Forget Cold Calling!

Opening a dialogue with a potential customer is the most crucial – and challenging – step in selling, thanks to today’s aggressive sales climate. So forget cold calling. Today, it’s all about picking your battles and focusing on smart prospecting to generate more leads and close more deals.

Stay Informed

Stay on top of your prospects’ latest news, personnel changes, acquisition information, etc., in order to find that perfect trigger moment to pick up the phone. Having that vital insight allows you to strike up an initial sales conversation and, when you’re familiar with your prospect’s history and industry, be better equipped to provide a solid sales recommendation.

Embrace Social Media

There’s a whole world of insightful conversation happening outside of networking events and coffee shops. Many conversations today take place on social-media sites, including Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+. Following the right set of influential people across social media yields opportunities to have door-opening conversations about industry trends, for instance. Tracking these developments also provides a unique understanding about a prospect’s business and industry as a whole, and then you can identify pain points that your product or tool will help your prospect solve.

Go beyond Google Alerts

Sure, Google Alerts are an adequate way to monitor news, but the payoff stops there. A multitude of more useful tools are available that provide relevant, tailored updates to help sales professionals track company news and Websites. Use an online tool or app to stay informed about the latest news regarding your customers and prospects to avoid spending precious time searching through an avalanche of online data. Find a smart sales tool that streamlines the mining process, and use it to uncover sales-conversation starters and achieve a first-mover’s advantage.

Know When and Why to Call

According to blogger Mark Lindwall in his post “To Win Against Increasing Competition, Equip Your Salespeople with a Deeper Understanding of Your Buyers,” the salesperson who works with a prospect on creating and delivering a vision has a 74 percent chance of closing the deal. The challenge is knowing when and why to call. Company-strategy shifts, new-product announcements, hiring, firing, expansion, etc., are among the trigger events that can provide compelling reasons to begin a sales conversation.

Tailor Your Pitch

Tailor your pitch to address a prospect’s emerging needs; moreover, talk to prospects before they even realize they have a need. Each company is unique, and tailoring your pitch to address specific pain points requires careful research prior to delivery. Understanding prospects’ business goals and unearthing immediate needs will get you ahead of the request for information (RFI) – and get you noticed.

Staying informed with a sales tool will help you identify the right reason and timing to contact a prospect and better tailor your outreach to a prospects’ particular needs. Maintaining a level of familiarity with your prospects will make you more effective at opening sales conversations and, ultimately, help you close more deals. r