old calling is not dead. In fact, almost every single startup or small business has to do it at some point. And when you’re a small company, you do not necessarily have the means to hire a professional sales person to do the job. When you’re not trained to do it, picking up your phone and start cold calling can seem terrifying – yes, let’s admit it, we are scared of the phone. Fear of cold calling is not something to be ashamed of, on the contrary. We’re here to help!
This article does not aim at giving you a whole class about sales. We merely want to focus on phone-calls – because that’s what we know best – and give you practical advice, directly actionable. To do so, we started from a blank page, and answered all the questions you would ask yourself before diving in.
- What is cold calling exactly?
- Is cold-calling suited for my needs?
- Should I prepare my cold calls?
- How should I target contacts for cold calling?
- How do I find phone numbers?
- Should I send an email before cold-calling?
- When is a good time to do cold calling?
- What tools do I use for cold calling?
- How do I introduce myself when doing cold calling?
- How shall I present what I offer when doing cold calling?
- What warning signs should I be aware of?
- Should I define some call to action at the end of a cold call?
- What if I’m rejected on the phone when doing cold calling?
- Should I send a follow up email after a cold call?
- What tools should I use to keep track of cold calling sessions?
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Again… What is cold-calling exactly?
Basically, it means picking up the phone and calling strangers – or almost strangers – and figure out if they’d be up to buy your stuff. Why “cold”? Because “warm calling” is contacting people who have expressed previous interest in your products or services. By the way, it is not necessarily done via phone but can also be done in face-to-face, although we’ll be exploring phone strategies in this article.
Is cold-calling suited for my needs?
In the book “Traction” by Justin Mares and Gabriel Weinberg, the authors recall a quote: “As Steve Barsh, former CEO of SECO – acquired by MCI – said, “You get you first customers by picking up the phone.”
You might have noticed that people did not necessarily go straight to your landing page once you published it to sign up for your beta. Even worse, they did not open your email when you offered them a discount. Poor them: they probably did not realize how hard they needed your product.
Cold-calling might seem not scalable for a lot of startups, because you imagine that submitting your product to HackerNews will be enough to get numerous and faithful users. In reality, as Paul Graham said: you need to do things that don’t scale. Taking 15 min to call a potential customer can seem like forever compared to launching an Adword campaign that will bring you a hundred signups for your free trial. Yet, imagine the cost of having to loose these 100 beta users because you’re building the wrong product? Having a great phone conversation can get you incredible insights in terms of customer needs and feedback, and helps building a strong relationship with your customers.
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