Just curious, is cold calling really working for you?
Obviously! If it ain’t working, then how are you getting meetings that close?
Hmm, but if look closely you would find an effort to result mismatch.
If as an inside sales professional, you think there is big engagement gap in your profession, then you have stumbled upon the biggest challenge in inside sales now.
Inside sales professionals like you put so much energy into making calls, but that doesn’t work 80 percent of the time. You dodge the watchful eyes of the gatekeeper then get to voicemail and from here things get rather slow. It’s almost like leaving Santa a voicemail and expecting him to call back.
Depending on the industry a cold caller ekes out N number of tele-prospecting calls and out of that only countable ones turn out as meetings. But, the positive interactions you get, usually fall into 3 categories:
- Neutral
- Interested but no requirement now
- Interested
The biggest problem of cold calling is not knowing the answer to the question, ‘what should you do after a neutral or not interested now response comes?’ Though as a cold caller you may be doing follow ups using methods like:
- Call your prospect regularly ( Once a month or in two months ); and
- Send follow up emails
Here, lot of stress is put on cold prospecting done through emails or phone calls, which by the way is super inefficient. Harvard Business Review says that 90.9 percentage of all cold calls fail to create an impact. On an average, an inside sales cold caller takes 6 attempts to get a quality interactions because industry connect rates are dropping year-on-year between 5-10%.
Hence, the million dollar question you should be asking is, tell me a smarter way to do follow-ups, if there is one.
So we set out to find the answer, by conducting a half yearly – ‘Hurdles to Tech Sales Survey 2015’ on 500 inside sales professional and sales leaders responsible for IT/Software solution selling. We asked them before and after Twitter prospecting, how much of change in mid-year meeting numbers do you see. The answers were surprising, to say the least.
• Customer engagement and recall of sales rep and his company increased by about 60%
• 30% increase in meaningful interaction with follow prospects
• 40% Increase in meeting output which translates to 15-16 meetings to a Sales rep from 8-12 meetings per month
This spike in interactions and meetings is due to the special powers of Twitter, elaborated further. More than 45 percent of Twitter users who fit your perfect point of contact in the software/IT or any industry respond within 1 hour, to questions, favorites, retweets or replies on Twitter. Because timely Twitter responses are essential to generate user appreciation, recommendation and social media word of mouth.
If you give it a thought, it will be clear that this is something more than prospecting. Twitter could make your customer/prospects remember you and your company when an opportunity comes.
Given that, your email campaigns and cold calling regularly generate below 25 open rates. I am sure that you’ll get much more attention with “@” mentions given that, about 40 percent of your prospects are active on Twitter. Using Twitter you can interact, listen and engage with your hot prospects, who could give you an intro meeting, without being obnoxious! By which I mean without calling them continuously when they are busy; without poking them on social media or flooding their inbox with sales pitches.
The game isn’t really about just grabbing the attention, it’s all about making you and your company visible by continuous non-intrusive efforts.
1 hour a day, 3 Twitter hack for better prospecting :
HACK # 1
Connect:
- Connect with point of contacts with whom you had a positive or neutral interactions.
- Connect with them instantly or within an hour after the call, that’s when your prospect can easily recall.
- Make prospect lists on Twitter based on various criteria such as location, designation, contact priority, company, and industry etc.
Faithfully dedicating an hour a day to prospecting on Twitter can change your odds of getting more closures.
Golden Rule # 1
Follow, Mention, Reply, Re-tweets are virtual applauds that people love and they like to connect with those people who regularly appreciate, recognize and congratulate them on social media.
So, do it!
HACK# 2
Listen:
Great sales people listen more. Active listening can make you aware of:
- Events, announcements and other important milestones in your client’s life. Do connect to your point of contact and congratulate them for their accomplishments.
- Use hashtags popular in your industry and among your point of contacts to listen to latest trends.
- Polish your prospecting using knowledge on patterns, habits, likes, dislikes of your point of contact.
Time magazine say, Twitter is one of best news aggregator on the Internet. Using this power tool you can watch, follow and respond to announcements like; closure of a funding round, product launch or achievement of some other milestone.
Now I suppose, you’re starting to figure out how an inside sales professional could make more returns on time invested at work, using Twitter.
HACK# 3
Engage more fruitfully:
- Connect with them, don’t just reply, mention or retweet. Be curious, discreetly ask relevant question about challenges your point of contact face.
- Pick up the phone and strike a conversation. Congratulate them on some milestone they’ve achieved or just wish them on their birthday.
Build Trust
Frequently interact with your right point of contact. Be proactive, sincere, listen and when your prospects open up be honest. Never say yes, we can, to things that you can’t deliver.
Do look for challenges that you can solve for them. Find pain-points of your prospects, through conversations on the phone.
Golden Rule # 2
Invariably, Folks Buy Folks First!
Never ever hard sell, orient yourself, get to know people, help people and build trust, finally when an opportunity comes, you are more likely to close people you are in contact with often.
Now if you ask me; “Why should I do all that, I already have my basket full?”
If that thought crosses your mind I wouldn’t blame you at all, you have big targets and only little time to achieve it. If a junior inside sales associate could bring 8-12 good meetings, then he is performing based on industry benchmark, these benchmarks could vary based on the industry or company.
You could increase your brand recall by connecting with people whom you have already spoken to using Twitter. If you are remembered by your point of contact, there is a 50 percent more chance that you could close them.
Obviously, you now know it’s beneficial, but should you sweat on it. Can’t the digital marketer do it for you?
Sure, the digital marketer doesn’t usually talk on the phone to a lead, so if you have done your research right you’ll find it easy to prospects to customers.
Now imagine, won’t it be wonderful if you are able to convince and convert 10 to 15 percent of positive responders with a concentrated effort of 60 minutes or less a day.
This is sustained brand building and lead nurturing exercise that you should start doing from today. I bet you will get to know the difference it brings to your midyear meetings.
We are sure this article would spark, your Twitter prospecting experiments. We surely would be follow-up on to Twitter hacks in our blog. And you could always put your opinions, experiences and question to us on our Twitter handle ‘@BusinessMojos’.
