Create a Contact List
When cold calling first determine who you are trying to contact and develop a marketing strategy.
Ideally you’d have a team of people analyzing client buying patterns and perception about your brand or your product but when you are first starting out you may have to do this yourself.
Create a list of contacts that you want to reach out to either through Email, Linkedin, Facebook, or Phone.
Start by tracking those on a spreadsheet and once you start to generate some revenue move this data to a CRM.
If you are technically inclined you can create your own local CRM. However, the best is to use a supported software package so you are focusing your time building your business rather than managing your IT infrastructure.
Create and Practice Script
Once you know who you want to contact then determine what you will say when you reach out. Create a short value proposition as a script and write that out on either a piece of paper or digitally. Digitally is the best as you can use it as a template to take notes and capture objections.
Rehearse the script and focusses on clearly annunciating and the speaking naturally.
Role play your script with someone who can give you good feedback.
Your goal while role playing is to identify objections that would come up during cold calling and develop responses for them.
Get to the point where it you have developed many different responses and try them when the situations come up.
Do the Work
Stay positive while cold calling and look it as a fun game. Set the expectation with yourself that you will get a lot of rejection. Some people may be friendly and some people may not be friendly. However if you have a concise message and their friendly yourself then you’re more likely to get better responses.
Ideally you would record the calls but in most cases that is a violation of privacy so you will need to settle for just taking good notes.
The best leads are those that already have some interest and could come from either a webinar, trade show, networking event, or web site contact page.
However, at the start you’ll most unlikely to have a lot of inbound leads. Therefore, you’ll have to make outbound cold calls to generate interest.
When making outbound cold calls set the expectation with yourself that it will take on average 10 phone calls to reach one person.
Focus on the activity and not necessarily the results while you are executing the activity
Since it takes a long time to fine the reach someone be sure the context in your list are the appropriate decision makers
Set Goals and Track Activity
Define activity goals such as 50 to 100 calls a day 5 to 10 appointments set
If possible, have the meeting over the phone to qualify the lead.
Create an outbound and inbound strategy.
You can use tools such as WordPress, Marketo, Salesforce Marketing Cloud.
