Reasons Your Cold Call Campaign Might be Failing You

As you likely understand by now, the cold call is a difficult tactic, one that can pay off big when done effectively, but something that takes quite a bit of work to get just right.

Let’s consider for a second precisely what is going on with the cold call. A complete stranger is:

  1. Bugging a very busy person out of nowhere, inevitably when they are busiest, usually when someone else is on the line it seems, or maybe they’re eating dinner.
  1. This is made worse for b2b when you can’t even get a hold of the right person immediately. You need to get through the secretaries and other gatekeepers whose job in many instances may specifically be to keep telemarketers out of their boss’s ear.
  1. Then they are trying to sell that person something 99/100 they don’t want, never heard of, and don’t care about.

That’s a lot to overcome. Still, with the right approach cold calls can be successful so let’s review some things that may be going wrong if you are not getting the results you would like from you cold call campaign:

  1. Are your call agents motivated? Whether you hire out your telemarketing or do it in-house, you have to know that the people doing the talking want to sell your product or service. Boredom and indifference come through over the phone, and they are contagious so make sure the telemarketers are motivated.
  1. Are the callers fallowing the structure of the script? In order to stay personable, usually you want your phone agents to be able to speak in a natural way, which may mean a couple minor changes to the word for word thing they are reading from (hopefully that they have memorized by now). But your script was written a specific way for a reason; that is to give you the best possible opportunity to reach the most possible people. Make sure the phone agents are following the structure of the script with the introduction, description, benefits, price, value, etc. or the structure your script follows. A good telemarketer uses the script to their advantage.
  1. Do your callers really know the product? Selling some vague thing is not easy. Selling something you know inside out is pretty simple to a good salesperson. Make sure all of your callers understand your product inside and out. They should know your product or service nearly as well as you do yourself.
  1. What’s their attitude? Humans aren’t robots and even your best sales person is going to have a bad day. Make sure your call center has a positive “feel” “look” whatever it is in order that your call agents can pick up their mood to make that sale. Selling over the phone isn’t easy, and your telemarketers experience an unbelievable amount of rejection even on a good day, so make it easier for them at least as far as the rest of the office goes.
  1. Do your phone sales people know their target? In large part your script should take this into consideration and so the tone of it should make it simpler to speak to that specific target, it is still essential your callers know the target as well.