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Does anyone still do cold calling for B2B sales?
I personally don't pick up the phone anymore if the call was not scheduled before via email.
What do you think? Would you decide/become interested in the new data software over the cold phone call from a consultant?
Or maybe you tried it as a part of your sales strategy recently and it worked?
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Joe Snowdon
After 35 years selling a wide range of products and services I have concluded that cold calling is actually a marketing and education job, not sales.
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@joe_snowdon I agree. Then once they are educated and interested you send them to the closer to seal the deal. :)
@lisa_canning well, closer is a little too 1970s for me! I honestly don't think it's about to closing. Closing is easy if you know the problem. Like really know the problem from beginning to all of the downstream effects of every possible action on the problem. It means knowing all of the reasons they should not buy, if you can eliminate those they will buy. If you cannot, they should not buy. They should buy something else.
@joe_snowdon well my point is that the person educating and problem solving doesn't finalize the sale. It works a lot better that way.
@lisa_canning Right! Very different skill sets. Finalizing the sale is selling. Educating and analysis are, well, not selling.
@lisa_canning @joe_snowdon I think it really depends on the kind of product and the type of potential customer. If we speak for example, about the data tool and you need to convince your potential customer about the necessity of making data driven decisions, that is more like educating. After you're done with this part, you can move on to sales. If they are already using a product that is your competition, then it is selling as you focus on why you are doing this better and what problem they have that you are solving.
It's an interesting question. Being frank. I hate it and I'm sure everyone else hates it.
However, also being frank, it has a higher success rate than cold email. Especially if your name isn't traditional. As counter to traditional advice, it's easier for people of colour to have a call with perfect English, in an English speaking country (even if they were born there) without providing their name, than get through by email when the first thing the recipient sees is an "atypical" name in their inbox. Especially with tech.
@ethar_alali Good point! I also feel like everyone hates it, but seems like a good, old technique that never goes out of fashion.
I'm curious what is the response for a B2B startup, we might give it a try!
That is, why would you put your most valuable resource in the sales and marketing department on the task of providing the lowest value activity? In it's essence selling is the act of clearing the barriers that are in the way of making a clear decision about an acquisition. No such decision is on the line in a cold call. Attracting new prospects and getting them into the funnel is a marketing job. Cold calling is one of the many forms of market education and blanket coverage. We need to stop thinking about cold calling as an entry level sales job, or an inside sales job, or a sales partners job. We need to think about cold calling as a marketing job, with expenses being budgeted under marketing.
I think cold calling can be valuable as a spoke in the marketing wheel. The returns on the activity are low when there is no accompanying campaign that would bring awareness to the marketplace of the business pain, the brand and the possible solutions to the pain.
I am unendingly embarrassed that a person's name in an email signature has such a profound impact on open rates. I am a middle-aged white guy, it's embarrassing to acknowledge rampant bigotry in the technology business. Having said that, a strong campaign in front of a cold calling campaign would go a long way too ameliorate that problem.
Spend the money on in-depth prospect profiling, marketplace understanding, linking features and benefits to problems, and on awareness campaigns. Let the sales people do what they do best: qualify candidates in the bottom of the funnel, decide on whether to forecast, and knowing the customer's reason for buying. If your sales team doesn't know the customer's reason for buying ( that is, why the customer needs to buy, not why you think they need to buy) you do not have a forecast-able deal.
I just tried it few weeks ago and we are now in the negotiation phase, hope it will turn out to be a sale.
@ray_heriel Cool! So it does work in some cases! Did you try it for Piptwitz?
I suppose it depends upon various factors such as your target audience, geographic location, etc. We have been trying cold calling from past two years, and it pretty much working for us.
@vartikaa_jaiswal Thanks for your insight! Which location have you been targeting? Which location didn't respond well?
@aleksandraszte2 Basically, we have customers all around the world. Earlier we used to cold call then we started using ADOHM Automation, through which we automated our whole process of email, SMS, whatsapp sequences and from this we got an excellent results.
@vartikaa_jaiswal So seems like calling as a part of a bigger strategy worked, not just calling itself. I'm happy it did work for you, we might try it too!
@rajool Thanks for your feedback! What kind of product were you trying to sell?
Let's be clear, the questions should be if cold calling is part of the mix - one of the 7+ touches you need to create a legit opportunity in B2B sales. Cold calling alone or as the first intro, forget it. Warm cold calling when they a contact or a company has engaged with your brand, or better yet your product, that is worth it.
It has been a while for me but I found the "Share" cold call to work best. "Hi XXX, its Fritz with XXX, we have provided XXX for XXX well known name and I wanted to share some of our learnings. Do you have a minute or can we set up some time? .....Great. We helped XXX accomplish XXX by doing XXX (with our product but you don't need to say that yet). The main challenge they faced was XXX. Does that sound like a similar challenge in your organization?...." You should be able to take it from here:)
@fritzly Amazing, thanks for your tip! We will give it a try, it is definitely just one of the elements in our strategy, not the main one.
@fritzly That is soooo true! We see the best results with the mix of email (both automated and manual - but both highly personalized), call, and social media touch points within the same sequence. When your goal is to connect and build a relationship with the prospect cold calling just won't cut it. The key is in omnichannel, meaningful engagement.
I personally think that cold emailing is much more efficient than cold calling. I mean sending an email by mass needs less energy and budget compared to call
A lot of founders really hate cold calling (or any form of outreach), and I feel you! I've been there myself.
This is why I'm building a pay-per-meeting marketplace where sales reps book sales calls for you, and you only pay for results -> orapa.co