If you think cold calling is tricky, then we’re on the same page.
It’s not really new when experts in the marketing field say “cold calling is dead.” Since the emergence of different technologies that heighten inbound marketing strategies, most marketers would think it is where money is – and a better investment at that.
However, is this really the case? Is cold calling really dead in the market? Is it not effective anymore?
True enough, modern marketing solutions such as social media selling have put cold calling under the spotlight of intense questioning.
So, the question remains, is cold calling still effective in 2023?
Well, if we will base our answers on recent research findings, we can safely answer that it still is.
While diversifying market channels is essential, the statistics and studies suggest that you may want to rethink the idea of cold calling being ineffective among sales rep practices.
As a matter of fact, it was also suggested that cold calls are 5 to 10 times more effective than email marketing campaigns. Statistics also show that companies that do not use cold calling as part of their sales game have 42% lesser growth.
Despite its dwindling success over the past few years, cold calling is still thought to be one of the most effective marketing strategies there, with 41.2% of sales professionals even believing that their phone is their most effective marketing mechanism.
As a business owner, every penny you put into your marketing budget matters as a business owner.
Because of this and the diverse sets of marketing channels, it is easy for companies to stretch their budget thin and cut off some marketing activities.
Like so many businesses, you may want to think that cold calling will be the first to be scrapped off the list of your marketing activities.
You cannot afford to waste your money on strategies that simply will not work.
To address the elephant in the room: Is cold calling still effective in 2023?
Indeed, cold calling may be difficult. More so effective cold calling.
It is not only time-consuming, but it can also be full of rejections which can dishearten so many sales representatives in the field. There is a constant challenge for cold callers to make leads spend a few minutes to hear about the products or services being offered.
So, we made it easier for you.
Read through this blog as we compiled the nitty-gritty of cold calling and creating effective cold calling scripts.
What is cold calling?
Before jumping into the act of cold calling, we have first to understand what cold calling is.
Cold calling is a sales strategy where a sales rep makes outbound and marketing calls to prospects or leads who know little to nothing about your company and whatever product or service you offer.
Generally, what makes cold calling very challenging is that you have to establish a connection with a person which whom you have never had any contact before.
Cold calls are usually received by individual consumers (B2C) or by businesses (B2B).
You may start to think that cold calling is just randomly calling people and talking to them about your product.
Well, the answer is straight-up no.
The art of cold calling involves looking for a lead or prospect company that would probably need your product or services or who would most likely find them interesting. Therefore, a great cold call should have leads or prospects that respond to the sales rep’s buyer personas. Also, check out the related guides, B2B sales, tech sales and SaaS sales.
The success rate of cold calls
As we emphasized in this article, cold calls have been used for decades and have been an effective avenue for sales reps to start the sales process and present their compelling sales pitch.
Despite its difficulty, a lot of marketing experts believe that cold calling is still proven to be one of the most effective techniques in gaining leads resulting in possible sales.
A post on Linkedin suggests that 82% of buyers say that they are more likely to meet with a salesperson coming from a cold call, and 75% of prospects from different business industries have attended an event or have a meeting scheduled due to unexpected cold calls.
So, in short, your success rate depends on your grit and patience as part of the marketing team.
Successful salespeople only become successful when they are persistent in building rapport and solid connections that make their prospects respond – resulting in eventual sales. Explore the sales pipeline stages guide.
Why should cold calling still be considered?
Despite a number of marketing strategies available out there, cold calling is probably the rarest among the strategy to provide an opportunity for a real-time and two-way conversation.
Unlike other forms of marketing such as media ads and cold emails, cold calls allow prospect hears, prospect responds type of communication. These phone calls and conversations make everything fast track and enable sales representatives to gauge whether the prospect is genuinely interested in the products that you offer.
And if you’re lucky, you get to close more deals along the way.
Here are some of the reasons why you should still consider cold calling as part of your marketing strategy:
It helps you adjust and modify your sales pitch
Since you will invest your time in reaching out to clients, you will have the time to learn what works and what doesn’t for your clients. Therefore, you would be able to pinpoint the parts that need tweaking for the fine-tuning of your sales talk and eventually improve your own cold calling scripts.
It can make an impact on your market research
While closing deals and making sales are the primary goals for a sales team, it is also essential to understand customer pain points. With the right cold call done, you may continue gathering information about your client. Through this, you gain more insights which can be helpful in understanding buyer persona and further analyzing your target audience.
It allows you to form a mutual connection with more leads
Making your product and services recognized by an extensive network of people is hard work. You cannot just sit there and wait for people to find you. This is why cold calling can be really handy in making your product known to new prospects and clients.
