First off, phone prospecting is a skill you can learn, develop and fine tune.
Genuine friendliness...business savy...good etiquette all very important. But your introductory call script --- so key but all too easy to overlook.
Why use a script --- Isn't that what annoying telemarketers do?
Stay with me on this.
What's different about my strategy is getting you comfortable with what you say.
Make your script sound like you.
Not just another telemarketer.
Write it yourself and let it be yourself.
Keep It Short.
How brief?
Twenty to thirty seconds!
That's all you get.
Say exactly who you are: The prospect you are calling is at a disadvantage.
He or she does not know your name or anything about you.
Prospects will refuse to speak with you unless you immediately confront these issues.
State the exact reason you are calling. Make your cold call introduction specific and brief...twenty seconds or less.
Effective cold call marketing by phone is about information gathering.
That means asking specific questions that properly qualify ---or disqualify--- each prospect.
Picture a crowded room. Your goal: find the folks interested in your offer. How to do it? Ask for a show of hands. There, that's the goal of your cold call --- (1) finding the right prospects; (2) separating them from the crowd; then (3) qualifying their interest level.
R-e-l-a-x. Dialog and delivery in movies, TV, and plays flows from carefully crafted scripts.
Yet these staged conversations sound completely natural and -spontaneous.
Effective cold call prospecting is no different.
Subtle inflections and pauses make your presentation more natural and far more believable.
Prospect Qualify. Good prospects...weak prospects?
Find out who's who by asking specific questions.
For example, "Does this interest you?" Or "When would you like me to recontact you"?
Make prospect qualify questions part of every cold call script!
Test, Test, Test ----but control your variables carefully.
Be especially careful with key words or phrases.
You might think they don't matter, but they do!
Whether via Zoom, in person, or any way we can communicate, you ask the questions, and I give you my answers.
Question: Does effective business outreach cold calling require a background in the industry or markets you are calling?
Answer: Surprisingly, industry specific knowledge about the business segments you are calling is NOT essential.
Knowing key words and phrases to get your prospect talking is key.
But over-the-phone skills ---genuine friendliness...business savy...good etiquette --- are even more important.
Question: Your people do just fine on the phone. Why get George Clay involved?
Answer: Making calls at lunch or between sales meetings is how most sales reps do sales prospecting.
At best this hit-or-miss process reaches only a small fraction of your prospect base.
Question: What makes George Clay’s phone prospecting different?
Answer: My system of hunting, prospect qualifying and list-building with real-time follow-up calls gives you the full court press you need to make sales prospecting effective for your business.
Voice-mail, email and social media are all effective CRM…but over-used to where their messages are too often ignored.
Furthermore, real-time follow-up calls make you stand out because so few sales people use the phone to effectively interact with their prospect base.
Question: How do you track who to call?
Answer: Reaching out to your prospect base in a very personal way is accomplished with a CRM software that I have used for close to twenty three years.
Called TeleMagic, this cloud-based platform simplifies, organizes, and programs even the largest prospecting list into bite-size segments for fast, accurate and highly personalized contact management.
Question: What about lists?
Answer: Keep it simple. Are there accounts your people aren’t getting to? Buyers you need meetings or demos scheduled to close a deal?
Whatever list you select, fifty or one hundred prospects is all I need to get started.
Question: Anything else?
Answer: Marketing Direct is an ongoing process of building relationships with select groups of well qualified prospects interested in what you do and wanting to learn more from you.
Yes, it’s a process!
But if you do it right, you’ll build a loyal client base that will likely result in more referrals and more money.