Telemarketing Software Featured Article

The concept of the cold call is not one lost on the typical sales professional. My first sales gig out of college required new account reps to spend a day cold calling in the field – or at least that’s what one of my co-workers suggested. The goal was to do 50 in a day – if you could survive that, you could survive the job. The practice had been discontinued the year before, but I wasn’t going to be the only one in the office to escape the task. I was going to prove my worth.

Several hours and sore feet later and I was much wiser as a sales rep. I also understood why the 50 cold calls in a day was no longer on the to-do list for the newbies – it wasn’t the most productive day. I was too set on hitting my target to really pay attention to the type of companies I was calling on or the type of interactions I was having. Unfortunately, it was also too many years ago to remember whether or not any of those calls turned into a sale.

Telemarketing software solution provider, VanillaSoft recently posted a blog on the topic of cold calling, something they refer to as an important sales tool with a bad name. The idea, of course, is that you’re going into a conversation cold. There is no relationship and there’s no reason why the individual should listen to you – it’s your job to convince them otherwise and hopefully start a relationship that will eventually lead to closed sale. One strategy the telemarketing software provider calls dumb – sticking newbies on the phone. Sounds like they wouldn’t have approved of my adventure years ago, either.

Putting the brand new person in charge of making those first connections is a significant risk. They are supposed to identify those potential leads where a relationship may not only be established, but turn into something profitable. Without the right tools and experience, however, there are way too many opportunities lost simply because the individual was too new to the job. Plus, calls may be made haphazardly (much like my stops were), the Do Not Call list may be ignored, promises to follow-up may never be fulfilled and so on.

While there is the potential to make some sales, the bigger problem is that your brand could be hurt in the process. If the goal is the long-term relationship that turns into profits down the road, the first impression is key. Too often, the newbie is too green to make the right impression and the potential is lost.

To avoid these challenges, the telemarketing software provider suggests that you elevate your cold calling to a professional level, invest in your call center agents, create a game plan, invest in telemarketing tools and put automation in place to support calling activities. With the right approach, cold calling can be very effective. The key is to ensure it’s not left to the novice so as to leverage every opportunity.