Is Cold Calling Still Relevant
Today?
By Ron S. La Vine
President of Accelerated Sales Training, Inc.
Is Cold Calling Still Relevant
Today?
By Ron La Vine, MBA
President of Accelerated Sales Training, Inc.
This question came up in a recent conversation
with a sales manager and deserves some consideration. After
all, with all the information available on the web these
days, might it be possible to forget cold calling and begin
our sell cycles in some other way?
Let’s take a couple of steps back,
and think about what we are trying to accomplish. Sales
is a relationship business.
Relationships start in a number of ways,
such as:
- You are introduced by a mutual friend
or acquaintance;
- A person with whom you have a relationship told their
colleague that you might be a good person to know, and
they called you;
- A piece of information linked to you prompted enough
interest for someone to seek you out; or
- You initiated contact because there was something about
the person or their position that was of interest to you.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the
first three of these produced enough opportunities for
us? The truth is that depending only on these is the reason
most cited for failure of sales reps.
Clearly, the first two, introduction and
referral, are the most efficient means of gaining access
and beginning a relationship. The third, marketing or articles
you may have published, are good door openers and facilitate
beginning a conversation.
However, it is the fourth, Cold Calling,
that is the source of most sales relationships.
The purpose of the Cold Call is to establish
contact with someone you have never met. At first glance,
this looks pretty difficult. However, this is where the
web comes into play. To make an effective introductory
(Cold) call, requires planning prior to the call. This
pre-call planning turns a “Cold Call” into
a “Warm” Call.
We now have amazing resources available
to us at our fingertips. Utilizing the different business
and social networks such as Facebook, Jigsaw, LinkedIn,
MySpace, Plaxo and others has made it possible for us to
study our prospects’ background, position they currently
hold, previous positions with other organizations, and
any shared connections they may have with you.
We can also find out their interests to
see if there is a match with any of ours. This information
will give us a better idea of the person we are going to
call, and should facilitate building rapport.
However, these sources do not provide
the essential information of how people relate to one another
within the prospect’s organization. Nor do they provide
what types of projects are currently in process or being
contemplated. Effective Cold Calling can provide us with
this needed and useful information.
Here are some additional benefits gained
through Cold Calling:
- A well-executed Cold Call can enable
sales reps to begin building relationships over the phone
that can lead to more productive face-to-face meetings.
- Cold Calling can be designed to collect the current organizational
chart which is a key piece of information for developing
your sales strategy.
- Cold Calling, if done correctly, speeds up or accelerates
the sales cycle by making sure you are working with the
right individuals such as decision makers.
- It is a lot less costly to build a relationship over
the phone than travelling to a face-to-face meeting
According to research in the Summer 2002
issue of Software Magazine in an article entitled Best
Practices of Successful Software Sales Reps,“The
productivity of the sales organization is primarily a function
of two issues: the ability to recruit the right people,
and training to upgrade the knowledge of the sales force.
Also, CEOs are frustrated when their sales teams don’t
call at a high enough level in their customer organizations
to drive decisions.”
In the same article it is also pointed
out that “CEOs felt more strongly that the
ability of their sales teams to penetrate top level executives
in their customer organizations was critical, a view not
expressed as strongly by the sales executives.”
Cold Calling is ideal for this type of
situation. Cold Calling can be used to find the right person,
find out how they do business, understand their needs and
challenges through listening and feedback - all while gathering
useful intelligence about the prospect’s organization
which can be used later on during the sales cycle.
It is about gaining introductions and
forming relationships with everyone you speak with on a
polite and respectful basis. In conclusion, based in part
upon on building relevant relationships, uncovering qualified
projects or needs and gaining useful and insightful intelligence
Cold Calling produces, it is still relevant and even crucial
to the very beginning of the complex sales process.
Sales training is an on-going process.
Be sure to include the building of this essential skill
in your program.
REPRINT PERMISSION
Ron La Vine, MBA is president and founder of Accelerated Sales Training, Inc.,
a sales training firm located in Oak Park, CA. You can get a special report “41
sales Tips You Can Use Right Now” AND the free bimonthly Sales Tips for
Selling Success eZine all by signing up at http://www.ast-incorp.com.
If you would like information on Live Cold Calling Sales Training please call
Ron at 818-991-6487 PST. © 2009 by Accelerated Sales Training,
Inc.
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