10 Simple Tips on How to Make Cold Calling Far Less Stressful

Do people even take cold calls anymore? The answer might surprise you…

Not only do sales prospects still answer cold calls regularly, but 49% of buyers prefer it as an initial means of contact*—increasing to 50% for professional service buyers and 54% for technology buyers. 

It seems that in an age where technology is taking over more aspects of our daily lives, nothing beats human connection. But when you’re reaching out on behalf of your organization, cold calling can be more than a little intimidating.

Fortunately, improving call performance is easier than you might think. By following current best practices and equipping your sales teams with the right tools, you can boost lead generation and increase sales conversions without much extra effort.

Ready to reinvent your approach to cold calling? In this article, you’ll discover 10 crucial tips to transform your strategy and make the most of software designed to streamline the sales process.

Key takeaways:

• Cold calling isn’t dead. It might be 2024, but that doesn’t mean cold calling can’t add value to your sales strategy — with the right tools and support.
  
• Don’t give up. Getting through to the right prospect at the right time might take longer than you think, but the results will be worth the wait. Persistence is key.
  
• Invest in automation. CRM software integrations, AI-powered analytics, and advanced automation can help you optimize cold calling within your organization to improve ROI.

*Zippia, 2023

Why Cold Calling is Still Worthwhile in 2024

If the thought of picking up the phone and cold calling a customer fills you with dread, you’re not alone. 

A lot of salespeople say cold calling is the thing they dislike most about their job. Still, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it—quite the contrary.

On average, cold calling has a success rate of about 2%. That might not sound like much, but let’s look at the stats…

Data shows that effective sales prospecting calls take about 14.3 minutes on average. So, let’s say one call center operative could comfortably make 20 calls a day. That’s around 100 calls every week. With a 2% conversion rate, this equates to two potential customers per agent in the same timeframe. Not bad, right?

When you consider that there are simple steps you can take to increase this success rate, it’s not hard to see why so many sales leaders still favor this seemingly “old-fashioned” approach to prospect outreach.

However, not all cold calls are created equal. To get the best results and ensure you’re not wasting precious time and resources, you must develop your sales team’s cold-calling skills and provide them with the tools they need to succeed.

10 Cold Calling Tips to Boost Sales and Customer Confidence

Want to up your organization’s cold-calling game and improve call center performance?

We’ve outlined 10 simple tips that’ll show you how to turn this old-school method into a modern sales solution. This way, you can exceed targets and optimize different functions within your team.

1. Carry Out Pre-Call Research

Ever heard the phrase “failure to prepare is preparation to fail”? Cold calling is no exception.

You need to know your prospects to offer them a solution they’ll be interested in and eligible for. So, before starting phone calls, you must understand two things:

1. Why the prospect needs the product or service you’re offering.
2. What will motivate the prospect to invest in your solution.

The best way to find out this information? Delve into your customer relationship management (CRM) systems to gather prospect data like job titles, industries, pain points, and their stage in the customer engagement cycle. 

You can also use sales intelligence tools by LinkedIn such as LinkedIn Premium or LinkedIn Sales Navigator. These tools let you research your prospect’s professional background and activity before picking up the phone—a tactic 74% of B2B salespeople already use.

By doing this, you can personalize call scripts and tailor your offering to potential customers, increasing your chances of converting leads.

2. Draft an Intro, Not a Conversation

Calls should be a dialogue, not a monologue. If you don’t give your clients enough time to talk and ask questions, they’ll probably hang up.

The best way to get this right is to craft a concise and personal opener that immediately grabs the prospect’s attention. This introduction should help you establish that you understand the recipient’s needs and how you’re able to meet them—setting the tone for a productive conversation. 

According to Zippia, 42% of cold call customers value active listening the most. So, while it’s important to ensure you’re saying all the right things, the rest of your cold calling script should feel more like a checklist, leaving room for salespeople to respond to prospects more naturally.

To set your agents up to make successful cold calls, create a script that provides:

• A clear list of steps to take to keep the call on track
• Detailed answers to frequently asked questions
• Advice for facing sales objections and dealing with angry customers

If you want to take your cold-calling performance to the next level, you can introduce software such as CloudTalk’s AI-powered Talk/Listen Ratio feature to understand call dynamics better. 