It does not need any complicated tools
Cold calling can be a budget-friendly form of marketing strategy. It does not require any complicated device or tools to be used for you to start off a great conversation. So if your company is looking for ways to cut down expenses, cold calling is one of the best approaches there is.
It can create competitive differentiation
Forming great relationships with your clients is a must in sustaining continuous cash flow in businesses. And trust us when we say business and client interaction can help in strengthening your business. With cold calling as part of your strategies, you only get to foster connections by having direct interaction with your clients, increasing your ways of connecting with them.
Cold calling script and why you need it
You may think that cold calling scripts can make your cold calls seem unnatural.
More often than not, cold calls can also dishearten and induce negative feelings among sales reps as there is a definite possibility of rejection.
Therefore, it is important that during your initial contact with your prospect, you come in prepared for anything. That way, you will not just be able to convey the right message but also be able to answer any queries your client may have.
So what are cold call scripts?
Basically, cold calling scripts are templates that you can use in order to be effective in cold calling.
“Hello, this is Anna from XYZ company… and I would like to know if you’re interested in…[long pause]… Oh, alright! [Bluntly hangs up]”
Sounds familiar? Well, it is not new for sales reps to experience rejection. Many cold calling tips will suggest keeping a game face on or just being patient in finding the right person to answer the call. But it is not always the case.
You see, cold calling takes more than just making calls. This is why cold call script templates should be done with a lot of preparation, so sales reps do not come off as inexperienced and shoddy.
A great cold call involves making a well-written and executed cold call script.
So from the time the prospect responds, “Who is this?”, you will have a better chance of starting a conversation and, hopefully, the buying process itself!
Before we start off writing the best cold calling script, you have to know what makes cold calling scripts important and what makes them fail.
Why are cold call scripts necessary?
Cold call scripts are an essential aspect of sales calls. Simply because it has the power to make or break your client interactions. So you want to make sure that you do not lose customers just because of ineffective sales calls.
So you have to be really thoughtful of what you want to say. From the moment you start your first “Hello?” down to your “Thank you, and have a great day!”.
Here are some reasons why a cold calling script is essential for your sales process:
It helps a new sales rep to quickly adapt to change
Doing sales calls is never easy. You have to know when is the right time to bring up your product and what are the right things you should say about it. A script will alleviate any fear of making mistakes since you will be properly guided, allowing new sales reps to be more comfortable in making cold calls.
It prepares you for an initial cold call
Having a script would mean that you have already thought about what your client needs to hear and what should you say. Writing your sales script will give you endless possibilities of how the conversation would go, allowing you to modify your pitch despite any change in the course of the call. These inevitable changes can be caused by your prospect’s questions or opinions.
It helps keep the conversation on track
Your prospects can vary in terms of interest and the way they converse. So it is completely unavoidable to lose track during conversations or figure out what to say next which can make them think that you are unprofessional or not knowledgeable enough. Having a script enables you to keep track of all the points needed to be discussed all throughout your sales call.
It boosts your confidence
Usual experts who give cold calling tips can easily say, “Just be confident during your sales calls.” Well going into a call without a solid game plan can make you be off the grid. However, with solid cold call script templates, this can less likely happen. You will feel more confident with any follow-up questions that your prospect may have, and rest assured that you can make your point quickly and accurately.
What makes cold calling scripts lousy?
Cold calling can sour a potential customer, and you may lose them with just one lousy initial cold call. And it is always not a good day for many sales teams.
There are many factors why cold calling scripts fail. Here are some of them.
Some sales call templates sound stiff
Sure, when a caller sounds like they are following a script word per word, they may sound stiff and robotic. They may come off as memorized, impersonal, and pushy. And, of course, you would not want anything like that.
Therefore, aside from having a good cold calling script, having your sales team trained also takes a lot of work to avoid making everything sound so practiced and unnatural.
A cold call script may not sound engaging enough
Some prospects feel scripted calls may exhibit a lack of interest in clients. More often than not, prospects usually know that after greetings during calls a sales talk is about to happen.
This is something every rep should avoid by using a more personalized approach during calls. It is imperative for reps to make sure that they understand the pain points of their customers during a sales call.
Scripts can come off as rigid
Another factor that makes a script lousy is when there is no allowance for creativity. When engaging in a cold call, it is always important to know that you will have a wide pool of respondents. This means that you will be dealing with different people with a diverse set of personalities.
It is always important to always allow room for flexibility to adapt to different ideas that you may use in order to create the best cold calling script.
The best cold calling script
Now that you understand the importance of a cold calling script, you may want to start creating your own.
Creating the script is an art in itself. And it does not only require you to find the right things to say but to find the right people you should say it to.
