Monday, May 21, 2012

Cold Calling Doesn't Have To Be So Tough

Cold calling and cold emailing can be a truly daunting task.  I personally hate whenever I have to make a call cold.  The person on the other line will most likely be very impatient and not very receptive to you.  The success rate of cold calls is historically very low, and for good reason.  However, there are ways that can make cold calling go a lot better for you.  You can arm yourself with a few tools that can make cold calling not so bad.  These tools are called sales intelligence tools.

Sales intelligence tools are relatively new and they can help provide you with a lot of information about your prospect before you ever make a call or email.  You would have to agree that you would be much more receptive to a cold call or cold email if the person making the call or sending the email has clearly put a lot of time doing research about you.  With sales intelligence tools, you can do this research and show your prospect that you have spent the time learning about his/her situation and you know what is best for him/her.

So what are these sales intelligence tools?  Well, they are companies such as Jigsaw and iProfile, amongst others.  With these tools, you can get very detailed HR information, such as org charts, responsibilities, and contact information.  You can also learn a lot about the company and the various departments within the companies as well.  You can learn, for example, what the IT department spent last year with its budget and what new initiatives it has on its plate going forward.  With this information, you can tailor your sales approach a lot better and be a lot more successful when making your pitch.

I would highly recommend using the tools from one of these companies if possible.  Jigsaw (http://jigsaw.com) is a more general website and focused mostly on HR information.  It can show you the  titles and contact information of a lot of people within a company.  The major issue with Jigsaw is the data is user-driven, so it is not always accurate.  It is a really good starting point, however.  iProfile (http://iprofile.net) is IT-specific, but it contains org charts, contact information, information on budgets and spending initiatives, etc.  It is a really great tool if you are in IT sales or marketing.  You can learn more by going to their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/iprofileLLC.

Armed with more intelligence about your sales prospects, you can convert a lot more leads to sales.  It simply makes your job much easier.











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