What’s missing from your Cold Calls?
April 21, 2009 by ProGrad · Leave a Comment
Over the past 10 months the company I work for has delivered over 250 hours of training in cold calling skills to graduates as they take up quite demanding business to business sales roles for leading Australian organizations.
What I think however is far more impressive is that over this same time frame we have conducted over 7,500 hours of actual cold calling to book business meetings. Anyone who has ever faced a full day of call calling will know exactly what I mean when I say when you’re on a roll its great but when you’re hitting some tough calls - maybe a trip to the dentist might seem like a welcomed break!
So what have we found? Studies have shown that if you invest 10,000 hours into an endeavor diligently you too can join the ranks of expert. Maybe 7,500 hours doesn’t quite make us an expert, but you learn a thing or two along the way!
1) Be careful of the advice you take when it comes to cold calling. There are plenty of people queuing up to give advice and even train on the subject. Yet if you probe a bit further they may spend more time training than actually doing it themselves “do as I say not as I do!”
2) Some people advocate using scripts and some prescribe the drawbacks, pitfalls and recommend a more free flowing approach. One thing for sure if your phone call gets off to an awkward start, it can go downhill very quickly from there.
3) Be genuine; put yourself in the call and always remember the reason for your call.
4) A call cold has a time limit and a commercial benefit.
In our business model we use a script as a starting point, yes I know what you’re probably thinking that’s not genuine, it artificial and who really wants to be called and on the receiving end of the script? Well the script is our starting point to ensure our sales teams build their skill set via routine and practice. Its effectiveness in terms of hitting KPI’s occurs several months post hire as they adopt their own style and personality in the call. Actually what I feel is going on is the salespersons attention moves away from the script and onto the client. As a Sales Manager for leading advertising company recently told me he knows his teams run their cold calls effectively when they really “put themselves in the call”.
Listening to a piano student learning the scales on their 3rd lesson is painful but necessary. After mastery of the fundamentals, listening to an accomplished musician is a pleasure in fact the most successful musicians can make the mundane sound great in fact it looks effortless. We hear the final performance but we don’t hear the hard work that went into developing the style!
So let’s review, the script is our starting point; it also helps to, as Steven Covey points out, “keep the end in mind” and also have a purpose and reason for the call. Ours is to book the business meeting - a cold call really does have a time limit. A potential client books a meeting not because they like me but because they see a potential commercial benefit in doing so. If our calls are too free flowing and open ended we could probably have great discussion on the phone but why would you want to meet with me?
Kingsley -Training Manager Prograd
ProGrad have been working successfully with organizations in both Sydney and Melbourne over the last 4 years. We have worked with over 500 organizations placing and training over 1000 graduates across a variety of industries.
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