Calling up anyone out of the blue is a tough thing to do. It’s hard enough to call up that long lost friend just to catch up, let alone someone you’re hoping to sell your services or products to. While there are plenty of people who love the prospect of the cold call, not everyone can be Jordan Belfort.
But, as with all things, there are ways to make that difficult job just a little bit easier. Keep reading, and I will give you a few tips to “warming up” your cold calls, making it that much easier to land that all-important meeting.
What do I mean by “Warming Up Your Cold Calls?”
So, first things first, I need to clarify what I mean by warming up. There are actually two ways to warm up a call.
For those unfamiliar, a cold call is a call that the person you’re calling is not expecting or did not request. Even if you know them well and have an established relationship, a call to them would still technically be a cold call.
But if you’re making a cold call, it’s still always possible to ensure the person on the other line is as primed as possible for whatever pitch you’re about to throw their way. Obviously the best way to do this is to create a situation in which the person on the other end of the phone is actually expecting your call.
By and large, you are more likely to have success with a warm call than a cold one, so it’s usually in your best interest to do this whenever you can.
So, without further ado, let’s jump into ways you can warm up those cold calls!
Do that Research!
I’m starting with the obvious one here, and admittedly, it’s not the sexiest thing in the world, nor is it particularly fun. But there’s no denying that the first step in making a successful cold call is making sure you’re calling the right people.
To make a tangential comparison here, there is the old adage in Hollywood that 90% of directing is casting. It’s a familiar idea that if a director casts the right people in the right roles, his job of working with them on set is mostly done. Sure, it may be an exaggeration, but the sentiment makes a lot of sense. If you do the work upfront in making sure the role matches the skill set of an actor, you’re already setting yourself up for a great performance.
Similarly, you need to do the same with the phone calls you’re making. We don’t live in an age where you can just flip open the Yellow Pages, close your eyes and point at random to your next prospect.
Okay, I mean, I guess you could go that direction, but down that way leads a lot of dead ends, annoyed prospective clients, and wasted time.
Instead, get to know the company you’re calling first.
Research your point of contact. See if you can understand their pain points and, most importantly, how your services or product can help relieve them. Do that and incorporate that into your cold calling script (CLICK HERE to make your own personalized script!).
Build Your Authority
We live in a glorious age of technology. Before the internet came along, advertising was unwieldy and expensive. You had to create, print, distribute — and there were few ways of knowing how effective any one campaign was (unless you had customers bring you flyers). Now, anyone with an affordable marketing platform such as Mission Suite can reach their potential customers like never before and track the effectiveness of their campaigns. And you’d be missing out on a lot of potential business if you weren’t doing just that. The more you stay in a potential customer’s head, the more likely you are to get their business.
It all starts with a lead magnet — some piece of content that gets them into your mailing list.
It can be anything you want. Maybe it’s an ebook chronicling the must-knows of your industry. Maybe it’s a podcast of you speaking with business owners and industry leads. Whatever it is must be a piece of content that adds value to the user in some way. And in order to get that piece of content, they MUST join your mailing list. Once they are in there, that’s when the real fun begins.
You now have access to their email and can drip feed them all sorts of interesting things. It can be weekly industry updates, blog posts about a problem your customers have, or just some fun, inspirational stories related to your industry to help perk up their mood.
All of this is a way for you to build your authority in your space and “warm up” those potential customers. Now, when it comes time to turn those email leads into prospective calls, they’ll know who you are. In fact, when all said and done, if you have done your job correctly, you may reach a point where the prospect of potential clients speaking with you is one they look forward to.
In this particular case, you will have effectively switched the cold call into a warm call!
Look for a Common Connection
This step also requires some more leg work in the form of regular networking. Of course, networking groups can have a lot of different benefits, and one of the main benefits is the expanded connections you’ll have to other businesses.
So, let’s say you’ve done your research and come across a business that would be an amazing fit for our service or product. You go on LinkedIn and find that you have a common connection with your contact at that business. It would behoove you to reach out to that common connection for a direct introduction. After all, professionals are more likely to take on meetings from people they know – or at least were introduced by someone they know.
But maybe the world isn’t so clean, and LinkedIn does you no good. This is where things like professional networking groups can come into play. If you’re not a member of at least one yet, I’d get on that. In addition to making great referral partners, they’re also amazing for increasing the size of your professional web. In many cases, groups offer opportunities for members to ask other members if they are looking for an introduction to a specific company. That would be a great time to bring up that company you’ve been looking into.
In either case, what would have been a cold call could have been turned into a warm call with a simple email introduction from a mutual friend.
Your Turn
These are just a few ways you can make your calls that much more productive. No, they aren’t get-rich-quick approaches, but let’s face it, nothing in life ever is. Nothing worth having comes without putting in the work beforehand. Whether it’s research, building your authority, or growing your professional network, it all leads to the greater potential of locking down those sales through cold or warm calls.
So, what are you waiting for? Go out there and make it happen!