Almost no one will tell you they enjoy cold-calling. A cold call is a lot like an awkward first blind date. You’re sizing each other up and trying to put your best out there at the same time. The prospect knows you’re trying to sell them something, and this naturally puts them on their guard. It’s a tense conversation.
If cold-calls were tough in the past, they’re even more difficult now, in the age of rampant telephone fraud. For every legitimate sales call you field, you get five robots telling you that your vehicle’s warranty has expired or that the IRS is trying to track you down. The salesman may be telling the truth, but the robot is certainly lying, so this adds to the prospect’s wariness.
The Path to Improvement
Cold-calling is uncomfortable for just about everyone. There’s really only one way to get comfortable with it, and one way to get better at it—do it a lot. The more cold-calling you do, the more comfortable you become, and the more natural you sound. Some folks swear by using a script, others say you should never use one. Whether you use a script or not, you need to know the product and you need to sound natural, and the only way to accomplish these two goals is to practice.
Even with practice, however, cold-calling is a detriment to your sales team’s morale and to its conversion rate, when compared to conducting sales calls to qualified leads. That seems pretty obvious. What isn’t obvious, however, is where these leads will come from. Creating a targeted lead list is a science, and even with an extremely honed strategy for creating a lead list, you’ll still be making cold calls at the end of the day. There is, however, another way.
A Better Way
The good folks at Launch Leads have spent years developing effective sales processes. With a combination of talent and technology, Launch Leads creates a custom sales structure for your business. They start with a review of your current sales strategy and an analysis of your target audience. Using proprietary software and years of expertise, Launch will then begin to build a test lead list and an overall sales strategy. They create campaign collateral, two sales scripts for testing, outreach email templates, and white papers and other visual collateral. Finally, Launch Leads will train its most appropriate sales team members for work with your campaign. They will continue to test throughout the course of the campaign.
As Launch’s sales team contacts your prospects, they will qualify the leads and, ultimately, schedule appointments with decision-makers within the prospective organizations. The result is that your sales team will be through with cold-calling. Their time will be spent in pre-arranged meetings with interested potential clients. Your team will be talking with the people who have the power to buy your product or service.
Summary
For decades, cold-calling has been a fact of life for sales teams. For most, it’s a singularly unpleasant experience. With practice, a salesperson’s cold-calling skills will improve. However, even the best cold-callers can expect painfully low conversion rates. Fortunately, those days can be over for your sales team. The folks at Launch Leads have a much better way. Our sales structure will increase your team’s productivity and conversion rates while it gives morale a welcome boost!
