Make Cold Calls Great Again
Tech that can increase conversations for your Team
TL;DR Cold Calling in 2023 is tough AF but THERE IS TECHNOLOGY that gives your team the ability to do more volume without sacrificing quality.
You NEED the following to see ROI on cold calling:
Local Dial to match prospects’ area code - 4X more likely to answer
Power/ Parallel Dialer - Call more people faster
Automated Voicemail - People Read their voicemails, did you know that?
Enriched Data
Light and effective CRM for follow-up
Experienced Operator - someone who has kids to feed and sales experience
Benefits of this tech:
Less overhead - turns an Account Exec into their own BDR or has 1 BDR do the work of 3
Tracking - See what is working and what isn’t and listen to call recordings then iterate and improve.
Tech Stack I’ve used:
Zoominfo(data) + LeadIQ (data enrichment) + Orum (power Dialer)+ Salesloft (activity and follow-up tracking) = More quality conversations
When you need a Conversation right now: Turn to Phonecalls
The ol’ tried and true telephone. People hate cold calling and people hate BEING cold called but damn it, it still works despite buyers trying to kill it.
When done right, a phonecall leads to money and there is no denying it. But you need a bit of tech and an experienced operator.
Buyers are Trying to Kill Cold Calling
You got a number to hit. Whether you are a sales leader, an SDR, or an account executive you need more meetings on the books to build pipeline and have more opportunities to close.
The problem?
Your prospects are getting a ton of calls and emails from other sellers just like you. Some might be able to actually solve a major problem your prospects are facing. But it's too bad. The sheer number of calls they receive drives them to ignore all incoming calls, texts, and emails.
Since everybody started working remotely, cell phone numbers became a hot commodity and no one even calls office lines anymore.
Tech Stack for Modern Cold Callers
Contact Data $200 - $500 per month
You need a few numbers to try and get ahold of buyers. Everything from main line, to office line, to their cell phone and their burner phone. Use Seamless.ai, Zoominfo, Lusha to get a couple thousand phone numbers.
Data Enrichment $80 - $500 per month
Take the data you bought and run is through a data enrichment tool like Lead magic. This will give you more access to insights like how many times they visited your website and when. It can also give you more “up-to-date” info on prospect whereabouts which is great due to the number of people switching jobs right now.
Power Dialer with Ability to Target Local Numbers $50 to $300 per month
Call 10X more prospects in less time by using tech that can parallel or power dial. Being able to work more prospects per hour will increase odds of having conversations.
Coupled with the ability to use a local number, your pickups should see significant increase.
Orum is the best for this that I’ve seen and Ring.io is a close second for hubspot.
BONUS:
With Orum, you can create a voicemail that is sent out automatically when you reach a voicemail and jump to the next call. You can prerecord a killer message and many phones will no transcribe these into text and people will read them.
Light and Effective CRM
Hubspot wins this IMO.
The SDR/BDR Role isn’t for Newbies Anymore
For now, the SDR/ BDR role doesn’t make sense to give to fresh college grads who have never worked a sales job. You need experienced people who show you an Roi your investment.
This might mean Outsourcing to BDR firm or hiring someone who is 29 plus years old and has worked in sales for a few years already.
Millennial Decision Makers Ignoring Unknown Numbers
Now more than ever decision makers are going to ignore calls from unknown numbers. Hell, even many sellers will ignore numbers that they don't know. It's a generational thing and as Millennials start to take over the decision-maker roles the number of ignored calls only goes up.
What does this mean?
Well, you better at least be calling verified numbers. AND, you’re going to need to call a lot more.
AND when you get someone on the phone, you better have your shit together.