How to Make a Customer-Friendly Cold Call

When you are having a conversation with someone, how do you make sure you keep their interest? You talk about them instead of yourself of course, so why should a cold call be any different? Showing a person that you are interested in them naturally makes them more receptive to speaking with you and that is the first step to a successful cold call.

How can I put the customer first and still sell?

  1. Listening to them and talking about their needs does not mean you do not have control over the conversation. Quite the opposite actually, it gives you more control. The key is to drive the conversation toward the problem that your product or service will solve for them.
  2. Separate yourself from your product or service for the first part of the conversation. Pretend that you are working together to solve a problem instead of looking at the person on the line as another sale in the books. This mental step creates a situation where, once you introduce you product or service, it sounds more natural and genuine and increases your odds of making the sale.
  3. As you are describing the benefits of what you are selling, concentrate on the problems discussed in your conversation. Even if you script goes in a different direction focus on the things that seemed a greater concern to the one you are talking to. This is a level of insight you never could have reached had you simply treated the phone call like a “sales call.”

Let’s look at an example of how to do this:

Let’s look at the financial industry for example. This is a pretty common area which often uses cold call campaigns as a selling tactic. Normally it would go something like this, “Hi, I’m calling to find out if you would be interested in making more money.” Okay, that’s what a lot of scripts sound like. It’s not as effective as the authors would like to think for the simple reason, it sounds like someone selling something… like a million people trying to sell something.

Try something like, “I was wondering if there was any area of your portfolio that isn’t making as much money as it could?” No doubt everyone in finance has at least one area, and now you are talking about them, not telling them “Hey idiot, buy this if you like money.” –which is kind of what people hear with the first example.

Opening the conversation this way does a number of things; it keeps people on the phone longer which is half the battle, it lets them know you are actually interested in them and not just trying to sell them something, it gives you insight as to the precise problem they have, allowing you to incorporate the important benefits later in the conversation when you do finally introduce your solution.

This tactic will work for just about any industry. Come up with a handful of conversations starters that use this method and see what works most often. Click here for more Cold Calling Tips.