Translate

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

THE #1 PROBLEM WITH COLD CALLS

Reports of the death of the cold call are greatly exaggerated.

I received two of them lately.   But neither were very good.

After decades of books and seminars and in-house training, why are salespeople still so bad at making cold calls?

The key problem:  the salesperson doesn’t explain why they are calling.

Most cold calls I get begin under the ruse of a survey, such as, “I’m just wondering what CRM tool you are using,” as if I might leap at the chance to disclose this to a total stranger.

The call I received today also began with a question, something about whether I managed a certain type of team.

Please:  just start by telling me your name, your company, and what you do.  

Feel free to complete your first sentence with a question.  But don’t hide the fact that this is a sales call.  

“Hi I’m Dave calling from Appcelotron, we help companies share large files, I apologize for barging in on your day but I wondered if you might be interested in a better way to share large files?”

That pitch takes all of 12 seconds to deliver in a moderately-paced voice.

Feel free to take out the apology, or add some spice to the value proposition, but don’t leave out the most important part:  who you are and why you are calling.

No comments:

Post a Comment