Cold calling will still remain as one of the most-effective and personal ways of communicating to a prospective client. Whether you are contacting a client or running into a gatekeeper, there is still a couple of roadblocks that you can run into.

These might be common but they can be deadly to your sales appointment setting pitch.

However, we’ve got you and in this article, we’ll talk about what you can do in order to avoid the common pitfalls of cold calling.

The First 8 Seconds of the Call

Like an elevator pitch, the first 8 seconds of the call will determine if you’re worth devoting a couple of extra minutes to and you’ve got to understand that a simple: “good day!” just does not cut it anymore. More often than not, this automatically tells the person you are calling that you’re from a sales team who needs to make some sort of quota.

Start your pitch with something fresh and new.

If you sound like the rest, then you’ll get treated like the rest.

Reading Off of a Script

There is no harm in making a couple of notes or setting goals for a call, but if you were to read from a script in every single call, you’ll probably just mumble your spiel out by the end of the hour. Also, the recipients of the call will know that you are reading from a script and it shows the lack of effort to get to know the company and how you can adapt and meet their needs.

Choosing The Wrong Time to Call

We like picking up the phone at either 10 am or 2 pm because it’s either you’ve settled into the office or are ready to talk to people after lunch. However, do not fall into this trap. Since you like calling at this time, your competitors will most likely want to do so as well. This means everyone is in competition to get to a DMU. You want to be able to differentiate.

Your prospects already know its sales hour so they could be a little more defensive, too.

Pitching vs Discussing

Sometimes we have to stop pitching and start discussing how you can help a company. There’s a reason they are still talking to you and maybe it is because of a particular point that they have. Companies do not need additional products or services to help them out but rather they need answers to the questions that they have.

Not Maintaining Your Focus

A bad phone call gets you down, we get it. However, doesn’t a good phone call and prospective sale do the opposite for you? At the end of the day, bad, good or neutral phone calls cannot have an effect on your focus because it carries over to the next call that you will be making.

You need to be able to maintain a consistency in the composure that you will be projecting to every single person that you speak to during a cold call barrage.

Talking > Listening

This is a common issue in normal everyday conversations and it’s even worse if you carry it over to your cold call strategy. Listening allows you to be able to understand what the prospect actually needs from you and this usually equals into better outputs. 

Just as we have mentioned earlier, a lot of us want to be able to pitch our products but it is through the listening that we get to know what kind of prospect the person you are talking to is. It also makes you appear to be more human because you have taken the time to get to know a person in-depth.

The more we listen, the more effective communicators we become.

No Cold Call Call-to-Action

Just as it is on a website, you really need a call-to-action at the end of the phone call. This allows you to be able to speak with the prospect again and start negotiating a sale.

However, it is also helpful in other cases, let’s say the prospect has no use for the product but you would like to check on them again because it seems as if they will have a need for another product under your brand in the near future, this allows you to set a schedule and it doesn’t waste the time that you have.

Next time you have to call them; you do not have to worry about gatekeepers as they will be expecting your call in any case.

Do not fall victim to any one of these issues that you could get with cold-calling because even expert salespeople find themselves falling over these pitfalls every now and then. Efficient systems and strategies for cold calling make for a much easier time in getting your pitch across to your leads.

Lead generation is what keeps sales alive, but sometimes we hit a point in the business cycle where we need something new to stimulate new leads. What happens when we’ve hit one of those inevitable dry spells in our sales process?

In this article, we will be discussing 4 key tips for attracting and converting new business leads using an ABM approach.

Making Information Easier – MAP IT OUT!

The casual observer who first encounters your product will want concise information that is digestible in order to spark interest, but then what happens next?

If they are attracted to what you have to offer then they will start to do some digging – usually on your website – and if the information isn’t readily available it can be a precursor to abandoning interest.

Think about it this way, how many times have you gotten frustrated with bad navigation on a website, different information on different pages, and answers that can’t be solved?

Having a general features page that explains everything with its own subpages detailing individual features. Have a page that details technical information. Your pricing page has to be clear and concise to trigger a decision to buy.

There are also different stages in the buying process. You have to be able to map out the different stages in and provide relevant information for each stage. It has to start out with the basics and move to more convincing factors for your prospects.

This also means you cannot overload them with information right in the beginning. Build your website and your information outlets with the user in mind, this will it make easier for both parties.

Remember the Group Buying Decision Factor

If making a singular person move on a purchase decision is already difficult then think about the dynamics of the group buying decision factor. Most of the time it is not just one person who makes a majority of the decisions in a company – especially in business-to-business transactions.

