Recently we spent some time with a sales team who utilised cold-calls as a big part of their sales process. To hone-in on the areas that they could improve we devoted a day listening to their calls with customers. After which we taught them some cold calling tips that massively improved their performance.

I’d recommend this sort of regular analysis for every aspect of your sales process, whether you do cold-calls or not. It is crucial to audit your process constantly to make sure you don’t fall into potentially damaging habits.

From the time we spent with the sales team a couple of important points on their cold-calling became clear.

Listen to your tone

Very often if you’re processing a large number of calls your tone can be compromised. If focus is on processing a lot of calls then each customer will feel as though they are being processed! A lot of the salespeople we listened to ended up speaking very high-pitched and quickly, which instantly tells the person on the other end that THIS IS A SALES CALL and turns them off.

You really need to pay attention to your tone and consciously try to slow it down. Over the phone it is harder anyway to communicate your emotion. During a cold-call it is even more important than usual to add some tonality and personality to your voice. Standing up or gesticulating with your hands while you’re on the phone, even though the customer won’t be able to see this, will influence how you sound.

Get personal

In addition to slowing the pace of the call down, you must also try to be in-sync with the customer. This will allow you to answer their questions in a genuine and thoughtful way, as well as being able to listen out for buying signals.

Due to the distance that being on the phone creates between you and the customer it is doubly important to try to bridge that gap. In-person you can rely on body language, facial gestures and other physical signifiers to help you create that feeling of closeness. However, because all of these are removed during a call you must really think about how you’re coming over. As well as creating that empathetic feeling through your voice with ups/downs, slowing the pace and prompting/signifying engagement.

I’d love you to try these cold calling tips out over the next few weeks and see what a difference it makes. Leave a comment below or message me to tell me how it goes.

Remember to GET OFF THE PROCESS WAGON and start to utilise tone and personality to communicate better in your cold-calls.