Cold calling tactics
Many experts say that cold calling with the telephone is dead, but the really savvy marketers know that cold calling tactics will continue to bring in clients as long as you have a plan and you continue to work the plan. Making money depends on finding customers, and if one out of three people becomes a customer and you call a million people a year, you’ll be in business!
By 2016, 88% of client-side marketers, media sellers and agencies believe that integrated multi-screen campaigns will be very important for effectively delivering a marketing message, according to results from a study conducted by Nielsen and the Association for National Advertisers (ANA). In keeping with that outlook, respondents predict that multi-screen campaigns will comprise an average of 49.3% of media spend in 2016, up from 20% this year. Some attributes will drive that spending lift more than others. Source http://trends.e-strategyblog.com/
In the last post we read about “Telesales Tammy”, the superstar of the department. Tammy’s manager called his mentor who gave him some advice. And what a change it caused in Tammy!
After listening to the manager’s response, Suzie was quiet for a moment and then said: “You have a business leads superstar on your hands, don’t let her go. Now, here is what you need to do to help her succeed…”
She asked the manager to imagine that his top cold caller was not at her desk in the office but rather in a large stadium that holds 100,000 people. Each person represents a prospect. Would Tammy walk out to centre field, tap a microphone and just start her pitch? Of course she wouldn’t.
And yet, as Suzie pointed out to the manager, that’s exactly what he was asking her to do. She was using a canned pitch and presenting the same thing to every person she dialled.
No matter how enthusiastic she was and no matter how much she believed in her product, it would be unreasonable to assume that all 100,000 people in that stadium had shown up with cash in their pocket to buy that day.
In the last article we read about “Telesales Tammy”, the superstar of the department who could cold call an impressive number of people and turn them into business leads.
View Part Four Here
First, explore the possibility of other marketing methods, including advertising, public service, referral generation, press release distribution, networking and trade shows, and cold calling in person. Of course, this should go hand in hand with your current telemarketing efforts. After all, you don’t build a house using only one type of wood! You use 2x4s, 2x6s, and plywood and even then the job is only partly done!
Second, make sure your sales people are scheduling their cold calling. If your sales people are feeling too much pressure about making calls, consider this option: rather than rewarding them for each successful appointment from a call (which can cause too much pressure), instead reward them for the number of cold calls they make. One great example is a cash bonus of $1 per cold call in which they actually talk to a person, with an additional cash bonus if they make an appointment. (Create a list of items that have to be covered to count it as a call – like an introduction, asking for the appointment twice, etc.) and listen in to random calls to make sure it’s getting done. Even someone who is afraid of cold calling and feels the pressure will love to see themselves earning dollar after dollar as a bonus that they have complete control over! It’s a great way to motivate your staff to start calling.
Want to be more successful? Expand your sales techniques and empower your staff to make cold calls a daily priority. And always, always, always be asking the question: “How do we get our people to make more sales?”
