Cold calls are the most traditional way of finding new customers. Even today in the era of information technology the cold calling is the most effective way of generating new leads.
But at the same time, cold calling has remained the most dreaded aspect of selling.
However, it completely depends upon the context. If you change the context then cold calling can become a remarkably interesting game which you would always like to play with. Today I am going to share with you some secrets of making the effective called calls.
In any face to face sales call with your prospect, your professionalism, and your friendliness are the first things a customer or a prospect sees. Within first 30 seconds he judges you for rest of your discussion. Therefore, you must be well prepared to handle the initial interaction with your prospect. For a face to face meeting you must be well groomed, well dressed and must look impressive enough.
If you are on a phone the opening line is the most impactful part of your conversation. Your opening statement is the only one which is going to decide the fate of your call. Because you cannot show your prospect your face, your dress for your enthusiastic body language. You fate completely depends upon the quality of your initial few words and your tonality
I advise you to follow the seven principles given below, while making a telephonic cold call to your prospect.
1. Smile: You may be wondering, how can a smile help a telecall. Believe me or not even when you are on the phone the customer can see you smiling! Therefore, make sure that when you are talking on the phone you are in happy mood and you are smiling. Your smile passes to the prospect through the telephone line. He can get your smile through your tone and he responds positively after receiving your smile. You can see the impact of your smile on the telecall immediately!
2. Always give your name and company name.: Do not initiate your call by asking the unnecessary questions like how are you feeling, are you doing good or such other statement which do not carry any substance. It is important to introduce yourself immediately after getting through. Your introduction must be short and simple. You only need to give your name and company name period!
3. Get to the point immediately: State the purpose of the call within first two statements. If you do not state the purpose fast enough then and you will run a risk of losing the prospect interest in conversation, and the customer might hang up the call. The customer does not have enough time to listen to your long story. Some salespeople have difficulty in getting to the point, they keep rambling and take long time in expressing the key point. It is neve a good strategy.
4. Keep it short and simple: Your conversation must be very straight forward, short and simple. You need to do a thorough preparation for this. It is important that you write the script of your call and prepare fully. Make sure that you practice your tele calling script thoroughly before making the cold call.
5. Be somewhat interesting and humorous: If you can do this, you will be able to strike a strong chord of rapport with him. But whatever you say it must be meaningful. Also make sure you are not humorous at the cost of professionalism.
6. Ask for help or offer the help: People in general believe in giving or asking for help. If you initiate your statement by seeking help then most of the people on the other side would definitely love to oblige you. Also, if you offer some help to the person you are calling, your chances of being heard will be much more.
7. Important information tactic: Start your call be telling that you have an important information to share. With this statement you immediately grab the attention of the person and he start listening you. You can also say I have got some important information that will impact your business. I’ve got some information that will increase your profitability immediately.
Let us assume that you are wanting to fix up the appointment and for this purpose you are making a telecall to your prospect. I have seen many times, that some salespeople ask very ineffective question, for example they might ask, ‘did you receive the information I sent you through mail last week?’ My experience has been that most of the time the answer to this kind of a question is NO. Under such situation the salesperson is completely lost and disempowered. Therefore it is advised that instead of asking such question you can always say, I had sent you some important information last week. However, the information was not completely self-explanatory. I would like to come over personally to discuss with you for five minutes, I propose to come over on coming Tuesday at 2:30 for a short discussion.
If you really want to get benefit out of this article you need to do the following right away:
· Write down the opening statement you currently speak during the cold calling to your prospects. Change these lines as has been advised. Revise this statement and compare with your current statement. Analyze if new statements are more effective?
· Practice this new script multiple times and then make few calls by taking help of these new script.
· Analyze what benefit you get. I am sure the results will surprise you!
If you implement the above points in your cold calling script, your success rate of lead generation will definitely will become very high.
If you have any further queries feel free to write to me. Until then…..Happy selling folks!
