A sales rep that handles cold calls has a tough job. To be successful, she has to be knowledgeable about the industry, product, business, and competitors—she has to prove herself fast. If this sounds like you, check out our tips below on how to get the conversation off to a great start.
Be an expert.
First, you’ll need to quickly prove that you’re more than a “just” a cold caller—you’re a knowledgeable advisor, and you’re calling for a good reason. (You wouldn’t want to waste a prospect’s time or yours.) Luckily, being prepared with compelling data about the prospect’s business doesn’t take more than a few clicks and a couple minutes. You can customize your BuzzBoard tools to instantly generate the information you need for every call, and if you don’t have time to customize (we know how busy things get), BuzzBoard’s competitor analysis and recommendations report will get you off to a great start. Data on competitors almost always makes a prospect’s ears perk up!
Give them something before you ask for something.
Give your prospect valuable data on the market and/or their competition. Always, always start the conversation/relationship by providing them with something useful, and demonstrating your expertise.
Next, make the call positive and complimentary. Look at the BuzzBoard data and call out an obvious milestone or achievement that is adjacent to the solution you’re selling. If possible, offer to support the prospect’s continued success. If you’re selling a payroll platform, you may be calling because you got a BuzzBoard alert that the prospect just got funding, hired their first five employees, has five or more roles posted for hire, etc. Your pitch may be something like “Big congrats on that Series A! I see that you’re ramping up hiring, so I wanted to let you know about our payroll platform and offer a free trial with no commitment. We have a subscription that’s tailored to companies like yours [insert specifics]…” etc.
Ask the right questions: open ended ones.
To quote some favorite U2 lyrics: “We thought we had the answers. It was the questions we had wrong.” You’re calling to demonstrate your expertise and give them a pitch on why to buy your solution. It’s easy to have a one-way conversation, but great relationships—business and otherwise—are founded on trust and understanding. Ask open ended questions, find out more about their story and get to know their personality and motivation if they’re willing. Lots of cold calls are cut short. If you’ve made it this far, let them do the talking.
