My first attempt at cold calling (yikes)

[Scott Millar]

So I've been putting this off for months...Cold calling most people hate it. The prospect of having to pick up the phone and try and get a meeting.

I've been procrastinating about this and figured out a way I can motivate myself and hopefully be of some use to the people here in this forum.

As such I came up with the bright idea of recording my cold calls and making it into a youtube video. The logic is that because I'm recording myself doing the calls it acts like a form of distraction to help my nerves.

Would love to hear your experience with cold calls...

 

[SamLH]

Ha, thanks for this video.

How did the calling go? We outsource our cold calling, when we tried to meet businesses to demonstrate and pitch products to we got around a 12% conversion rate, when we tried to sell services to a company got about .5% conversion rate.

 

[JMack986]

We're on the lookout for a good telesales agent. We generically find outsourcing to be very expensive. The general meeting conversion in our industry is around 1% so it would be interesting to hear your conversion success rate. Telesales is not for everyone, some people find it comes naturally were other can really struggle.

I think that would be a good way to judge your success will be to continually monitor your conversion rates vs your industry. Remember when doing telesales that you are checking TPS and/or CTPS to avoid any unwelcome fines

 

[UKSBD]

What did @RedEvo say to you?

 

[patientlady]

From my own experience, emails are a complete and utter waste of time.

 

[JMack986]

Depending on your data, have you considered a sending a well written letter or an email prior to your call? Usually helps increase conversion rates.

 

[Scott Millar]

I'll be sending direct mail (post) once I have names. I will use email addresses but only on a custom adroll retargeting campaign.

 

[suitontherun]

About 5-6 years ago I converted from an analysis role to a client facing/sales role. First few cold calls are certainly daunting and v weird. My calls were relatively few in number but were to high level professionals who were always short on time and high on ego. I never became a great cold caller but these techniques did help me gain a conversion rate of 40-50% (call-to-meeting or call-to-business).


1.) Always research your prospect first. Get their name, idea of age, social bracket.. Try to profile them a little bit. Do they strike you as a John Major type or a Malcolm Tucker type.. You can learn a lot before you call and having an idea what to expect will help.



2.) Do send a brief email before you call. 80% of the time they wont reply BUT 50-60% of time (in my industry anyway) they will have seen the email and it helps break the ice.
2.) b Figure out if you have any common connection with the prospect.. You in same sports club, have a common professional connection. etc etc.. Anything you can do that allows you, passively, to forge a common bond will help immensely.

3.) Within the first 30 seconds drop a client-based anchor. This should be something the prospect wants (should be related to a "pain point") not your primary conversion goal.

4.) Be friendly but not chatty. I utterly failed on this point when I started. Talk facts.

5.) Be punchy and get straight to the point - Write down bullet points before you call.

6.) Do not be too rigid in your follow-on request. If you sense the prospect isn't keen for a formal meeting suggest a coffee or beer. Perhaps even conclude by offering him some research.

6.) Always always follow up after call with a personalised email that same day.

Not by any means an expert but those points helped me. Good luck!

 

[UK Business Directory]

Love the video

You did really well there

 

[Scott Millar]

Appreciate all the useful feedback and thanks for the tips.

 

[David Reinhardt]

Scott, you're a brave guy. Well done for both taking the plunge and for recording these. I thought the calls looked okay and given that you were cold calling them, you managed to qualify some and disqualify some and that's pretty good going. A real rock star.

I've started a new software business with a colleague and, having spent a little while building some software, we're beginning to focus our energies on building up some leads/prospects. Seeing you tackle this is really helpful for us so - thank you.

To this end - could I ask, where you using any sort of CRM / sales software to track these leads/opportunities? You mentioned taking notes but nothing about what you were using to do it.

Thanks
David

 

[Scott Millar]

Thanks David.

I use PipeDrive for CRM which I love. I was brought up on Dynamic CRM however it's too clunky and just love the ease of use with PipeDrive.

What's the software business?

 

[David Reinhardt]

Hey Scott

So the business is a web CRM business! My question was out of interest to see what forum users are doing in this instance as that both gives us the chance to (1) learn how people are doing what you're doing (informing our product design) and (2) potentially validating our ideas for the business (i.e. if small businesses are open to using web based CRM). Your comments about Dynamics are very interesting because our product is built on top of Dynamics.

We've built a "pared down" version of Dynamics 365 specifically to address the frustration you allude to. Generic Dynamics is a big and unwieldy beast but the cloud pricing makes it attractive to small businesses. Getting "generic Dynamics" to be specific to a client's needs sometimes takes a big and expensive consulting project and that's a barrier to entry that we're looking to break down.

Our angle is to provide small businesses with a "simplified" version which is quick and easy to use but also puts users on the Microsoft technology stack which has so much power available as organisations' needs change. If you want to look at what we've done, have a look at our website (I can't post it as I'm a new user, but if you Google for Recursyv, you'll find it).

Thanks
David

 

[Nochexman]

Hey Scott...
...Thanks
David

Welcome to the forum, Scottt, I am sure it will be interesting to have you here.

Perhaps you could start a new thread with your own question, rather than trying to take over Scott's very interesting thread.

#Justsaying