Cold Calling: With Social Media is it Still Necessary?
Ok I'm going to level with you here. I absolutely hate cold calling, I have flash backs to making 120 calls a day, staying up all night to get my documentation and accounts completed the last few days of the month, not remembering the drives home and to work at times. I still do it, and I love the few people every day who get excited about Perfrm, who would have never heard about Perfrm had I not picked up the phone.
I leverage my network to it's full advantage, post daily on multiple social media platforms and engage with as many people as possible. Referrals are huge, I basically preach about creating a referral network as a must to hit your quotas. Even if you have an sdr team, it is ultimately up to you to hit your quota. This means spending time on lead generation and cold calls. I believe calling is more effective than more passive ways of cold outreach like social DM's and email campaigns. You're taking control of the conversation if you cold call.
At the same time you need to make sure that the time you're spending on the phone is as efficient as possible. So how do we effectively set up a cold call funnel and strategy. I haven't perfected this, but I want to share what I have figured out.
My Tips for Effective Cold Calling:
1.) Know Your Buyer:
This may seem like a simple concept, but I mean you really need to know who your customer is. I've even named my two ideal clients, because my product is consumer based and B2B. Amy Landino, author of Vlog Like a Boss and founder of Aftermarq, talks about this in her book and courses. Becca is my consumer, she is between 28 years old. She is on a large sales team and feels a little lost in the shuffle. She also just started selling for an MLM and is doing well but doesn't know how to coach her growing team. We're friends and when I'm talking to her, I'm talking to my friend across the table at coffee or brunch on Sunday afternoons. Sam is my B2B guy, he's the director of sales at a mid-sized SaaS company, the sales team has 12 employees and it's growing. He is also still selling which means training people how to sell and manage the entire process is done on the fly. It's not in their budget to have a sales trainer or other sales management. Sam needs a solution because he cares about his team and each member of it being successful so he's been looking into online training and consulting.
What does all of this information actually translate to? My consumer customer is 25-34, female, employed and has a side hustle, or has just left her job to make her side hustle full time. My B2B customer is the sales leader at his company, the company has under 15 sales team members, they do not have a sales trainer on staff.
2.) Use the Information about Your Customer to do Your Lead Generation:
Take all of the things you now know about the people who consistently buy from you and find the people that are most like them. If you're using something like LinkedIn Sales Navigator this is pretty easy, also your instagram and facebook analytics will tell you a lot about the people who are following you. Only put people on your cold call list that meet the criteria of your ideal customer.
3.) Plan Out Your Calls:
Enter all of your leads into your CRM. Decide on how many people you want to call a week, then per day. Put these people in a daily call que (salesforce) or call campaign (hubspot). This part is really important. It seems simple and like you may be able to just hold yourself accountable, but this is about data. The data from cold calls will help you buildout sales projections.
4.) Make the Calls and Document Everything:
Besides knowing you should start making calls, there are so many other things that can fill our time that seem more useful. Set aside time everyday to do it and then just do it. Document everything, record the calls if you can. Keep track of how many calls it takes to get to the DM, get to a pirch/demo, close sales. This will all help you build an even more effective cold call pipeline.
Let us know in the comments how you run your cold call strategies or if you have a different opinion.