Cold Calling: 4 golden rules for a cold calling campaign that generates results

Inbound marketing is running out of steam, and HubSpot, which claims to be the originator of the approach, says so. 

This is undoubtedly why we're seeing a resurgence in direct marketing, whether through cold emailing or cold calling campaigns.

Contrary to popular belief, 57% of B2B buyers prefer this channel for initial contact.

In this very practical article, we give you 4 golden rules for a successful cold calling campaign and generating your first results.

 

#1 Overcoming the fear of rejection is half the battle

The stumbling block with a Cold Calling campaign is above all psychological. People are afraid of rejection, for obvious reasons. 

The champions of telephone prospecting know how to play down the "no" and bounce back.

It's a possible outcome of the call, just as defeat is a possible outcome of a soccer match. They know that a Cold Calling campaign is also a matter of probability.
A rejection is one step closer to conversion. It's mathematical. 

The first battle in telephone prospecting is mental.

Don't hesitate to share the following statistics with your sales force. Benchmarks are decisive in prospecting, as they reassure and motivate in times of doubt or discouragement:  

• • 78% of Cold Calling conversions require between 6 and 12 contacts (calls, e-mails, social network messages...). 

• • Only 2% of sales are completed after the 1st call... while 80% are completed after the^5th contact .

• • 44% of sales reps give up after the first "no". Insisting (reasonably) on the first rejection is already better than half of sales reps.

 

#2 We try to "cool down" the cold call

The death of Cold Calling has often been prophesied.

In reality, only a certain form of cold calling is tending to disappear: the one where you contact a prospect blindly, without taking the time to work on the context of the call. 

The idea, then, is to move from a somewhat "out of the blue " approach to calling, considered unjustified and intrusive, to a "lukewarm" approach.

You have two possible approaches for warming up the exchange of this cold calling: 

• Call prospects who have already been exposed to your brand, even very slightly. We're not necessarily talking about a lead who has filled out a contact form. It could simply be a prospect who has accepted an invitation on LinkedIn or interacted with a company (or employee) post.

• Calling prospects who have had no prior interaction with the company, but taking the time to work out the context beforehand. In B2B, this is known as Sales Intelligence. We compile everything there is to know about the target so we can approach them in a personalized way: content recently "liked" or posted by the contact, company and market news, recent change of post, participation in an event, and so on.

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According to this study by Duct Tape Marketing, Cold Calling "warmed up" with elements of LeadGen or, at the very least, Sales Intelligence, has a conversion rate 20 times higher than the classic cold call.

 

#3 Handling objections: AI can help!

In the end, the salesperson's job is to identify the customer's pain points and convince them that the product he or she is proposing is in line with their challenges.

As anthropologists say, man is a creature of habit. They instinctively resist change. Even if you have the best product on the market and promote it with a certain talent, your prospect is bound to have objections.

Managing these objections depends on the alchemy and perfect balance between three decisive elements: 

• • Upstream work and preparation, from mastery of the product (and its use cases) to the specifics of the prospect's business sector 

• • Experience accumulated over dozens, even hundreds of appointments

• • A certain sense of repartee, a certain "bonhomie" and emotional intelligence.

AI is unlikely to be able to help the sales force with the last 2 points: experience and know-how are skills that are acquired over time.
The first point requires our full attention. A well-known quote warns us: "To forget to prepare isto prepare to be forgotten.

To deal with potential objections, sales reps can rely on generative Artificial Intelligence (genAI) chatbots.

In concrete terms, the sales rep can set up a tool like ChatGPT or Claude AI to ask him or her to embody a difficult prospect. The prompt should include as much information as possible about the target and its industry, but also about your product and its use cases. 

With a well thought-out brief, a lot of Test & Learn and a little creativity, the chatbot will ask you very pertinent questions and generate interesting objections that will challenge the pitch.

Depending on the type of sales team you have (age, use of new technologies, possible time to allocate to this task...), this work can also be done upstream by your marketing team, or in a "pitch" workshop, shared by both teams.

The results obtained can also be used for cold emailing campaigns.

 

#4 Cold calling campaign: Data best practices to avoid going off track

Before mobilizing your teams for a large-scale Cold Calling campaign, you first need to assess the quality of your database. 

Select a representative sample of your database and try to reach the contacts at different times of the day and over several days. The reachability rate will tell you something about the quality of the database... and help you decide whether the campaign is worth launching at this stage. 

You can also take a few names at random from your sample and search for them on LinkedIn. Compare their profile information with that in your database. If the discrepancies are significant, you'll probably need to clean up, update and/or enrich the database before going any further.

Don't forget :

• in BtoB, 20 to 25% of your databases are inaccurate every year just because of turnover
• in BtoC, 10% move every year... and the percentage triples if your target is young people.

Take this opportunity to assess the number of duplicates in the list, to avoid contacting the same person more than once.