The Top 20 B2B Cold Calling Tips

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1. I’m not talking about buying a lead list or paying overseas workers pennies to dial for you and then transfer connections — I mean using software like Orum to accelerate the speed at which you can work through your own curated list of leads. Remember: you’re a solutions consultant,nota telemarketer. 12. Respect their time. As I mentioned in the previous point, every sales rep conducting cold calls is naturally pressed for time. A prospect‘s professional responsibilities don’t begin and end with fielding cold calls and listening to everything everyone has to say. If you manage to connect with a potential customer, be mindful of the fact that they probably have much more to do than speak with you. Don't be long-winded, go on tangents, or overdo your monologue. You don‘t want to end all of your calls as quickly as possible without getting your message across — but you also don’t want to put your prospect off by commanding too much of their time. Strike an appropriate balance, and respect their professional life beyond your call. 13. Ask open-ended questions. Effective cold calls aren't monologues where a rep touts every feature and benefit their product or service can offer until the prospect hangs up. Even though a cold call is more or less a means to an end, it still has to be a conversation. You have to give your prospect the room to explain themselves, let you in on valuable context, and convince themselves to embrace next steps — all of that hinges on your ability to ask thoughtful open-ended questions. Your lines of questioning should never end in “yes” or “no.” They should always warrant some kind of explanation. Letting your prospect close a conversation with a single word often means hitting a dead end — and as you can probably assume, dead ends don't lend themselves to consistently successful cold calls. 14. Be ready for objections. “You’ll get all kinds of different (and conflicting) advice on the best way to open a cold call, which is why I suggest you test, test, test.” Come up with a few openers and track how they perform to help you home in on a technique that fits your product, industry, and personality. Not sure where to start? Check out these four tried and true openers. 17. Follow up after your call. Not every cold call is a self-contained, one-and-done slam dunk. There‘s a good chance you’re not going to book a meeting or schedule a demo on your first pass. Sometimes, you need to follow up with a prospect if you're going to make something of your efforts. If your prospect says they can‘t meet with you again until next week or beyond, follow up with them within a day after the initial call. And don’t just hit them with the conventional “Thank you for your time.” If you can, try to offer some valuable information that could help them better understand where you‘re coming from in the period between your initial conversation and their ultimate decision. You’ll lose a lot of business if you give up prematurely — it generally doesn't hurt to keep yourself top of mind with a follow-up. 18. Conduct call reviews every time. Sales call reporting and reviews can be both invaluable to your individual cold calling efforts and benefit your broader sales org as a whole. You should always maintain records of who you call, what the calls were like, and what you learned from them. Keep track of that information — along with some other key intel — in your call reports and reviews. That insight can help you improve your cold calling acumen, give management some perspective on how to train reps, and inform more effective sales messaging from your sales org going forward. 19. Put away distractions. Cold calling isn’t fun, and our crafty brains will do anything to try and get out of putting in the work. If you’re checking Instagram or texting a colleague between calls, you’re going to hamstring your output without realizing it.

   In Call-script testing and iteration

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