Many businesses and professionals doubt whether cold calling still works or not. The reason for this doubt comes from the massive improvement of digital marketing and social selling. Individual targeting is more accurate today which is also the main USP of cold calling.
However, cold calling is still one of the most effective channels to obtain clients. Especially for high value and high volume business, decision makers still find calling more useful for a meaningful evaluation.
This blog answers one of the critical questions every business has in their mind: “ does cold calling still work to find new clients?”
Why Cold Calling is Not Finished, Rather It Has Evolved?
With the rise of precise digital marketing and social media promotion, many start to believe cold calling service is becoming outdated. In reality, organizations will always need cold calling for one key reason; it’s ability to make direct contact with proper timing.
How Today’s Smart Cold Calling Brings More Result?
The evolved cold calling we are talking about is smart. It not just uses industry data but utilizes triggering points and psychology behind purchase of every individual. In a recent reddit discussion of user r/agency, Mr. Tobes shares his experience. He explains how his business spent $20k in cold calling leads and over the years received around $1 million worth of orders! Fascinating right?
He also explains that cold calling has to be smart. 80 % of Americans don’t answer calls from unknown numbers. So you have to be proactive. You need to warm up leads before you start dialing. To do so, you can use emails or LinkedIn messages.
Personal Touch & Multichannel Approach Brings Better Results
LinkedIn gives you key insights of decision makers from their personal life to their professional choices. If you can hit that, the chances of conversion increases.
Cold calling works well when you use it as the center of a multichannel approach. For example, you warm up a lead with content. Then enter it into the top of the funnel (TOFU) through referrals or emails. Then approaching via calls gets better results.
This smart cold calling ensures better conversion and sufficient ROI. So it’s pretty clear that Cold calling isn’t finished, it has evolved.
Direct Communication is Needed in Sensitive Business Environments
In most cases, B2B has a sensitive operational environment. If your ideal customer profile (ICP) is time sensitive like insurance services, no communication method provides a better outcome than calling.
For example, cold calling helps generate high-intent commercial insurance leads. It utilizes policy renewal windows to make outreach where chances of conversion are high.
Besides this, in this period decision makers seek all kinds of information and queries to decide if the deal is a best fit for them. These key information and queries need real-time delivery with accuracy which is only possible through cold calling
Why Does Timing Matter Most in Cold Calling?
The reason why timing matters most is simple: your prospect needs a fresh mind to think. Especially, if you are doing high value tasks like B2B lead generation you have to consider a long list of items.
A study from Keller Center for Research shows that during 10 AM to 2 PM, response rate is typically higher. Calls in this period generate 53% of the total appointments from only 31% of the total calls. It’s because in this period, decision makers have a relatively sound mind and enough time to think.
Another research from MIT by Dr. James Oldroyd describes a key factor. When you are able to connect with a lead within 5 minutes after they generate any interest, the chance to see an action significantly improves.
Here again, you have to be smart with cold calling. You need real time engagement data of your prospects from the digital marketing team. If anyone shows any interest, the marketing team needs to send the data to the cold calling team immediately. This immediate calling increases the chance of qualification.
Can Cold Calling Reach Decision-Makers and the C-Suite?
Simply yes. The common myth that roams around that decision makers don’t like calls is not entirely true. A RAIN Group study shows that 57% of top-level management and decision makers still prefer phone calls to connect. The reason is simple, a simple 5 minute call is enough to make a basic assessment that can take days in email or texting.
In B2B, deals take time to conclude. Maintaining an outbound telemarketing funnel is the key that keeps you relevant to prospects. During this nurturing process, your approach needs to focus on the benefits, not the features. A value proposition makes more impact than a sales pitch.
When a caller sounds like a consultant, the chance of funnel conversion increases to around 70%. And it helps to shift a low interest leads towards the bottom of the funnel (BOFU).
Metrics That Determine a Cold Calling Campaign’s Success
Metrics like conversion rate, cost per lead (CPL), consumer acquisition cost (CAC) and ROI helps to determine the success of a cold calling campaign.
Conversion Rate of Cold Calling Campaign
For cold calling 2.5% conversion rate is considered as average performance. But a highly strategic operation can bring up to 8% conversion rate. But it requires more focus for turning marketing qualified leads to sales qualified leads (optimizing MQLs to SQLs).
Measuring Cost Per Lead Generation
Cost per lead shows the ratio between total cost for running the campaign and the number of leads it generates. Different industries have different benchmarks for CPL. It depends on the value of the deal size.
Consumer Acquisition Cost
Often referred to cost per sale (CPS) is a key metric that indicates the overall performance and profitability of the campaign. 10:1 ratio is considered a standard for this. It means for every $10 spending, cold calls generate $100 worth of revenue.
Final Thoughts
Cold calling may seem an old fashioned marketing and sales technique, but still it brings in clients to businesses. Although the method has evolved a lot, the core characteristics remain the same till date. Once only random calling tendency is now fully converted to target only potential leads.
When the cold caller reaches out to these potential buyers, it automatically increases the chance of a conversion. And when cold calling is integrated with other methods it even provides a better outcome.
