7 Steps on How to Execute Productive Cold Calling in Sales

Two words that strike fear to any salesperson is to "cold call". As challenging as this may be the ability to pick up the phone and create a relationship is a critical skill for any successful salesperson. It's normal for the first few phone calls to cause anxiety but a calling campaign can be incredibly lucrative for those who know how to navigate it and are brave enough to master it.

This task gets even easier when you know how to properly plan and execute a calling campaign for your sales task.

What is a cold calling campaign?

Through the life of sales you are collecting contact information and buyer data from your potential customers. There are companies which will sell you lists of potential customers that fit your desired criteria. A cold calling campaign is a structured plan for contacting these individuals for one-on-one conversations. It's the oldest form of marketing and when done properly can yield unexpected results.

Benefits of a cold calling campaign

• You learn more about your customers. Having a personal connection allows you to learn about their pain points and understand the lengths which they have tried to solve their own problems in the past, and what they are looking for going forward.
• Improving brand awareness in the marketplace.
• Keep your sales database up-to-date.
• Generate leads.
• Close sales.

Outcomes may differ depending on your goals and tactics but this remains to be a great investment for your business.

How to Execute a Productive Calling Campaign

1. Understand your goals

Before taking any action decide what you are looking to get out of this time. Are you reconnecting or announcing a new product or cold calling potential customers?

2. Decide who you will contact

Your database should be solid to be able to provide you with all the information you need to reach out to existing or lapsed customers. If you're cold calling make sure the contact information you have includes people who may need your product and have the ability to buy it.

3. Decide how you will contact people

4. Decide when you'll call

This will be based on who is on your list, if your ideal customers are businesses, make sure to call during business hours.

5. Arm your salespeople or agents properly

You should have your pitch ready and easy to follow, but you'll also want to have answers ready for any questions that may be asked.

6. Record data

Manage your contact database using a CRM system. This information can help you better serve or sell in the future.

7. Evaluate your plan and switch if needed be.

If you find that you are having absolutely no success it may be time to make changes. Know that not all strategies are fixed.

Conclusion

Don't waste your time, energy and money on a jump in first mentality. Identify your goals, have a strong database (purchase one if you don't) and factor in follow-up calls. Be sure to speak to them in the right language, and preparing to answer any questions that they may have.

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5 Questions That Can Identify a Customer's Pain Points

As you're performing sales qualification with a prospect, here are 5 questions to help you discover some of the pains that can create a great conversation with your prospects:

1. What's the biggest hindrance to your customers' growth?

This is a classic. It cuts right to the chase and goes right to the heart of the matter. Every customer is in the customer of growth and the biggest obstacle to it is a serious pain.

Here are some great ways you can get to the meat of the conversation quickly:

1. What's your plan to tackle this?
2. When is your deadline to solve this problem?
3. Do you think it'll be easy or hard to solve this problem?
4. Who is your customer is working to fix this right now?

These questions although simple in its outlook has many layers of complexity to it and will blow any conversation with the prospect wide open.

2. What is your biggest problem?

This is a more fun question. This is a casual question and has its own personality, is funny and creates unusual chaos. It acts to stir up emotion and gets to your prospect's core needs.

3. What does your boss obsess about?

When doing sales you don't always speak to the top and sometimes you will have to manage with someone who is 2 or 3 levels below them.

1. They usually control the budget for B2B
2. A manager usually filters down to her direct reports
3. This signals inexperience. 

4. What takes up the most time in your day?

This focuses on your direct point of contact and you can help them to focus more about the value than the features.

5. What's been repeatedly discussed at company meetings by senior management?

1. This focuses on what keeps the CEO up at night. It has to be addressed for the company for them to continue operating at full capacity. Some examples include:
2. What do senior managers put on their quarterly planning agendas?
3. What do they talk about all the time?
4. What do they send all-company emails about?

These are the customer pains you are looking for and could be life changing for your sales objectives and target.

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4 Ways to Create Customer Focused Content for Growth

This is the million dollar question that all both small and big businesses ask. Is there a way to win brand visibility in an ever crowded market without overspending on resources? For many companies embracing the web, content marketing is, in many ways, the most powerful opportunity to achieve growth and outshine competitors. Also new startups don't have the luxury of being unique anymore. They must be better - not just different - from competitors if they want attention and sales.

The answer is actually straightforward. Focus on customer based content for growth.

Although the concept is straightforward, gaining thought leadership in a crowded market of experts isn't easy. What's more ranking for major keywords can be challenging. For anyone embarking on this journey understand that there needs to be a level of commitment to the craft. With authority, relevance, and warmth everyone can carve their own space in the content space.

Start here.
Your customer should always be the hero of any story that you tell.

Here's how we're practicing the 4 methods during the implementation of a customer focused content.

1. Establish a voice

This is often missed out on, but the voice is everything. All successful brand voices:

• Resonate instantly with the target audience
• Is consistent across all channels

2. The Flywheel Effect

The best way to illustrate this is through an example. Just like a wheel would spin create a repeatable method for success.

Increase traffic to the website > Generated traffic creates demos and trials > Demos and Trials converts to sales > Sales earns brand recognition > Recognition generates more web traffic > And the cycle repeats.

3. Rank-to-Win Strategy

Here's the biggest mistake everyone makes. Don't just strive for the nuances in every blog post, but focus on filling a gap with authority and dedication. Do this knowing that it isn't the uniqueness in the content but rather the thought leadership which is focused on authority and quality content.

4. Content strategy for blog traffic.

Content marketing delivers conversions with persistence and quality - it isn't luck. Going back to the Flywheel Effect, if increasing website traffic was the goal, we knew we had to focus on producing quality and consistent content.

Conclusion

Creating content is the secret to unlocking customer focused growth in saturated markets. These can also be part of your greater marketing strategy as you are able to focus on buyers' needs and make prospects and customers the hero of all of your stories.

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