The decision-making unit (DMU) should be appeased and it’s not just one person. Your services should be able to appeal to each member of the DMU. Here’s an example, suppose you are marketing SaaS and you know your materials are already appealing to the people who’ll use it on a daily basis, is there enough convincing information to get the vote of their tech team?

Omnichannel and Consistency

It is likely that you have multiple channels of client and lead acquisition, and this is a great thing to have in any business. However, it is important that you are consistent with the way you deal with your prospects on every channel that you have. 

If you’re responsive to your clients and prospects on one platform, it is important that you also employ the same level of customer of service in any platform that you are invested in. This means you cannot just invest resources into answering every email within the hour but are unable to answer questions on your site’s messenger platform in the same amount of time.

The reason consistency is important is that it shows to your prospects that you are a company that they can rely on whatever platform it may be. Reliability breeds trust, trust breeds relationships, and in this industry relationships are your key to growth.

Aim for the omnichannel experience as much as possible, aim to be able to replicate what you have on one platform and seamlessly integrate that experience on to the next one that your customer is in.

Touchpoints: In Context

Where your customer or prospect communicates to you in where you’ve got to respond to… in the same context. Let’s put this into perspective, people who write support emails usually have the time to message you about their entire issue with your service. However, those who try to engage with your support team through messenger are looking for quick answers to their questions.

Providing a consistent experience doesn’t mean ditching the norms on the different touchpoints that your prospect has with you.

You also have to predict, learn and adapt to the way they interact with the other touchpoints that you have set up for them. Let’s say you have a landing page on your website that has way too many fields for them to fill up and they feel interrogated, this messes up with your conversion rate optimization (CRO) meaning your lead magnet won’t be working well.

Lead generation techniques are very dynamic in nature and sometimes with just a little creativity, you can bring new leads into the pipelines, ready to be nurtured for those important conversions that we have.

Remember, lead generation is not just purely a science, but there’s a specific art form to getting attracting and engaging your marketplace.

Generating quality B2B leads do not come easy like picking apples, but goes through a process called lead qualification. It’s a way to gauge the probability of a prospect to buy and bears countless benefits that could spring your sales and marketing numbers.

Benefits of lead qualification

The lead qualification process will help you profile the best-qualified buyers. And by knowing when to disqualify misfits, your B2B campaign is ensured of the following benefits:

Lesser Opportunities Lost   

Although the bulk of qualification is done at the initial touch base, it continuously occurs at every stage of the sales process, which can help you avoid losing worth-nurturing leads due to poor follow up. 80% of sales require 5 follow-ups after the initial touch base (Marketing Donut)

More Time Saved

When you know which leads need to be prioritized, it is most likely that much of your time will be devoted to nurturing high-converting leads. This is a good thing as it will give you a wider room to build a better relationship with prospects, address their needs and eventually close deals.

Increased Lead ROI

72% of organizations that calculate ROI say their marketing strategy is effective (Hubspot). This is true as high lead scores can lessen follow up time and effort, and result in high returns on investments.

Higher Conversion Rates

Having more qualified leads, by building buyer personas and developing messaging that appeal to them, in your pipeline, would result in higher chances of converting prospects into clients. You can increase conversions by up to 300% when you have the correct targeting and testing methods in place. (kyleads)

Better Productivity

A small pool, but of good quality leads will result in large productivity number. This will expedite the sales process as you are able to work on multiple follow-ups at a time. (NuGrowthSolutions)

The Different Lead Qualification Frameworks

You’ll only earn the benefits of lead qualification when you learn how to spot the best candidates to proceed to the bottom of the sale and which ones are not, which you can do by leveraging Qualification Frameworks. Here’s an ultimate guide to sales qualification to help you work out positive results from your sales and marketing efforts.

CHAMP

(Challenges, Authority, Money, and Prioritization)

In this framework, challenges are set on top as it is the first fundamental part of sales qualification (Zorian Rotenberg, Atiim Inc., Founder). Authority is also defined as call-to-action in this framework for you to take actions by mapping out the company’s organizational structure to reach the decision maker.

GPCTBA/C&I 

(Goals, Plans, Challenges, Timeline, Budget, Authority, Negative Consequences, and Positive Implications)

The ultimate purpose of Hubspot for developing this framework is to address changes in buyer behavior. Today’s B2B buyers are well informed so you need to state the differentiated value of your product, and also look beyond the scope of its solutions. It’s also crucial to know your prospect’s strategic goals, plans, challenges, timeline, budget and buyer persona, and find out the negative consequences and positive implications to give you a better understanding if things turn out otherwise. 

BANT

(Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeframe)

This is probably the most basic and flexible framework. It lets you classify leads into three categories: hot, warm or cold. In this framework, all lead types can be set to nurturing as long as they are deemed positive.

