If you have the sales skills to generate new business for your company and can reach decision makers in a company, as a salesperson, you have little time to implement a successful first contact with this person. Decision makers are sold in every way about every hour. Like clockwork, potential companies or vendors reach out to these people with all sorts of product offerings ranging from SEO services to mass email software and who knows what else.
So, as a salesperson, you need to be able to differentiate yourself in a split second when communicating with these people over the phone. Here are some ways to do it and ensure that your cold calling campaign is lucrative and fruitful. How do you ensure this? Below you will find some explanations and tips to do so.
The 7 second rule
Cold calling has what I call a “7 second rule.” This means that when you cold call a new lead, you as a sales professional have about 7 seconds to differentiate yourself from any other competitive sales company or individual who communicates with this person on a daily basis.
How do you do this?
There are several ways in which a cold call, early on, can lend itself to a high success rate and could capture the attention of the target party.
1. Get down to the person’s level – People hate being sold to. Therefore, as a sales professional, you need to come across as a human being and connect personally with the individual. How can this be done? First, when you cold call someone, act like it’s not a cold call and you don’t have the goal of selling the product. Instead, you should have the goal of building a relationship to start the sales cycle.
2. Understand that the secretary is very, very important: As a sales representative, it is imperative that you befriend the secretary or assistant of the person you are trying to contact. Not many sales reps do this and subsequently greatly reduce their chances of cold calling success.
A secretary, most of the time, is a cold call and being able to reach the decision maker implies the implementation of a sales cycle. Consider this a sales cycle of a sales cycle. A secretary or assistant to a decision maker will not accept you either on the first or on the first phone call. Instead, she uses the first two phone calls as a precursor to asking them to make the formal introduction.
3. Be Mentally Prepared to Lose Business – When you cold call, you need to understand that you are “rolling the dice”. If you treat every call like it’s the Super Bowl, you won’t do well. Allow yourself some room for failure, and when you talk to the prospect, don’t let them get the feeling you’re nervous. Once a prospect smells this, they don’t stand out from the 100 other companies trying to sell them and they’re not going to start the sales cycle and subsequently have an opportunity to generate revenue through this avenue.
Bottom line, take a chance with your presentation like everyone is playing it safe, you should be the one trying different tactics that will bring credibility to both you and the product or service.
4. Be mentally prepared for a lot of rejections – When starting a cold calling campaign, you need to be mentally prepared to endure a fair amount of strong rejections, as not everyone is always welcome on a sales call. If you project rejection on the prospects you’re going to call and then later expect rejection, your campaign and presentation will miss the mark.
