3 Tips to Improve Your Cold Call Conversion Ratio
February 20, 2014
Building and developing a lead generation program within a B2B company is critical to scale. But for your lead generation team to really deliver revenue-producing results, that team’s calls need to convert. In the video below, ExactTarget Senior Manager of Sales Development Christy Weymouth reveals three factors that can positively (or negatively) impact your company’s cold call conversion ratio.
By nature, lead generation is a high activity, low yield function.
Reps are often reaching out to prospects who haven’t heard of a business, aren’t aware they could benefit from a particular product or service, or have no interest in listening to a sales pitch. And, needless to say, convincing those people to grant you even 15 seconds of their time can be challenging. Typically, most cold calls end with a response that sound something like, “Umm, yeah, not interested.” Click.
To counter that frequent rejection, some lead generation teams opt for the old “spray-and-pray” prospecting technique, throwing things against the wall and hoping something sticks. But, as ExactTarget’s Christy Weymouth explains in the video below, doing that will ultimately get you nowhere. Instead, the solution to your cold call conversion woes is to encourage your reps to be more strategic about every call they make.
ExactTarget’s Cold Calling Strategy: 3 Factors that Drive Conversion
In the video below, Weymouth — who got ExactTarget’s outbound lead generation program up and running — shares three factors that can help your business attack cold calling with greater focus and purpose, and greatly enhance your call conversion ratio.
1. Know Which Accounts to Target
This might seem obvious, but focus is critical when it comes to lead generation. If companies want to drive better efficiency in their lead generation program, Weymouth says lead generators must possess clarity around the types of accounts salespeople want to target, and they must remain focused on the right kinds of deals for the sales organization.
2. Have Call Cadence Discipline
Statistics suggest that lead generators stop trying to reach prospects after just three calls. According to Weymouth, that’s a problem. “(Three calls) is not enough time to get someone to respond to you,” Weymouth explains. “We live in a very busy world and it takes time for individuals to get back with you. You really need to press forward and go beyond three calls.” At ExactTarget, lead generators are asked to make a minimum of five calls (seven if the prospect is a C-level executive), and they space each call out by two or three days. “At the end, we give the prospect a week to respond,” Weymouth says. “We’ve found that allows us to call over a month’s time and it drives a response back.”
3. Always Call with a Purpose
Making calls is just one piece of the lead generation puzzle. What prospectors say on those calls is another critical component of call conversion. “(You need) to have a purpose for every call,” Weymouth says. “You have to think through what would be of value to that person and offer up something unique every time. And as soon as you connect with a prospect, you can figure out what (messages) resonated with them and what works.” If you prepare and train your lead generation team to follow these three factors, they’ll find far more success on their calls, says Weymouth.
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