Cold Calling Within The Small Business: Reality vs. Expectations

In a nutshell, cold calling is the process of selling your goods or services to a person or business who has never reached out to you before. The thought that cold calling is dead nowadays is quite rampant, but we can assure you that it is still pretty much alive, especially within B2B and if you are proactive.

What to expect?

What’s more, a recent survey reveals that in some business spheres, cold calls generate more leads than other marketing strategies. Our experience shows that the percentage usually varies from 1 to 10% within different business industries. For example, in technology, professional, and financial services, the reach rate reaches 1-4%; in tourist services up to 10%.

When it comes to cold calling, the main task is getting through gatekeepers, those highly trained people who won’t let sales representatives get through to decision makers. The bigger your target company is, the less your chances of getting through are. Within the company, getting past 100+ employees is next to impossible.

The average cold calling conversion rate depends on multiple factors like the services you’re trying to sell, the market itself, etc. A good script, written for a certain company and purpose, and a feeling of confidence in a sales representative are of the same importance.

Whether a cold calling campaign is successful or not also depends on your expectations. Companies that have never done that before have quite high ones. But sometimes its success can be even inconspicuous, but it exists. If you don’t get a response right away, people get to know your business or services anyway. Besides that, cold calling is just an element of or a tool for, implementing the marketing strategy. If it’s followed by a LinkedIn Direct Message or an email, your chances of drawing your potential customers attention will double.

To leave or not to leave a voicemail?

The vast majority of phone calls don’t go through and end up as voicemail. And it is not a waste of time. On the contrary, a good voice message is highly likely to attract your prospect’s attention and bring you a callback. And in that case, your prospect is no longer “cold”.

To use or not to use a script?

Here comes a question about scripts. And it’s a debatable one, but very beneficial. Mostly, sales managers do not sound that professional when they do not use a sales script. However, you don’t have to memorize a large amount of information. Using a script means just knowing what to say and sounding more professional. A feeling of confidence is all you need. Within a limited amount of time, you need to establish a conversation and gain the speaker’s attention. That is why sounding good is so important.

Cold calling productivity also depends on all the key steps being taken and cold calling stress being decreased. Writing and using a good script kills two birds with one stone.

To do or not to do it yourself?

Making cold calls requires a lot of preliminary research, like finding the right contact person in the company, compiling a database, etc. Moreover, the database should fall under certain rules (GDPR Compliance in Europe, for instance), or you might get into trouble.

Well, so how many cold calls is a sales representative supposed to make to be successful? Usually, the best winning formula is 60 calls a day and 3 hours of quality talk time. For sure, you can do it yourself. But in case you’re not familiar with certain regulations, you may delegate it to a trustworthy company.

Сold calling, when combined with other marketing tools, is a wise decision. Doing thorough research and compiling databases is time – and effort-consuming; that is why it is better to delegate. A smaller company would be a win in terms of cost.

Would you like to give your business a boost and launch a professional lead generation campaign? VAfromEurope will take care of it!