Cold calling lead generation is a marketing technique in which a company representative or sales rep contacts an individual (a cold lead) to share their sales pitch. 📞
Unlike warm calls, pre-scheduled or follow-up calls, cold calling is an unsolicited and unexpected marketing call. The key difference is that you never know how the other party will react to your cold calling!
While not universally advantageous, cold calling can be a valuable tool in your B2B lead generation and sales arsenal; however, it comes with challenges. If you’re considering incorporating this approach into your sales strategy, here is some practical data to consider.
What Is Cold Calling Lead Generation?
Before you understand the exact meaning, imagine your phone suddenly rings, and someone starts talking: 👇
“Hello, I have called you from company A. We provide services related to cosmetics and health products. Would you like me to introduce you to our services and discounts?”
Yes, this was one of the worst cold-calling cases that probably happened to many of you. There is no intimacy and no reason why they chose you to call! They just started talking like robots! What is that? Now, we will get to know the general concept of cold calling.
Investopedia defines cold calling as “the solicitation of a potential customer who had no prior interaction with a salesperson. A form of telemarketing, cold calling is one of the oldest and most common forms of marketing.”
For instance, imagine you receive a call from a car dealership you’ve never heard of, offering you a special deal on a new car. This would be exactly a cold call.
Pros & Cons of Cold Calling for Lead Generation
Despite being an old marketing strategy, cold calling can still be one of the most powerful lead generation tools when combined with other techniques. Its potential to significantly promote your products or services should inspire hope and motivate you to explore its benefits. Here, we explore cold calling pros and cons.
Pros of Cold Calling
As one of the older marketing methods, cold calling for lead generation has different advantages that you must get to know.
1. In Cold Calling, You Can Reach New Customers
People not actively looking for your company’s products or services won’t discover your website. So, it’s your job to find them. With cold calling, you can contact people who fit your ideal customer profile and tell them what your business offers.
2. You Can Find Skills in Your Field of Activity
Cold calling is a fantastic training ground, especially for new salespeople. It offers a unique opportunity to improve your selling skills through repeated practice. Its emphasis on learning and improvement should encourage and inspire you to embrace cold calling as a skill-building exercise.
Becoming confident and comfortable talking to potential customers through cold calling can take time, but the experience can help you master it. Having a few conversations with potential customers can help you get real-time feedback and correct your mistakes in the future.
3. You Can Get Relevant Information and Make a Human Connection
Cold calling in telemarketing can be a great way to get relevant information and make a human connection with potential customers.
When you send an email to a customer, they can ignore the correspondence or carefully review their response before contacting you. But when you call someone, they may be more willing to give you valuable information.
In addition, you can establish a human connection during the call and gauge the personality, sense of humor, etc., which can never be understood through email or even in a social media post.
4. You Can Increase the Conversion Rate
Some businesses use cold calling just to get the benefits, including increasing the conversion rate. Cold calling also helps find a lead and improve its quality, a huge positive point in B2B lead generation.
5. You Can Get Instant Feedback
Cold calling is one of the most effective telemarketing strategies because it provides immediate and valuable feedback. This real-time feedback allows you to optimize your products or services according to your customers’ needs, giving you confidence in your sales approach. Therefore, cold calling allows you to introduce the brand and make sales and provides an instant overview of your current products and services.
6. It’s Affordable
Cold calling is the most cost-effective way to increase sales and introduce your products and services. Although you still need to pay for calls and software, it is cheaper than many other methods.
Cons of Cold Calling
Everything in this world has a dark side. Cold calling is not so dark, but it is still better to know its cons.
1. It Can be a Bummer!
Let’s be honest; most people do not enjoy unexpected phone calls and may find them annoying and unpleasant. Most of the time, they don’t want to take the time to hear your salesperson’s voice and explanations, and they want to hang up as soon as possible. Plus, you might catch the person at the wrong time since the call isn’t scheduled!
2. Not Useful All the Time
Even if you’ve succeeded with cold calling, you shouldn’t use it as your only sales strategy. According to the findings, cold calls’ conversion rate is lower than other lead generation methods. So, while cold calling can be helpful in some situations, it may not be useful in others, and the people you contact may not have good behavior.
