How To Choose Between Cold, Warm, and Social Calling

For tasting epic success, business, especially the SMBs must develop the best communication skills to create a fruitful dialogue with their customers.

Proper communication has always been the key to creating bonds and relationships that last longer. The same rule applies in the world of business where you need to drive revenue by creating a meaningful dialogue with your customers and prospects so that it ends with a successful sale.

Graph Worldwide Calling Trends 2017-18

Train yourselves to be empathetic listeners when you engage with your customers or prospects.

Picture 1. Warm Calling Trend (Worldwide)

Cold calling is becoming less relevant in the digital age where you have (BI) business intelligence software, social media, and other digital resources for approaching prospects with a detailed homework (research).

The best part of using these modern tools is that they provide a 360-degree view of the consumer’s psyche and their purchasing habits.

However, cold calling will not lose its grip on the market and companies will be using it for breaking the ice between them and their prospects. We have compiled some of the best cold calling scripts that businesses and sales reps can use in various situations.

Key differences between cold calling and warm calling:

What is Cold Calling?

The uninvited calls done by sales reps to prospects is the definition that has been given to “Cold Calling” as they are contacted by the reps without any prior contact.

Crucial Cold Calling Stats:

• Around 63% of the salespeople do not enjoy cold calling
• It is ineffective 90.9% of the time
• Less than 2% of cold calls ever turn into a meeting
• Less than 1% of cold calls ever convert into a sale

Cold Calling is NOT a Waste of Time!

Yet after such horrific statistics, 78% of decision-makers revealed that they took an appointment or went to various meetings and events after attending to cold calls.

Source: Statista

Cold calling Creates Seller-First Mentality

When a prospect is reached out by a Credit Card sales rep, the conversation is often about creating the need of having a credit card, which the prospect doesn’t even wants or needs.

Most of the times these calls are made after studying the mass behavior of customers and no consideration is given to the individual traits or buying patterns of prospects.

• The seller is not interested to know if you can solve your problems with their product or service.
• If you fit the required profile, you are a prospective buyer for them.

What is Warm Calling?

As we mentioned earlier, cold calling will take time before it gets annihilated from the outbound sales and marketing scenario. Today, businesses are slowly yet steadily adapting other ways of establishing communication with prospective clients.

Companies using warm calling for establishing contact with their prospects can raise their success rate from 2% to over 30%.

Warm calling is one of those methods, it lets you start a conversation even before you pick up the phone.

• Amazing right? Thanks to today’s digital era there are numerous ways of establishing contact with your prospects and providing a hint about your product.
• However brief your first conversation is, you can create a positive image in your prospects mind regarding your business. And this helps in developing trust in your product and service too.
• Prospects are more likely to pay attention to your pitch with warm calling.

84% of B2B decision-makers begin their buying process with referrals

Few tips for warm calling:

• During your scheduled meetings, ask for one new contact as a referral and be direct in asking for it.
• Practice your pitch so that when the time comes you can deliver it without any hesitation.
• In case you are not able to establish contact, leave a voicemail. While doing so remember to mention the mutual contact’s name.
• Use social media for reaching out to your prospects.
• Promote your content, explaining your products problem-solving capacity

75% of B2B buyers use social media in their decision-making process

What is Social Calling?

While doing the social calling, sales reps use social media tools like LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook for branding your business and its products.

Social media platforms are the new age brand driving methods that provide the optimum result any business wants, and your prospective clients are out there on some social media tool, researching about a product or service that can help them solve their problem.

Verdict

The crucial difference between warm and cold calling: warm calling is done to initiate further contact with prospects who show interest in your product and services.

Companies that embrace warm calling along with intuitive inbound marketing strategy successfully build deeper and long-lasting relationships with their customer.

Reasons for Cold Calling should be avoided

• Today the decision-makers follow a busy schedule and don’t like to be interrupted
• The increasing mobile working environment pushes people to work away from desks
• The Internet is the best place for doing research and prospects utilize this tool to the maximum
• For any person, receiving unwanted calls is always annoying
• Because it is a time-consuming process, cold calling uses the resources to the maximum but fails to deliver the expected ROI

Stats from LinkedIn

Prospective customers avoid having conversations with sales reps who have zero knowledge about their problem, their personality, and their traits.

For making a deeper connection with the prospects, sales reps must show sincere interest in the problem that the prospect is facing. This comes after in-depth research of their personality.

Inbound marketing provides you with the tools that you need to conquer the market space for the survival of your business and when you bring warm calling into the mix, well you have your chance of adding the cherry on top of the cake.