For many cold calling is the scariest part of the sales process. It intimidates salespeople to the point they start to lose their confidence. It’s ironic that many salespeople are highly trained to sell and are coached to use their razor sharp marketing skills to sell, but when it comes to picking up the phone and making that cold calls they feel ill prepared. The reason this is so is that many salespeople make a cold call without understanding the psychology that is involved.
The secret of making successful cold-calls is knowing the background, the strengths and weaknesses of the people you wish to do business with. The most important thing to remember is that you must get inside your prospects head so you can figure out what their problem is.
A good salesperson not only needs to think about the product they are selling, you also need to think about why it makes sense for your prospect to pay attention to you in the first place. If you don’t grab the prospect by the neck everything is lost. Doing a little bit of research before you pick up the phone goes a long way because you’ll know exactly the problems they’re facing. Thus you can immediately offer solutions that will help them without wasting their time. More importantly you will stop wasting your time.
So in order to be effective at cold calling, I coach my clients that they need these 3 things:
- Get an insight on the people you have to call.
- Know the reason you’re calling by figuring out how you can solve their problem.
- Get their attention so they invest three minutes of their time to listen to you