This solution reveals exactly how much each participant spoke during a call and ensures you’re not missing important insights, helping you refine scripts and shorten call handling times.

3. Arm Yourself with Customer Success Stories

When it comes to sales, social proof examples can speak volumes. 

Collecting a range of case studies demonstrating what your solution has helped other customers achieve will create a bank of real-world examples to lean on. So, when your prospect asks how your offering can address their specific pain points, you’ll have the proof to show them. 

These testimonials can also come in handy if you’re confronting common objections or concerns. By showing that other businesses have had similar reservations and outlining how your solutions helped overcome them to achieve success, you can relate to prospects directly and build that crucial emotion—trust. 

The result? Faster decision-making, more credibility, and better chances of converting prospects into buyers.

4. Call at a Good Time

Before cold calling key decision-makers, put yourself in their shoes (and dive into your CRM data) to determine the best time to reach them.

If you want to get through to your lead the first time, Wednesdays and Thursdays are your best bet. Mondays and Fridays are a no-go, as most people are either setting up for the week ahead or winding down for the weekend, meaning they’re less likely to want to chat.

Typically, between 4 PM and 6 PM is the most promising window of opportunity, allowing salespeople to catch leads as they round things off for the day. 

Of course, the most effective slots for contact and prospect qualification will vary depending on your location and industry. The best way to work out the right moment to call is by analyzing your call history to determine when customers are more inclined to answer—something CloudTalk Analytics can help you with. 

5. Don’t Lead With a Sales Pitch

This is a mistake lots of sales reps make. It might seem counterintuitive not to begin cold sales calls by outlining your product or service, but this can be an instant turn-off for your prospect.

Ideally, you shouldn’t introduce your solution until the end of the call, after you’ve proven to your potential buyer why it’s worth knowing about. 

Instead of diving straight into all the features and benefits of your product straight away, you need to know how to relate them to your prospect’s specific pain points. You might have an idea of what these are based on your pre-call research, but it doesn’t hurt to hear it from them, too!

To get your client to stay on the line for as long as possible, ensure your sales teams always:

• Take the time to ask the prospect about their challenges
• Tailor the offer to address their requirements 
• Finish the cold call with a personalized sales pitch

Pro tip: Create and use customizable Call Center Scripts tailored to different prospect segments with CloudTalk. This ensures your messaging is relevant and resonates with the specific needs and interests of each prospect.

6. Only Reach Out to Qualified Prospects

Cold calling is most effective when used to target qualified prospects: The people who are ready and willing to invest to solve a problem.

Fortunately, there are plenty of ways your salespeople can find this out before picking up the phone to minimize wasted time…

• Define your ideal customer. Building a profile for professionals who share characteristics like industry, company size, budget, location, or job title can help you target people who are predisposed to needing what you’re offering.

• Leverage CRM data. Use your existing CRM data to analyze previous leads and success stories and identify what they have in common. Then, you use this information as a benchmark to qualify new prospects.

• Ask qualifying questions. Create lead capture forms for your website and marketing assets, asking relevant questions to gain insights into prospects’ challenges, requirements, and stages in the customer journey.

• Examine recent activity. Has the prospect’s company just gone through a merger? Are they likely to be busier at particular times of year? Have they engaged with your website or email content recently? These factors can influence how receptive they’ll be to a cold call.
  
• Capitalize on relationships. Look for individuals who share mutual connections with your agents or have previously engaged with your organization. These prospects are often easier to convert thanks to their familiarity with your business.

Pro tip: CloudTalk integrates with popular CRM systems, so you can access up-to-date prospect information. This helps maintain a clean database and ensures that you’re reaching out to qualified leads with accurate, current information.

7. Practice, Practice, Practice!

Having a positive, proactive mindset is crucial for cold calling. Staying calm is the key to sounding confident and hitting the right tone for every prospect. 

According to Professor Albert Mehrabian’s 7-38-55 rule, 38% of meaning is communicated through tone of voice, with only 7% attributed to spoken words. It’s not what you say—it’s how you say it!

