Cold Calling is the easiest and quickest way to develop market share in an industry. However, not everything is suitable for cold calling.
For some products and services, cold calling becomes an unfriendly way to pitch an offer.
This blog deeply analyzes this topic, when your offers become not call friendly. This will give you an idea whether your offerings are suitable for cold calls or not.
What Does a Non Call-Friendly Offer Actually Mean?
When you can’t deliver an offer to leads accurately and without any issue through phone, it refers to a non-call friendly offer. Cold calling companies work with different types of business. In some cases, a client’s product, service or offerings become very complicated to describe through a phone call.
Let’s say your company sells high-end laptops. You call a potential customer and make the pitch. After hearing about the specifications they start asking queries on benchmark, heating issue, color consistency, hand feel of the product, keyboard typing feel and more.
These questions can’t be answer by phone directly. Because words don’t justify accurately about topics like hand feel, color visuals, heating issue. Rather they require direct inspections.
This situation looks like this in a conversation between an agent and a prospect:
Agent: Dave, the reason for this call is that I heard you need a top performing laptop for your creative studio, am I right ?
Prospect (Dave): Well yes.
Agent: We have a product that you will love.
Prospect: What is its color accuracy rate? Can you tell me how it feels to use it, especially when it overheats?
Agent: Well Dave, It has a nice hand feeling. And the heating issue is minimal, you can type even when it overheats.
Prospect: But what’s its texture?
Agent: It has a nice texture.
It’s clear that in this situation the agent is unable to deliver accurate responses to the prospect’s question. These types of calls actually hold non friendly offers.
Cold Calling Structure Can Make Offers Non Call Friendly
Services like lead qualification or appointment setting are not that complicated and can be conducted via calls. But high value and complex deals that require a large amount of information transfer and evaluation are hard to conclude with calls. It’s because cold calls have structural limitations for these cases.
Time Limitation of Cold Calls Restricts to Make Complex Offers
Cold calls have time limitations. Reddit user r/salestechniques started a cold call related discussion. Here user ProfessionalList5123 describes that calls normally last for 30 seconds to 1 minute.
When prospects have higher intent the call can last for 5-6 minutes. However, average call duration changes depending on how deeper leads position on the funnel. TOFU leads are usually less interested in talking compared to BOFU leads.
However, you can’t make a cold call and ask for 10 minutes of the prospect’s time.
You can sell a SaaS product to a sales qualified leads over the phone, but you can’t sell highly confidential cyber security software using cold call.
The reason is simple, SaaS product pitch requires less time and has little complexity. But for a cyber security related product;
- You need longer time to pitch
- Confidentiality issue makes pitch over phone call risky
- Have to educate the lead with background of the product
- Negotiation for TCO (total cost of ownership) is complicated to do over call
- Requires large amount of legal documentation transfer which need additional channels to transfer
So it’s clear that your offer becomes call friendly when you can conclude the call within a sufficient time.
Excessive Call Volume and One Sided Sales Pitch
Cold callers often have a long list of calls to make in a tight deadline. When this happens, agents tend to have a rush in their calling. It means they don’t listen to property and provide less effort.
Prospects often have latent intent which needs proper nurturing and understanding of pain points. But when agents are in a rush, they are unable to understand the situation and their response becomes less effective.
Rather agents start to make one sided pitch on calls. In B2B, decision makers are deeply focused on risk assessment. When they hear one sided direct pitch just after the call, it automatically creates a negative perception in their mind. Which makes the call and offer non-friendly immediately.
Cold Call Often Requires Other Channel’s Support
Outbound telemarketing and cold calls work well when it is backed by a content marketing strategy. A content marketing strategy first warms up leads. After that when the calls are made, prospects show less resistance due to their familiarity with the offer.
But when contacts are purely cold leads, contacts mostly respond negatively. Because to them these cold calls don’t have any value to them. This is a perfect example when cold calls deliver non-call-friendly-offers.
Due to the offer’s nature, in some cases cold callers need to send further documents, demos or samples through other channels. Sometimes for these types of deals email or direct web connections are considered as better options.
What Type of Business or Offers Are Suitable for Cold Calling?
