Cold Calling Tips

Cold calling is the most commonly used method of sales prospecting, or lead generation.

Cold calling typically takes one form or the other: On the telephone (telemarketing), or in person, also known as canvassing. Or if you’re an old timer, you might know it as “banging doors.”

While is used to be a rather productive form of sales prospecting, growing sales resistance, increased security in office buildings, and the myriad of both state & federal “Do Not Call” laws are making cold calling more of a challenge. So here are some cold calling tips to make it more effective for you.

1. My first cold calling tip is to compile a list of target prospects before you even pick up the phone. The major weakness in prospecting is calling people at random, with no intelligent targeting at all.

Whatever your product or service is, you should have a good idea of what types of prospects would be best qualified, or in need of it. Make a list of 50 or 100 companies that would be a good fit for your product, and who would be a beneficial customer to you.

Once you have a list of targeted sales prospects, you can move on to my next tip:

2. Of all cold calling tips, this is my favorite: Know something about your prospect before you pick up the phone! In this age of the Internet and social media, there is absolutely no excuse for calling someone truly “cold” and attempting to start a sales relationship from scratch.

Once you have your list of target companies, get on their websites and find out who the decision makers are. Next, get on LinkedIn and Facebook and look at their pages. Find something in common with them. Look at where they went to school, what pro sports teams they like, what their favorite food is, if they’re a pet owner, and so on.

That way, when you make the initial contact, you can start off on a personal note and make a connection that way. I rarely see this advice in any book or article on cold calling tips and it’s a shame because it’s the easiest way to get in the door effectively, and make a sale.

3. Once you engage the prospective buyer in conversation, keep it conversational! Don’t fall into the trap of reading from a dead script, or saying dumb things that annoy business decision makers, like “Is that fair?” If you only follow one of the cold calling tips on this page, make it this one. Be a real person. Remember that people buy people – in the end they don’t buy features & benefits, and they don’t buy on price (most of the time). They buy from people they like, trust, respect, and most importantly of all, have some level of friendship with.

4. Avoid the common cold call in the first place, and engage via social media. When sales reps ask me for my best cold calling tips, my first answer is that they shouldn’t cold call in the first place and should use modern prospecting techniques instead. When they tell me they have to cold call because their boss makes them, my next answer is to remember that social media is the new cold call.

Remember that people will buy from a friend above all others. So why not befriend a high-value prospect? Become Facebook friends and connect on LinkedIn. Follow their Twitter feed. Read their posts and make friendly comments where appropriate. “Like” pictures and posts on Facebook, especially when it comes to kids, pets, and other things that are close to the heart.

Get active on LinkedIn groups in your local community and in your industry. Here’s a great cold calling tip: Find relevant groups that are full of your target prospects! Get active in those groups. Participate. Give good advice where appropriate. And once people know you, start sending messages to prime prospects.

Even better, you’ll find that many will start contacting you.

So there you have my list of cold calling tips. Remember to have targeted prospects, to know something about your prospect on a personal level before calling, and finally, to engage via social media whenever possible because it’s so much more effective than the old-fashioned telephone cold call.