Have you ever been a recipient of a call where the sales rep blurts out their name and place of work and then starts to bombard you with facts and benefits of their product or service? Or have you been on the receiving end of a phone going beep beep because your lead has put the phone down? Then it is time to curate the perfect cold call script for your business. Here are the three steps to consider.
1. Why are you cold calling?
Yes, we eventually want to land the big sale, but the cold call is not when this will happen. With the cold call there could be three objectives you want to reach:
- To schedule an appointment: You may want to set up a sales call or product demonstration with the lead.
- To qualify a lead: Even though you have done all your research before making the cold call, you need to confirm if your target has the budget, authority, need and timeline urgency to want to purchase your offering.
- To make an introduction: You may be contacting the person to introduce your business and product to them. With this introduction, you may highlight a time-limited special for your products or services.
2. Who are you calling?
Because we want to write cold calling scripts which are targeted and personalised for our ideal client, we need to understand their goals and challenges. After we have identified who our target client is, we can search for them on LinkedIn. By entering the position, industry, and location you can find a list of potential clients. From this list, you can see if you have a common connection, and you may be able to see some industry news about the company or person to use to personalise your cold call.
3. What are you offering?
When you contact your target, you need to highlight the benefits of your product or service. But you can’t only say we are the best at X but you need to link your unique benefits with the challenge your customer may be experiencing. You need to focus on the customer and let them know how your solution will make their job easier.
Now that we know the objective of our call, the person we are calling and our unique selling point we can focus on creating a cold calling script. A cold-calling script has four sections:
- Introduction: In this section, you will greet the lead and tell them your name and your business name. Then you will take an eight-second break before you continue to speak to give the other person time to absorb the information.
- Purpose of the call: Next you will state why you are calling the person and you will ask them if they have some time to listen to your offering.
- The offer: Now you will start to ask the customer questions about their challenges and depending on their answer, you will highlight how your offering will solve their challenge or you will need to face objection. It is important to remember that throughout the discussion you need to focus on the customer and their needs. You need to listen actively and make notes throughout the discussion so that you can refer to them later on in the discussion.
- Summary and call to action: At the end of the discussion, you can summarise the discussion and ask your new contact if you can organise a sales call or demonstration as soon as possible. It could even be the next day.
By having these four sections in your cold call, you will be well on your way to making good connections and potential sales.
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