How RevHERO Sales Automation Killed Cold Calling

Cold calling was once the mainstay of lead-generation, however sales automation has rendered it obsolete. To many, this is a welcome change as the majority of sales professionals and prospects are repelled by it. In fact, 63% of salespeople say cold calling is what they dislike most about their jobs, 88% of buyers will have nothing to do with cold callers, and 90% of C-suite executives say they never respond to cold calls. While there are still sales trainers around who are pretending it’s still the 1970s and that you can build a business with cold-calling, their success stories are either bunk or outdated. 

If you’re still hesitant to give up cold calling, consider the following points and you will most likely reconsider:

• Cold call conversion rates average about 1% and only increase to 2% for top brands.
• More than 5 people are involved in today’s B2B purchase decision, so cold callers need to immediately understand who they’re speaking with, what part of the funnel they’re in, and overcome enough objections to get four more people involved in the process.
• Large businesses and enterprises are now introducing gatekeepers so you can’t get to the right job title unless you’ve got their name (and typically an appointment).
• More Americans are running their own businesses than ever before, which often means using their personal phones for business.
• Over 200 million people have joined do-not-call lists, which means some businesses are on there as well.

It’s time to stop cold calling, and focus on leads that you can qualify; the ones who are going to be receptive to your call and not resent you for it. Here’s what I suggest you try instead to generate quality leads, and land more clients. 

Share Valuable Content

Introduce yourself and your brand by giving a potential lead relevant content that addresses their chief pain points. It positions you as a partner and resource, while focusing on building a relationship. This creates an easy path to get to your services or products after a few interactions, giving you time to establish credibility and authority.

Create Your Own Valuable Content

It’s good to give people something that helps; it’s even better to own the content that helps. Whether it’s an eBook, a blog, LinkedIn posts, or video tutorials, give your targets something they need with your logo displayed all over it.

Discuss pain points and offer resolutions while cementing yourself as an authority.

Expand With New Media

Blogs are an amazing tool, but they aren’t the only thing you should be considering. Today, the hottest growth area in B2B is turning out to be videos.

Videos that answer a question can rack up highly targeted views and create plenty of ways for people to learn about you and interact with your brand.

Common problems are high-value targets, and they give an easy connection option by letting viewers know you can create custom solutions too. If you offer a free consultation, then you’ve got a smart funnel designed specifically to provide aid.

Reach Out On LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and More

Social media is taking up more and more time in the B2B space because it’s how buyers conduct research and where professionals look for support in their positions, to find new research, or to read about the latest best practices.

Target the networks that best fit your customer profile and look for relevant keywords, hashtags, groups, lists, and chats around the topic, industry, and specific customers.

Share Your Personal Knowledge

Don’t limit your prospecting to what you can do under just the company name. Engage your prospects personally in places like LinkedIn’s groups or during a Twitter chat to answer questions and provide support to targets. It creates a connection that makes it much easier to get your foot in the door when it comes to going for the sale.

Share On Your Personal Accounts

Building on our theme of attacking from all angles with all content, you can also share the same top quality content you’ve curated through your personal profile and feeds, plus in those LinkedIn groups you’ve joined.

Make it a mix of company-published materials with articles and infographics from other sources to maximize your chances of being seen as a leader instead of just a company representative.

Convert Content To Inbound Lead Emails

Use all the content you’re spending time gathering and creating in as many ways as possible. One avenue often overlooked is the ability to use content as part of an email campaign that provides information and support for inbound leads.

This way you can avoid jumping right into the sales process and give yourself more time to learn about your leads as they get insights into what your business can do for them. It’s a way for you to more actively participate in the research process that most B2B buyers perform — and it sets you up to have a conversation much sooner in that process than you otherwise would.

Capture Email Addresses With All Lead Tools

Long forms are a giant pain, especially when you want whatever content is on the other side. You need to end that hassle.

