Have you been cold calling prospects or been prospecting, but are struggling to gain interest from the prospect or are unable to move the prospect to the next stage of your sales cycle? This article will help you. In this article, we talk about ways to overcome these problems and ways to help you increase your sales.
Don’t let the “No” get you down
One of the biggest reasons why people fail at cold-calling is that they give up as soon as they hear the stomach punching “No”. Most of the time the prospect has 100 other people like you calling him and saying the exact same thing. You should see this “No” as a “Not right now” opportunity to re-engage in 3-6 months. But never the less, do not let the “No” stop you from making the next call or lose confidence in the next call as the next call could be the breakthrough!
It's the power of averages
With Sales, it’s all about averages! I know, Maths and Sales actually link. But what I mean by this is that the more calls you make, the higher the chance of making a sale will be. If you aim for 2 positive conversations a day with the opportunity for next steps.
Ask open questions
You want to ask open questions so it doesn’t give the prospect an easy way out. I.e. “Do you need any help with X?” and an open question would be “Do you have something already in place to help you achieve X?” By doing this, means the prospect has a harder way of ending the conversation and having an easy way out. The more you ask open questions, the more information you will receive from the prospect and be able to find pain points that you can hone in on and use to show how your solution can help overcome that pain point or also known as the “current problem”.
Curious about automated data extraction from documents?
Lock in the next step with a specific Date & Time
A lot of the time you will have a great conversation with a prospect, come off the phone and realise that there is no next step. Once they have agreed to receive more information or a next stage call, the best practice would be to ask them on the call to confirm a date & time for the next step of the sales process (don’t say you want to confirm the next step of the sales process!) You want to say something like “Ok great, the next step is to go through x on a call with x. Do you have availability on X at X time?”
You can then send them a follow-up email with a calendar invite with their email. By doing this you are eliminating any opportunity for the prospect to close the conversation with you.
Play “Hard to get”
Whenever you are talking to a prospect, one of the hardest parts of a cold call is portraying enough interest for a prospect to know you want to speak with them and not being over-enthusiastic which annoys them and they end the call. Finding a balance is key to the success of the cold call!
To conclude, make sure you follow these tips as best as you can. Every call you have and every prospect you speak to will react differently. However, following these steps will make it easier to get these diverse prospects into your sales process.
P.S “Every sale has 5 obstacles: No need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust” - Zig Ziglar
About Legislate
Legislate is a contracting platform where business owners can create contracts to help grow and develop their business. Legislate's employment offer letters and contracts are key in protecting your IP and Legislate's NDAs are crucial to ensure you can have conversations and partnerships to help develop your business and brand. Book a demo or sign up today to put the confidence back into contracting.
The opinions on this page are for general information purposes only and do not constitute legal advice on which you should rely.