Here are some steps you can follow in writing a good cold call script.
1. Identify your industry
First, you have to find the industries that fit your market. You do not want to waste anyone’s time – not your sales teams’ and most especially not your prospects’.
Think about your current customers and where they are from. Then, you may want to look into similar attributes that can help you decide where to find qualified leads.
2. Find your prospects
Once you are able to know the right target industries, you may now start finding your prospects. Using platforms like Linkedin, you can easily find people that can be your prospects.
Basically, the more prospects you find, the more calls you can make, giving you more chances to close deals and make sales.
For some marketers, they could be adventurous in finding prospects which could also work in some cases. However, it is still important for you to cherry-pick your clients for them to be able to understand your value proposition and for your product to address the right pain points.
3. Research your prospect and your prospect’s company
Researching your prospects and their company can take you a long way. Sure, you do not want to waste your prospect’s time. Therefore, it helps that you get to know what their preferences are.
Through this, you may be able to construct a more personalized approach during calls and ask better open-ended questions, keeping the conversation open and flexible.
4. Write your cold call script
Once everything is clean and polished, you may start drafting your script. A script contains the following elements:
Introduction
Of course, you want to have yourself introduced first, and you want to make it compelling to hold the entire conversation together. You have to make a good start because your introduction can make or break the entire sales call. Therefore, you want to make it short and concise.
Your introduction can include some of these lines:
Hello, good day! Is this [prospect’s name]? Great. I am [caller’s name] from XYZ company. I was wondering if you have a few moments to spare?
Introducing yourself is very important. You may also put in some personal touch, like asking your prospect how they want to be called during the conversation.
Building rapport
Establishing rapport is one of the key elements that makes a cold call work. And there is no specific way to actually do it. You have to find out how to warm up the conversation. This is where your researched information comes to play.
You may start by congratulating them on a recent achievement, ask them about their promotion, or ask a specific question that may engage them to form a connection with you. By establishing rapport, you are not just prolonging the conversation, but you want to know that they are valued as clients.
But be careful in this stage of the phone call as this can easily veer you away from your primary objective.
You may follow these lines of questioning to establish rapport:
I just saw your post on your recent promotion. So, how do you like your new role?
Another example would be,
I see that you worked in [past company], so what was it like working there?
Through establishing rapport, it becomes easier to breeze into the conversation because of the lighter atmosphere.
Pitch
In the course of the conversation, and if things go well, your client may have already opened up about every single pain point their business has. That is a good sign that can help you push your pitch in.
In this part, you have to craft how your product or service can address their pain points. You have to make sure that your pitch revolves around the ways you can help them – meaning you have to take a customer-centered approach. This way, you can emphasize the different reasons why your product should benefit them.
Follow up call
If things really go according to plan, you may end the conversation by setting up a follow-up call. This is more of a call-to-action part of the conversation.
You may want to make it clear that you would want them to expect a follow-up action from you, may it be another phone call, an email, or an invite to an in-person meeting.
You may also want to be specific with the timeline, whether it is tomorrow, after two days, or the next week.
It is important to note that every part of your script should contain different options depending on how the course of the conversation will run through – such as their reactions and responses. This will help you prepare for every scenario, including gracefully handling ways of objections during the conversation.
Effective cold calling scripts in action
No matter what industry you are in, you may alter these sample scripts deemed fit for your need.
Here are some best practices to know and cold calling script examples in action.
Assess their interest before the plunge
Before following your actual script, check to see if your potential buyer is interested. The majority of prospects actually appreciate it if you give them the option to say no, as it shows respect for their choices and their time.
Sample script:
Hello, [prospect’s name]! This is Joe from XYZ company. How are you?
Is this a good time to talk?
Prospect says yes
Well, great! We’re a company specializing in addressing solutions for handling the needs of the sales and marketing team. Would you like to know more about it?
Prospect says yes
Great! So before I get into that, I’d like to ask a few questions. Would that be alright?
Once the prospect responds yes, you may start asking your predetermined sales questions. You may use their answers to give you an idea of what to highlight about your product or service.
Identify the prospect’s pain points
Of course, the rep should have the prospect’s pain points on top of mind. This way, you may be able to highlight what makes your product beneficial for your clients and easily explain its value proposition.
In this sample script, the salesperson asks what their challenges are and which would, later on, be addressed by how the product can be a solution to the presented pain points.
Sample script:
Hello, [prospect’s name]! This is Joe from XYZ company. We specialize in tech solutions to help you provide seamless communications within companies. I’m calling to see if our digital solutions can be of help to your business.
What are your top-of-mind challenges when it comes to communicating in the workplace?
