Many small companies dislike cold calling. They find it discouraging to make 100 calls that result in only two or three strong sales leads.
But according to a post by Alex Kuang on the SalesPractice blog, succumbing to that frustration overlooks the fact that a lot of traction can be generated by making the most of that small success rate. Here’s a summary of Kuang’s advice on how to get that math working for you:
In a down economy, generating sales leads is the key to survival. Discover how to turn prospects into customers and drive business growth. Download your free copy of Effective Sales Techniques: How to Sell in Boom Times or a Recession without cost or obligation.
-
Hire someone to make 100 calls for you every day, using a strong sales script.
-
Those 100 calls should result in two immediate appointments for your salespeople.
-
Within the next two weeks, two more appointments will come in from those first 100 calls. So you are actually getting four or more leads from your daily 100 calls.
-
Keep making calls to new prospects every day, without fail, and watch how the number of viable leads will increase because of calls that were made in previous days. Before long, you will be getting three or more strong sales leads a day, and possibly more.
-
And remember, results will increase if you hire additional representatives to make 200, 300, or more calls every day.
The lesson is that when you do the math, cold calling might not be so frustrating after all.
Tip: How to get more people to take your calls. If you are making cold calls from inside your company, be aware that potential customers may not pick up the phone when they see your company name appear on their phones’ Caller ID screens. To get around this problem, have your callers enter *67 before they dial out, which causes only the words “private number” to appear on recipients’ Caller ID screens. (Note that this may not work with every phone company or service.) Another approach is to ask your phone company to set up a “line block” that prevents your company name from being displayed on outgoing calls.