3. The Number and Amount of Sales Through Cold Calling Cannot be Measured Easily
Another reason is that you usually cannot predict how many sales will result from cold calling. This inconsistency can put your business at financial risk and increase the costs of the marketing and sales team due to the need for a specific telemarketing plan.
4. Its Relative Attractiveness Is Lower Than Other Channels
As technology advances, the relative attractiveness of cold calling has decreased compared to a variety of modern methods of communication, including:
- Social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.),
- Text messaging
- Referrals from existing customers
- Webinars and networking groups
Even more recently, marketers have preferred “cold emails,” which require a much smaller investment per customer, even if they’re not very effective at generating leads.
5. Durability and Customer Loyalty Is Limited
Customer retention and loyalty are very limited in telemarketing and cold calls; usually, the customer experiences a purchase only once.
6. Not Sustainable
To succeed in cold calling, marketers must work a lot. The problem here is that:
- It may take hundreds of phone calls in a day to find the right person to buy from.
- Even then, there is no guarantee that they will treat you well even if they are interested in the product.
Tips for Dealing with Cold Calls
A skilled and specialized telemarketer must have a unique style and technique to continue the conversation. What is the best cold-calling technique?
In this section, we examine some essential techniques and strategies for cold calling lead generation.
1. Think of the Phone Call as a Marathon
Remember that this is a long-term marketing process, so you are not dealing with a sprint race. Potential customers need time to make a final decision. In the market, access to information provides many options to customers.
It gives the customer more time to decide. As soon as you set up an in-person appointment or a follow-up call with the customer, you are considered the winner of this marathon!
2. Guess the Outcome of the Conversation Intelligently
Sometimes, at the beginning of a cold call, you can know the depth of the person’s passion and interest in continuing the conversation. Of course, this requires a lot of practice and experience. If you conclude that talking to the customer wastes time, you should end the conversation soon. Continuing when the customer is uninterested in the conversation is pure suicide!
3. Specify the Script in Advance
Of course, the conversation process cannot be predicted, but it can be controlled to some extent. You can prepare a specific script according to the information and specifications of the potential customer. Of course, you may encounter a talkative or a quiet customer. Anyway, you should be prepared for these things.
4. Be Regular and Persistent
What is the meaning of follow-up in cold calling? According to statistics, more than 80% of successful phone sales happen on the fifth call attempt. Finally, try email lead generation or text message if the customer’s answer is negative. No one knows what the future holds!
5. Check Your Daily Activity
Keep notes of your phone calls throughout the day to avoid confusion and forgetting important points. For example, write the names of the people you called, the exact call time, the critical conversations you exchanged, etc.
Naturally, you cannot remember all your calls. This will give you a general and regular framework. It also lets you know the customers’ contact details and appear more prepared for the next calls. It will increase your confidence during the conversation and customer search through cold calling. CRMs are good solutions for recording this data.
6. Ask Open-Ended Questions
By starting conversations, you can start your questions with who, what, where, when, and how, which gives your customer more space to answer.
Cold calling is a two-way conversation; you want to learn as much as possible about your business prospects, what they do, and what they need. Asking them questions gives you more opportunities to discuss.
7. Record Your Voice and Listen Again and Again
When you call a customer, the customer cannot see your body language, so tone of voice becomes very important. Without facial expressions and body language, you can only convey your points with your words and tone of voice.
8. Interactive Listening
Listening is one of the most important points of cold calling. Don’t just talk to them; listening is an easy way to build trust because it makes the person feel valued and allows you to learn more about their needs and concerns.
9. Don’t Waste Their Time
Remember, when you are cold calling, don’t waste people’s time; you have about ten seconds to prove your worth, and no more than that is appropriate. By keeping the call brief, value your customer’s time and earn mutual respect.
10. Stay Positive
Positive thinking has been scientifically proven to enhance your skills, health, and work. Every mistake you make is an opportunity to learn and do better in the future.