Prospect explains their communication challenges
I’m sorry to hear about it. It seems that using different platforms of communication brings a lot of confusion to your employees. It goes for everyone you see. A lot of our clients also experience the same hurdle.
Now, that you’ve opened up about it, I think our digital solutions can help you address your problems with communication. You see, our platform is so easy to use. Using our digital messaging and email platform would mean a continuous flow of conversations within your company.
You can now present your pitch in full detail according to the challenges presented by the prospect.
Emphasize product benefits
Your product should be the star of the show. But benefits alone would not suffice. You have to strengthen these claims. You may do this by using the experience of other customers with your product or reviewing buyer personas and their identical pain points.
This way, you can be true to your product’s claim while emphasizing the prospect’s need to purchase your product.
The script below highlights three essential benefits that the product offers.
Sample script:
Hello, [prospect’s name]! This is Joe from XYZ company. We’re a digital software company and our sales reps reach out to start-up companies like you.
So, as a decision-maker for your company, we would like to let you know about the product the main benefits of the product that we offer based on the experiences of our current customers.
1. Seamless shipping operations and ensuring continuous global operations.
2. Achieving easier communications from business to clients.
3. Efficiency in the workplace through unified and all-around software.
Do you have time this week to further discuss these benefits and how you could experience them as well? We would gladly schedule a follow-up call.
Let them know what makes you different
You have to keep in mind that you are not the only salesperson trying to close deals and convince the company’s decision-maker. So, it is important that you can incorporate what makes you different from your competitors.
In some cases, some prospects may have already done their research prior to your call. When this happens, you can expect them to ask specific questions as they already have some options in mind.
It is essential that when answering these types of questions, you remain respectful despite talking about your competitors.
The script below shows how to handle these conversations.
Sample script:
If the prospect asks whether your product is the same as your competitor
Oh, so you’re familiar with ABC company as well. Well, XYZ company is similar however is considered as the one that pioneered feedback analysis making it the most trusted software worldwide. Given your awareness of this tech product, it seems to experience our product firsthand can be helpful in giving you more knowledge about what else we can offer.
How does next week sound for you? I promise you it’s gonna be worth it.
Use social proof
Including social proof in your script can help you further convince company decision-makers. Like testimonials and reviews, the use of social proof can make your pitch more compelling and believable.
It helps people be convinced of what your product can offer.
The sample script below shows how social proof can highlight the experience of other customers using a company’s product.
Sample script:
Hey, there! [Prospect’s name] from XYZ Company here.
We’re calling you today because it seems your business is focused on providing fast deliveries to customers all over the world. And here at XYZ Company, we also value the same things.
We’re backed up by our amazing customers like [Customer 1], [Customer 2], and [Social proof posted on social media].
These organizations have experienced our product benefits, as you can see [sample results] within [given timeframe] after purchasing our product.
We’d like to connect with you and get to know about you and your needs. I think I may have the perfect suggestion for you and your business. Give me a callback or reply to my follow-up email right after this call. Thank you, and have a great day!
Use research-based statistics
To be more convincing in your pitch, you have to prove that the prospect needs the product.
Sharing data that corresponds to a prospect’s pain points can help them be fully convinced that your product works or that they may really need what you offer.
These stats can come from your own company research or can come from a pool of experiences from other people.
The sample script below features how impressive statistics can lure interest among prospective clients.
Sample script:
Hey, there! [Prospect’s name] from XYZ Company here.
We called you today to offer you a product that has increased the sales of startup companies like yours by as much as 70%. To be sure that I am not wasting your time, I would like to make my point quickly.
What are your company’s current challenges in sales?
Prospect responds
If I could accomplish half of what I have stated, say 35%, would you allow me to make my next call?
Cold calling script diversity
Yup, a cold calling script can vary from person to person. It can depend on what your product needs, who are you calling, and basically depends on how you are as a salesperson.
Whether you will be talking to CEOs or a regular employee, you have to come in prepared with convincing and compelling spiels.
A good cold call script can change your sales game
In the process of doing cold calls, you may find yourself reading the script, and it may sound unnatural at first. However, as you go along the way, you get to be more comfortable, finding more ways to learn the perfect language that resonates with your prospects.
You can easily find opportunities to refine your script and make a cold call a piece of cake experience!
Embrace the right tools for sales
Cold calling is just one aspect of making sales.
As they say, when you do something, you have to do it the best way you could.
Doing something the best way you could also means using the right tools for it. The sales industry is a big field, filled with so many competitors in the market. But with the right equipment, you may just be a step ahead.
Sloovi is a sales outreach platform that can help you automate your sales processes via emails, worldwide calls, and even SMS.
Elevate your cold calls through Sloovi and book your demo today!