Cold Calling Is An Effective Marketing Technique

There are many options you can apply to obtain more customers, however, if you desire to shorten your sales cycle, get in front of more qualified quality prospects and have more control over your sales growth, make sure you include telephone prospecting as one of the tools to help you increase sales.  According to the Expertise Marketing Research Report, out of 30 possible marketing tactics used to increase sales for service firms, cold calling rose to the top as the most effective tactic.

Prospecting via the telephone enables you to directly contact the decision maker to determine if they are the best prospect for you and if so, you can quickly move to the next step, the opportunity to meet. This eliminates unnecessary steps that may stand in the way of you getting your foot in the door to introduce your product/service which ultimately shortens your sales cycle.

The true power with each call that is made is your ability to choose who you desire to do business with.  Really think about that statement.  We all have "A", "B" and "C" prospects.  With most sales and marketing strategies, we don't have any control over who will respond to our marketing message.  When you prospect via the telephone, you decide who you would like to target and ultimately who you would like to do business with.  Your lead list should consist of "A" prospects, which are prospects that are the cream of the crop.  You will also come across some B and C prospects because no lead list is perfect, however, this is the beauty of prospecting, you are filling your sales funnel with a variety of options and you determine how much of a mixture those options will be by having a clear definition of what a quality prospect means to you. Knowing your definition of a quality prospect enables you to prepare a good quality lead list with the bulk of your contacts being A prospects and a few B and C prospects sprinkled into your target market. 

Lastly, telephone prospecting allows you to have more control over your sales growth. Each time you pick up the phone to make a cold call, you are being pro-active and going after the business as opposed to waiting for the business to come to you.  The more contacts that you connect with, the more sales you will make, therefore, you are able to grow your business as much or as little as you desire and at the pace that you desire. Prospecting via the telephone requires skills, coaching, tweaking, management support, persistence and consistency but if it is done correctly, it can be a great path to dramatic business growth.