Sales - Cold Calling

We are geared up for new decade and hopeful for 2011 to be a year of growth opportunities. With improvement in the economy, companies will begin to add salespeople to their sales team. As the economy slowly recovers, sales teams will be dealing with some tough issues in the coming year. The team has to work harder to get the deal than before. The expectations and demands from top management will be more crushing than they experienced during the business decline of the past three years.

We have also started building our India and global sales team to take up the challenge for next year and hence for next few weeks, planning to blog on the subject of “Sales”. To begin with, every sales person has to do “cold call” in their professional career but in general, everyone feels a rock in the pit of their stomach when they hear the word – “Cold Calling”.

Here are four tips for effective cold calling and converting them into sales.

1: Know your prospect
First, do a little research before you walk in. Know something about the business or the person you are looking for. Maybe they won an award for some community service or are launching a new product. Find one little bit of information that you can relate to going in that doesn’t have to do with selling your product or services.

2: Cross the gatekeeper
Second, treat everyone you meet as though they are buying from you. Most likely your first contact will be a receptionist. It’s very common that on that first cold call, you may not even get to the decision maker and that’s OK. The key is to treat the front desk fellow like they are no less than the decision maker. Ultimately the receptionist will get you where you need to be. The gatekeeper is every bit as important as the decision maker!

3: Be Prepared
Third, walk in the door or dial their number. It’s that simple. Have an idea about what you want to say and don’t over think it. Just take the steps through the door.

4: Build relation
Last, be yourself! Be friendly, be respectful, be conversational, be aware of their body language and keep it short. The people are busy. Let them know who you are, where you work and why you are there. Take notice of the surroundings. You may want to comment on a photo, an award or bring up the one fact that you had ready, to connect with them. Once you feel you’ve established yourself with the person you’ve just met, ask for the contact you should be dealing with or if you can schedule a time to come back to discuss business. The point of this first call is to establish contact.

-Aslam