Tag Archive for: Cold Calling Techniques

Measuring the productivity of your sales team should be a priority in any business. Today’s sales process can be lengthy and inefficient. Traditional sales reps frequently take multiple steps just to enter a contact into a sequence.

The unfortunate side effect of having sales reps perform mundane tasks on a regular basis is that it requires a significant amount of mental energy, leaving them feeling not only unmotivated and unproductive but also undervalued due to the task’s menial nature.

The following are some of the time-consuming and tedious tasks that sales representatives must complete:

• Switching between different tools and having multiple tools open at the same time
• Dealing with duplicate, incorrect, or missing data in sales engagement platforms and CRM
• Scheduling appointments with clients
• Tracking and updating sales opportunities and pipelines

What is the end result of all this hard work? Morale is low, productivity is low, and turnover is high. Sales leaders must concentrate on defining revenue-generating activities and establishing processes that allow reps to spend more time performing those tasks.

High-value versus low-value activities

Sales teams are constantly battling to make their company’s sales processes as simple as possible while also allowing reps to spend time on the right activities.

Low-value activities are non-revenue-generating sales activities; high-value activities are revenue-generating sales activities.

Sales reps can focus on tasks that should never be automated, such as personalised cold emails, by automating tasks that do not require mental effort, such as data entry. Identifying high and low-value activities enables sales leaders to decide which tools to include in their stack and how to set up processes.

What high-value activities should a sales team prioritise?

Prospecting efforts should be focused on one goal: reducing the number of actions and time spent per account while maintaining the quality of outreach. Having a unified sales technology stack with enriched data is the most efficient way to achieve this goal. With a comprehensive inside sales software, reps can:

• Find, qualify, and contact prospects of interest
• Identify which contacts and accounts to prioritise
• Reduce time spent on data entry and duplicate entry
• Streamline appointment setting
• Sales leaders can structure their sales process so that reps are spending the majority of their time on high-value activities

High-value activities determine whether a sales team generates revenue or not. Reps who spend their time manually creating records or prospecting without conducting research are doing their jobs incorrectly. The following are some examples of high-value activities and how a sales team should spend their time.

Prospect research

When conducting research, sales reps should collect at least five bullet points on each prospect. Each bullet point can be a reason to reach out. This exercise will result in five distinct personalised cold calls/emails for this single prospect.

Social media platforms such as LinkedIn are a great place to start. They offer a glimpse into the prospect’s professional experience and background. This insight helps sales reps make a more personal connection with prospects.

Writing personalised and relevant emails

Searching LinkedIn and other social media sites for triggers on a prospect is a good way to spend your time. Any content prospects have created, shared, or posted about their own lives and accomplishments can be used to personalise your sales email templates.

This attention to detail shows that the sales rep sees the prospect as more than just an email address or an opportunity to hit quota, but as a unique individual whose needs really matter to the sales rep.

Improving cold calling techniques

Sales representatives should never pitch or push for a meeting right away. Taking the time to engage in a genuine conversation and focus on relationship building adds value to prospects by demonstrating genuine interest.

To improve cold calling techniques, sales reps should:

• Ask the right questions
• Listen to prospects
• Empathise with their challenges
• Build trust through empathy
• Focus on solving customer problems

Engaging with prospects on social media

Taking the time to engage with prospects on LinkedIn (either by sharing content or by commenting on their own) allows prospects to become acquainted with a sales rep’s name and, eventually, come to think of them as a friend. Maintaining active contact with prospects on social media channels helps to establish a relationship and trust.

Over to you

In today’s remote and digital world, it is more important than ever for sales representatives to focus on building relationships with customers rather than waste time on manual data entry and spreadsheets.

Sales teams should concentrate on activities that generate revenue instead of focusing on non-revenue-generating activities. By incorporating automation, sales leaders can structure their sales process so that reps are spending the majority of their time on high-value activities.

Sales leaders should empower reps to spend more time on high-value activities by including the right sales technologies in their stack.

How do you go about automating time-consuming tasks that divert salespeople from revenue-generating activities?