Part 1 - Cold Calling - An Effective Sales Tool - when done right

Part 1 of 2
The obituary for cold calling is premature. While in the perfect world, your phone would be ringing off the hook all day with clients offering you business, the reality is that if you want business, you need to go after it, and cold calling is an effective sales tactic if it's done properly.

Except many small business people would rather spend an entire day in a dentist's chair than go cold calling. Does the thought of cold calling makes your stomach drop to your toes? These cold calling tips won't eliminate your fear, but they will help you make cold calling a more successful experience.

1) Focus on the goals when cold calling.
Beginners tend to think that cold calling is about making the sale. It's not.
It's about getting the chance to make the sale. Have a primary objective for every call defined and an understanding of all the steps needed, one by one to reach that point.

2) Research and understand your markets and prospects.
You need to target your cold calling to the right audience. Use market research to focus on your target market. Then find out as much as you possibly can about the company or individual you're going to cold call in advance. This gives you the huge advantage of being able to talk about them and their needs when you call.

3) Prepare an opening statement for your cold call.
The objective of your opening should be focused on helping you to understand the Awareness and Interest of your prospect and to stimulate that Awareness and Interest so they will voluntarily and enthusiastically move to the discussion. You must answer, "What's in it for me?" for the listener, or they will immediately begin the getting-rid-of-you process.
This lets you organize your thoughts before cold calling, and helps you avoid common mistakes in the cold call opening that would give the person you're calling the chance to terminate the conversation. Don't read your opening statement into the phone, but use it as a framework to get the conversation off to a good start.

Remember the “K.I.S.S rule - Keep It Short and Sweet.

Get to the point and don’t go into a presentation mode. I advise cold callers to write out their “opening” and then keep rewriting it until it achieves the results desired. What should be in the opening statement of your cold call?

"Include a greeting and an introduction and a reference point that answers the prospects question. “What’s In It For Me”.

For example, “Good morning, Ms. Marshall. This is John Thomas with ABC. If I caught you at a good time today, I was hoping to have a couple of moments to speak with you“. When cold calling my belief is that because of the nature of the call being interruptive, it is best to get the prospect on your side as quickly as possible. We don’t know what is happening when we call them, so if it is not good timing then we can arrange to call back. Once you have the approval to speak with them, this would be where you would answer their questions with your “commercial”.

4) To ask or not to ask, that is the question
Your in the middle of doing a task that is important to you. The phone rings, “Hello”. You have no idea who that is on the other end, but they introduce themselves and ask politely to speak to me for a couple of moments. At that point I am going to make a decision based on the information I have thus far and answer Yes or No. I decide that I don’t have the time now and promptly the person on the other end ask if today at 3:00pm would be better or tomorrow morning at 9:00am suits. The thing to notice here is the prospect is engaged in the conversation already what ever the outcome verses going straight into your Commercial for why you are calling. Your goal for this step is to begin to interact with the prospect asking permission then to me is only common sense.

Check back for Part Two