Products or services that require less complex pitching are suitable for cold calling. Here is a list of aspects which are perfectly suitable for cold calling:
- B2B, B2C, real estate, solar, insurance, home services, tech and many more type of industries are suitable for cold calling
- Appointment setting (sales meetings booked on client calendars across multiple industries)
- Lead generation (finding and nurturing qualified prospects in sectors like SaaS, logistics, healthcare, finance, etc)
- Telemarketing and telesales campaigns (industry-targeted outbound outreach)
- Inbound call center services (handling customer inquiries, support, and intake)
- Outbound call center services (prospecting, follow-ups, and customer engagement)
- List building (researching and verifying targeted prospect data by industry)
- Lead qualification (screening prospects based on fit, need and readiness to buy)
- Warm transfers (connecting sales-ready prospects directly to closers)
- Real estate prospecting (buyers, sellers, investors, and property managers)
- Solar lead generation (homeowners and businesses interested in renewable energy)
- Insurance appointment setting (policy prospects and financial consultations)
- SaaS and IT prospecting (demo booking and pipeline development)
- Healthcare outreach (patient acquisition and provider connections)
- Home services lead generation (repair, maintenance, and installation jobs)
- Logistics and supply chain prospecting (shippers and distribution clients)
- Staffing and recruiting outreach (companies needing hiring support)
- Security and facility services prospecting (guarding, surveillance, maintenance contracts)
- Janitorial and commercial cleaning outreach (business cleaning contracts)
These are some of the areas where cold calling is suitable. There are also more suitable areas too.
When Offers Become Non-Call Friendly in Cold Calling?
Any product or service that is hard to pitch over phone due to irrelevance, complexity, timing or legal issues are considered as not call friendly offers. Here are some common occasions when your offer becomes not call friendly:
Your Offer Requires Lots of Demonstration and Education
When your offer requires lots of demonstration it’s a signal that your offer is not called friendly. In this type of situation, businesses use cold calls to set up appointments rather than selling directly.
These types of offers are considered as complicated offers. Callers are required to maintain a solid rejection mitigation strategy while pitching these via calls. That’s why these type of offers are not considered as call friendly offers.
When Agents Start Pitching Directly
Every time a prospect start pitching directly after the call is connected, it immediately make the call non friendly. Psychologically decision makers went to defense mode when they hear the sales pitch immediately after the call.
It happens due to the increase fraud and phishing calls, low value and time constraint and risk assessment mindset of the decision makers.
Script Dependency Damages Callers Appearance
Similar to direct pitching practice, too much dependency on script make cold callers sound like bot rather actual human beings.
Decision makers notice every small details to find flaws of any offer. Script dependency creates suspicion and lack of insight from the callers side. Which makes it non call friendly offer.
Bad Opening Statement Damages Calls Appearance
Usually prospects decide in 3 seconds after the call whether they will continue or not. If the opening a caller makes any inappropriate approach, then the call goes under the not friendly offer category.
It’s not about the script, rather related to making an approach that seems like a security threat. As fraud calls are increasing, decision makers evaluate every minor detail. If any approach looks inappropriate, decision makers avoid those calls.
Relevance And Offer Recognition
What you’re offering via call, needs to be relevant to whom you’re calling. For example, your employer sells meat and wants you to find more restaurants in their operating area.
But your caller is outreaching to restaurants who are located far beyond your operational zone. Then the call had an unfriendly offer. Similarly if you call a totally vegetarian restaurant to sell meat it will not be a friendly offer.
When Cold Calls Are Made by Voice Agents
Voice agents work with structured demos but they fail to make cold calls. The reason is simple, voice agents are AI backed virtual assistants that fail to mimic human-like conversation.
Every cold call is different because contacts react differently when they hear that it’s a cold call. Decision makers observe every detail to evaluate relevance, safety and benefits. So when they get cold calls from a voice agent their reaction becomes negative.
Offer That Requires Multiple Approval
When offers require multiple stakeholders’ approval, it simply becomes obsolete to pitch via calls. Rather these also are conducted through an appointment.
In B2B purchase, a buying committee normally looks after the buying process. In most cases a group of decision makers make the final decision. But often except decision makers, products require key approvals from risk managers, account officers and technical support teams.
Final Words
Cold calling is a highly effective method to expand your business. But for some products or services it’s not suitable to sell it via cold calls directly. Especially when your offerings are too complicated.
But in this situation cold calls still become an effective tool because they help to set up an appointment. Later these appointments create an opportunity for you to deliver your offer properly and gain a deal.