Tips on How to Better Qualify Your Leads

Once you find the right qualification framework for your product, you’ll discover ways to evaluate leads for more specific characteristics. A lead scoring will help you better qualify your leads.

• Create your ideal customer profile (ICP). This will show you if your prospects fall under your target industry and territory.
• Gather company information: size, number of offices in different regions in order to gauge your prospect’s financial capability and market reach
• Build online behaviours to get more interaction from prospects. Evaluate results as to how many page reviews did you get from them, as well as the length and frequency of visits.
• Enhance email engagement by monitoring open rates and click-throughs via CTAs to gauge the prospect’s interest rate.
• Track social media engagement such as Likes, Shares, Retweets, and Click-throughs from your posts. The more your prospects become engaged, the higher their lead scores.
• Run a spam detection process by setting a benchmark, choosing the most valuable characteristics, calculating close rates and comparing characteristics, to enhance your data capturing method.
• Add Website Optimization, Content Marketing, and Paid Ads. These are also significant data tools to know who and how many searches for your product or read your articles, to better qualify leads.

Managed IT Firm, a Long-Term Callbox Client, Closes $150K in One Campaign

B2B lead generation is not purely a numbers game, but quality. Like apples, it’s not about how many you picked, but how sweet and crisp are the chances, based on data, do the leads you’ve gathered to proceed to the bottom of the sales funnel.

You must admit, there are plenty of lead generation tactics available for everyone. However, not everything is going to work especially if you own an SMB (Small or Medium Sized Business). In this article, we will be discussing the five basics of lead generation for SMBs.

This should provide you with enough coverage in order to start doing something about the tactics that you are currently employing.

Knowing Your Market (And Yourself)

The first thing that you have to realize is the size of the company that you own. SMBs do not usually seal the biggest contracts but rather use them as a stepping-stone for bigger contracts along the line. This means that you need to set up what kind of clients you need in order to move to the next step – growth.

Once you know your capabilities, it is important to know what kind of market you appeal and can appeal to.

Ask these questions:

• What sort of companies should I be reaching out to for B2B deals?
• What do my customers expect from me?
• What do I expect from potential customers?
• What kind of customers have I been attracting in the past?
• Do I want to change this in the near future?

Industry Partnerships

Mostly all SMBs and SMEs once started out as smaller companies have depended at one point depended on word-of-mouth advertising to drive sales. This means it’s time that you also start doing things that work again.

Do not be afraid to reach out to your current industry partners and start reaching out again. Sometimes it’s best to stick with the things that do work and multiply those parameters in order to achieve better results.

Talk to your current clientele and find out how they can help you drive more business and how you can help them with theirs.

Personalized Email Marketing

Stop thinking of email as a marketing and start thinking of it as outreach. You want to be able to reach people and solve specific problems that they have. This means knowing who your audience is and creating a plan to reach them.

Proper email outreach involves you getting to know your audience and combining it with proper testing in order to ensure that you are getting proper results and maximizing the use of the resources that you have.

Make sure you follow-up as well. A lot of industry leaders fail to get through the front door properly because an email was lost somewhere in between. The habit of following up ensures you do not lose potential customers accidentally and helps you be more efficient with the leads that you have.

Email will still be a powerful tool in generating leads. However, if you do not do it properly it can be a complete waste of time for you and your business.

Proper Social Media Exposure

Proper social media use is dependent on the audience that you wish to secure. Make sure that you have a proper system in place so that you may be able to determine where your customers are “lurking”.

Some specific leads you will only find on LinkedIn, so this means you should have a proper systemic campaign to target these particular customers. This would entail releasing content for a targeted set of individuals to establish your relevance as an industry leader before you invite them to do something.

Facebook appeals to a different set of people and this allows you to be able to more direct with your approach.

Every social media platform requires different types of content and appeals to different crowds. Understanding this will enable you to create personalized content and make efficient use of the marketing resources that you have.

Localized Lead Generation

Using directory networks and Google My Business will help you be more geo-relevant when you are trying to acquire new leads. Think about Google My Business, having a branch in the center of the city that you are trying to reach will allow you to be able to make your services hyper-localized and appealing to potential customers.

A hyperlocal approach can also be used for directory networks such as Yelp and the Yellow Pages; you will be able to create customized ad campaigns that target specific individuals in a location. This allows you to be more personal with the approach that you have.

It can also give you great results when you’re running a campaign that you know has specific parameters in mind.

At the end of the day, it is important to note that resources are not unlimited and given the size of your business, you’ll have to make sure that you’re using your resources in an efficient and effective manner.

By employing these strategies, you will be able to make sure that you are making the most of your resources.