This suggestion is a one-two punch because limiting what you capture to just a name and an email address gives you almost all the information you need anyway, but also makes prospects visiting your site more likely to fill out the form and get your downloadable.

Bonus points if you have a CRM that can assist with collecting this information, tagging people who’ve downloaded your content, and creating specific tasks or sending email reminders to help your sales team act on these new leads.

If you’re looking for assistance with this, let me know. We specialize in creating this type of process for B2B brands.

Flesh Out Company Information

Whether through your CRM or some recon work of your own, you can best understand site visitors and potential prospects when you know more about their company. Integrated platforms make it easy to generate this context, but you can also look it up yourself.

For manual work, don’t neglect looking at prospect social accounts on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Track Any Behavior You Can

If your website can track visitor behaviors, make sure to incorporate this with your CRM to determine the best channels to reach out, the right message to deliver, and the perfect time to send it.

Whenever possible, track high-level and granular data from company size and location to individual user visits, page views, and time spent on your site. Pairing this with company and individual data that you’ve already collected builds a more holistic view of the prospect and prevents any calls or emails from being cold.

Build Case Studies

If a prospect knows that you can solve the problems that they face, they’re more likely to engage with your team, warming up your leads.

Case studies are an uncomplicated way to let companies know what you can do, plus similarities between your profiled client and the new lead will make it easier for them to know you’ve got the expertise they need.

Help your potential clients with their research and make their initial decisions that much easier by showcasing your big wins and highlighting how easy it is to work with you.

Ask For Referrals

Consider the following stats:

• 84% of buyers kick off their buying process with a referral.
• 47% of top-performing salespeople ask for referrals consistently versus just 26% of non-top performers.
• You’re 4.2X more likely to get an appointment if you already have a personal connection.

What do all these numbers have in common? It’s easier and faster to reach decision-makers and close the deal if you don’t start as a stranger. Every referral is a valuable foot in the door that makes your job far simpler.

The easiest way to increase your referrals is to ask for them! Every situation and client needs to be assessed individually, but this post can help you figure out how to ask for referrals. Regardless of your industry or product, you should be asking for referrals and asking often.

Follow Up Consistently 

No matter where a lead is in your funnel, follow up after every touch point. Plus, follow up after you’ve made the sale too.

If you keep delivering relevant, useful content and showcase how your company adds value or makes their life easier, you keep increasing the likelihood of a sale and increasing the total customer lifetime value.

One thing to note is that you need properly segmented lists so you’re not hitting existing customers with new prospect language, even if you’re sharing the same content.

Give Your Time Freely

As mentioned previously, I always recommend providing prospects with a free consultation. It allows you to build rapport and discuss the needs of each person, without giving away the store.

Limiting it to about 30 minutes stays respectful of everyone’s time and means you can talk about high-level concerns but not offer granular solutions.

Build trust and credibility, then follow-up with your pitch during the next conversation.

Blend Automation and Humanity

One overarching theme that needs to be present in all this work is that it must be personalized and feel like there’s a real human on the other end of each email, tweet, phone call, and interaction.

Automating the process is ideal, but if rogue emails fly out addressing {First.Name} instead of their actual first name, the jig is up. They know that you’re just after a sale and that you’re not taking time to understand their business or problems.

Automating helpful messaging can make your life a lot easier, but never forget that you still need to do research and make an effort so every lead feels warm.

Conclusion – Goodbye Cold Calling, Hello Automation.

Hopefully, this list has given you some ideas for how to replace the time spent cold calling with more productive activities. If you’d rather not spend that time asking for referrals, writing emails, and connecting on social media, you should delegate these tasks to RevHERO Sales Automation.

Not only does RevHERO sales automation eliminate manual prospecting, scheduling, and follow up, we go one step further: we provide a team of professionals that create compelling sales copy designed to pack your calendar with quality leads.  Schedule a call with us to learn more about RevHERO Sales Automation and how we can help your team give cold calling the finger while reaching prospects, scheduling appointments, and closing deals all on autopilot.