘you want to inform them of something new’. A reason to call makes you feel comfortable in making the call. Next, decide on your objective. To determine your objective, ask yourself ‘what do I want to happen as a result of making this call?’ Next, have EVERYTHING you need to hand and then MAKE THE CALL!

2. GET THEM LISTENING
This stage is crucial because people are not waiting for your call. So plan a good opening to get the ‘prospect’s’ attention. This opening statement needs to have some benefits built in so they can see why they should talk to you, which in turn earns you the right to continue speaking. Here are some reasons why people might want to talk to you: you can save them money, you can save them time, you can offer security or your products can massage their ego. Once you start to look at what your company can offer you will find reasons for calling. Plan your opening until you are happy with and then hit the phone.

3. FIND OUT WHAT THEY WANT
The only way to get into people’s minds is to ask them questions. Don’t assume that because your product or idea is good you should simply talk about it. Try to find out about people and their business before making suggestions. To find the best questions to ask prospects about their business, as yourself this question: ‘what do I need to know about their business to determine whether or not my product/idea will suit their company?’

4. PRESENT YOUR IDEAS FAVOURABLY
If you have established by good questioning that this company could use your product or service, the next step is to present your ideas favourably. This means using the benefits of your offer. There are 3 key ingredients that will help you to do this: what it IS, what it DOES and what it MEANS. What it is – it’s made of metal; what it does – it’s strong; what it means – it will last a long time. So for example ‘it’s made of metal so it is very strong which means that it will last you a long time and save you money’.

5. ASK FOR THE BUSINESS
That’s right; go ahead and ASK. People rarely say ‘you’ve done such a good job, I would like 10 of those’. There comes a point in your conversation with your prospect when you know you have asked enough questions, you have matched your products to their requirements as in idea 4 and you know that this is a good time to ask for the business. Try words like ‘shall we go ahead on that basis?’ Or ‘which would suit your company best, the metallic or the plastic?’ Don’t be afraid to ask for the business – the worst thing that can happen is that they say ‘no’ and nobody ever lost family or friends as a result.

Good luck and see you next time!