The infographic below also explains what telemarketers should do in every step of cold calling, from preparation to follow up: 👇
Can Artificial Intelligence Make Cold Calls?
Yes, artificial intelligence has been active in the cold-calling field for some time and has proven very effective for businesses looking to improve their sales process and marketing.
AI lead generation automates many relevant but time-consuming and repetitive tasks, such as dialing and receiving qualified leads, allowing sales teams to focus on more strategic activities.
Additionally, research shows that AI cold calling can give businesses deep insights into customer behavior, preferences, and desires. Businesses can use these insights to adjust their approach and increase conversion rates with AI leads. Ensuring it is aligned with your business goals and objectives is essential for AI cold calling.
A Super Lead Generator Named CUFinder!
One of the most important aspects of cold calling lead generation is the accuracy of the contact data. Marketers should spend more time and energy daily on the right phone numbers.
Do you need help with the right data and phone numbers? The perfect solution to this process is CUFinder. Why?
So, it is time to make a change. Using new technologies is one of the wisest things you can do. CUFinder is one of the popular lead generation companies.
Do you need help with the right data and phone numbers? The perfect solution to this process is CUFinder. Why?
The first thing that stands out in this platform is the guaranteed 98% data accuracy. It means you can be confident about the information you get from CUFinder. Not only you have very suitable and reliable leads, but you can also easily find their correct and direct contact numbers with our various services.
I must also remind you that with CUFinder’s various services, you can access information from more than 419 million individuals and 269 million companies. Our database can create one of the most complete CRMs for you, or if you already have customer databases, you can complete them with our database.
If you still have doubts about using CUFinder services, start your free trial and try it yourself.
CUFinder also offers different phone-finding services, such as “Company Phone Finder,” “Person Phone Finder,” and “Phone Number to Person Name.” Thus, you can have whatever you need for a successful cold call with this magic platform.
Is Cold Call Still Alive?
Some people say it still works, and some believe it is long gone! Cold calling is still a main marketing method worldwide, but Let’s look at the data and see if it is dead!
A LinkedIn research has shown that less than 2% of cold calls lead to meetings or deals. Also, a study by Baylor University found that only one appointment or deal was made for every 209 calls.
Yes, cold calls seem even more inefficient, considering that only some appointments become deals. But how much of this is due to bad technique? And why do some sales managers insist that a phone call is necessary?
It’s true that prospecting methods like “social media marketing” are much faster and more scalable than cold calling, but don’t forget:
- First, cold calling gives immediate feedback on whether a customer is worth pursuing.
- Second, ignoring emails, sending them to spam, or filtering them is easy.
- Third, it is true that young professionals prefer digital interactions, but older decision-makers may prefer telephone interactions.
Conclusion
Cold calling lead generation is one of a few outbound marketing methods that have been tried and tested over the years and have had fantastic results. While digital marketing channels are growing with time, cold calling remains one of the main ways to connect with people.
Cold-calling lead generation also remains one of the main outbound marketing methods. It is perfect for generating leads from people or companies that have never shown interest in your product or service.
Yes, many tactics exist to make cold calls more effective. Success depends on preparation, knowing the target audience’s needs and pain points, and establishing a connection through a personalized talk.
Using such techniques, marketers could increase their chance of warming up cold leads during the most crucial first interaction. Everything can be improved, starting with the opening statement and ending with skillfully managing objections to make a cold lead into a possible customer.
FAQs
1. What is Cold Calling in Lead Generation?
Cold calling involves contacting potential customers via telephone, individuals with no previous interaction with your business, to generate interest in your product or service.
2. How to Get Cold Call Leads Without Using Software?
Cold call leads are generated manually; this involves researching potential clients through directories, social media, industry-specific forums, and networking events.
3. How Many Cold Calls Are Required to Create a Lead?
It is said that it takes about 15-20 cold calls to generate one lead, while the actual number can be much higher. For example, making one appointment takes 290 cold calls.
4. How to Generate Leads without Cold Calling?
Content marketing, email campaigns, social media marketing, and networking can generate leads sans cold calling.
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