With that in mind, it’s vital to ensure all your call center agents and sales people speak clearly on the phone and that call quality is consistently high. Plus, as we mentioned in tip two, it’s also crucial to make sure you’re being an active listener and asking lots of open-ended questions. Practice makes perfect!

Wondering how you can assess these key call center metrics? Look for software with features like Call Recording and Real-Time Dashboards to help your sales team review their call performance and identify areas for improvement — much like Leadspicker did using CloudTalk Analytics.

8. Document & Reflect on Every Call

Not getting the results you’d hoped for from cold calling? Check whether you have a system for recording and reviewing your progress.

By encouraging your team to document the details of their conversations while they’re still fresh in their minds, you can create a wealth of prospect data to refer back to. 

This process is crucial for monitoring call center performance and helping your salespeople:

• Enhance cold calling strategies with data-driven insights from previous calls
• Qualify leads to ensure they’re targeting the right professionals
• Build customer relationships by providing a bank of detailed call notes
• Provide training material for new and existing team members
• Stay organized with documented records of ongoing progress and next steps
• Track performance by highlighting patterns and areas for improvement
• Stay compliant with record-keeping laws within regulated industries

CloudTalk’s AI-powered capabilities can support these functions within your organization. With features like Single Sign-On (SSO), Call Monitoring, and Agent Reporting, you can track everything happening in your team while maintaining the security of your telephony systems.

9. Have a Follow-Up Plan

Not every cold call will end in a sale. However, every contact is an opportunity to start a conversation and build a relationship that might one day lead to something more.

Studies show that it takes eight cold call attempts on average for sales reps to reach their prospect. So, it’s crucial to never give up after the first try. 

If you’re struggling to get through, leave a voicemail. Keep it short and sweet (under 30 seconds should do the trick) and aim to capture the prospect’s curiosity rather than going for the sale. 

Then, make sure you have a follow-up framework built on accurate CRM and sales data that makes it easy for your operatives to check in at strategic intervals. This plan should include a mixture of email, phone, and social media outreach to give your salespeople the best chance of success. More often than not, it’s a matter of being in the right place at the right time, so being (politely) persistent is key!

However, this can be easier said than done when you’re managing hundreds or even thousands of sales calls every week. That’s where intelligent call center software like CloudTalk’s Voicemail tool comes in. With functionalities like Email Forwarding, Transcription, and Custom Routing, you can ensure your agents never miss a customer communication again.

Here’s a sequence you can use to reach customers across key touchpoints over time:

10. Automate Your Sales Process

If you’re still manually updating your cold calling databases, you’re creating a lot of extra work for your sales teams and wasting time that could be better spent on the phone with leads. 

Thanks to modern telecommunications technology, you can automate these processes with ease—boosting productivity and performance across your call center or sales department with access to a range of analytics tools.

Instead of your agents spending hours every week dealing with the admin that makes cold calling a nightmare for so many salespeople, AI-powered analytics can enable you to automatically:

• Track prospect moods with Sentiment Analysis
• Qualify leads
• Route calls to the appropriate agents

Take CloudTalk AI as an example. This innovative tool seamlessly integrates with a variety of industry-leading CRMs, ecommerce platforms, and helpdesk tools, including Salesforce, Freshdesk, and Help Scout. 
Boasting a range of advanced features, CloudTalk’s platform can help take the frustration out of cold calling and make the process much less daunting for your operatives, providing you with the tools to create a winning communications strategy.

Supercharge Cold Calling with Automation

Cold calling is still alive and kicking in 2024. Still, it remains an uphill battle for many sales teams and call center agents around the world, with dropped calls, inefficient systems, and a lack of performance insights leading to limited success. 

It doesn’t need to be this way. Many managers aren’t taking advantage of the solutions available to streamline and simplify cold calling for operatives, but we’re here to change that.

Better communication starts with call center automation. Using an AI-powered tool like CloudTalk, mundane tasks like data entry and call recording can be taken care of in just a few clicks, freeing up agents to focus on what matters most: Connecting with prospects.