Over a decade ago Harvard Business Review reported that cold calling is ineffective 90% of the time and now in 2022, it’s pretty clear that cold calling is ineffective 98% (Hubspot calculated it would take 6,264 calls to make just four sales).
So, let’s call a spade a spade - cold calling is dead.
The world has moved beyond telephone packages and landlines (do you remember those?) so it makes sense that the world of sales has shifted away from out-of-the-blue sales calls to highly effective, personalized digital sales strategies.
“The SDR in 2022 will need to leverage data and tailor their pitch to the needs of the person they are trying to reach out to. Sales reps that have the most information and can cater a message to their intended decision maker will see much more success than the SDR that just tries to make the most outbound calls. Sales reps must work smarter and do their research before reaching out to anyone to sell their product.” - Ryan Quinn, Sales Development Representative, Hyperio
Yet there are still companies clinging onto hope like Blockbuster did with storefront movie rentals. While these companies are continuing to implement outdated sales practices - other companies are pivoting their tactics to meet people where they are - online. They are simplifying, automating and personalizing the sales process for the buyer - just how Netflix transformed the movie rental business through an online platform.
In this article we’ll talk about:
You could follow a script to make the best of an outdated method of making sales – or you can change your game plan and start heating up your sales strategies.
How have sales calls changed?
Over the years, technology and sales strategies have changed a lot. Customers don’t want to be called by a stranger to talk about a product or service they have never needed before. In fact, they do most of their own research before making purchases rather than waiting for a sales call/email/social media ad.
We need to change our prospecting strategies if we want to thrive in the post-Covid sales world.
Today, if a company is using the right tools, SDRs only make calls to qualified leads – not prospects. Some companies pay big money to have leads qualified for them so that they know who their SDRs should call in order to achieve the best results.
Making an authentic connection with a lead is still the most important part of getting leads to convert in the pipeline, and in order to make such a connection you need information.
You need to know how you can add value to your customer’s business, how you can meet a need, or how you can solve a problem for them. Armed with such knowledge, your sales reps can make an educated, meaningful call that will be received much more willingly by the person on the other end of the phone.
The problem is that this takes a lot of time – and money, if you’re paying someone to do this research for you.
Let’s give you an example from our past service experience:
Our top SDR only called about 30 leads a day because the rest of their time was spent on research. When the SDR made the call, they knew about the buyer’s recent highs and lows and had put together a script personally designed to hook the lead quickly. It worked. The SDR’s calls were well-received and personable - that’s what made them the best.
But is it financially feasible for companies - especially startups - to pay for hours of research when there is perfectly good software available to do that grunt work for them? And, what if you could take how effective personalized outreach is and then scale it up beyond 30 leads to 10,000+ leads?
No more people-hours slogging through research - let the tech do that part for you.
Technology has advanced by leaps and bounds over the last handful of decades, and artificial intelligence has changed the game. There are chatbots who engage customers on websites at the first moment of contact. There are technologies that help build buyer profiles. There are even technologies that assess tone of voice to pick up buyer interest during phone calls.
The right software will help you not only save your SDRs time, your company money, and generate data that will help you make better connections with your leads - - it will also identify the hottest leads for you, and implement omnichannel outreach strategies that will connect you to more leads with less expense.
Take for example the AI-engine built into Hyperio. By looking at the behavior of each target, Hyperio determines where leads are in their journey, prioritizes when outreach should occur and identifies highly relevant and personalized messages to deliver to them based on current events and their behavior.
Hyperio was built from the ground up to automate as much of the preparation, operations and analytics that weigh down sales teams. Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, Hyperio leverages structured and unstructured data to bring exciting account prospects to the forefront of your sequence and identify personalized contact insights to win the sale.
Schedule your custom demo. Try Hyperio for free for 30 days, risk free!
So, let’s call a spade a spade - cold calling is dead.
The world has moved beyond telephone packages and landlines (do you remember those?) so it makes sense that the world of sales has shifted away from out-of-the-blue sales calls to highly effective, personalized digital sales strategies.
“The SDR in 2022 will need to leverage data and tailor their pitch to the needs of the person they are trying to reach out to. Sales reps that have the most information and can cater a message to their intended decision maker will see much more success than the SDR that just tries to make the most outbound calls. Sales reps must work smarter and do their research before reaching out to anyone to sell their product.” - Ryan Quinn, Sales Development Representative, Hyperio
Adapt or Die: Don’t Go Down in B2B Sales History like a Blockbuster
B2B sales experts have seen this shift away from cold calls coming for years now, and we’ve had plenty of time to develop better ways of doing things.Yet there are still companies clinging onto hope like Blockbuster did with storefront movie rentals. While these companies are continuing to implement outdated sales practices - other companies are pivoting their tactics to meet people where they are - online. They are simplifying, automating and personalizing the sales process for the buyer - just how Netflix transformed the movie rental business through an online platform.
In this article we’ll talk about:
- The “death” of the cold call
- The new cold call alternative
- The secrets to software and sales success
Why did cold calling die?
Back in the day, a sales development rep (SDR) would call a potential prospect without knowing how valuable that call would be to the customer, or how well the sales rep would be received. That’s the “cold” part of cold calling – and though COLD calling is dead, warm, personal calls are still very much a part of the sales process.You could follow a script to make the best of an outdated method of making sales – or you can change your game plan and start heating up your sales strategies.
How have sales calls changed?
Over the years, technology and sales strategies have changed a lot. Customers don’t want to be called by a stranger to talk about a product or service they have never needed before. In fact, they do most of their own research before making purchases rather than waiting for a sales call/email/social media ad.
We need to change our prospecting strategies if we want to thrive in the post-Covid sales world.
Today, if a company is using the right tools, SDRs only make calls to qualified leads – not prospects. Some companies pay big money to have leads qualified for them so that they know who their SDRs should call in order to achieve the best results.
Making an authentic connection with a lead is still the most important part of getting leads to convert in the pipeline, and in order to make such a connection you need information.
You need to know how you can add value to your customer’s business, how you can meet a need, or how you can solve a problem for them. Armed with such knowledge, your sales reps can make an educated, meaningful call that will be received much more willingly by the person on the other end of the phone.
The problem is that this takes a lot of time – and money, if you’re paying someone to do this research for you.
How do I save money while making more sales?
If you’ve got a good sales team, you’re going to be paying your SDRs for hours of work spent just doing research to qualify leads and gathering data before placing calls or sending emails.Let’s give you an example from our past service experience:
Our top SDR only called about 30 leads a day because the rest of their time was spent on research. When the SDR made the call, they knew about the buyer’s recent highs and lows and had put together a script personally designed to hook the lead quickly. It worked. The SDR’s calls were well-received and personable - that’s what made them the best.
But is it financially feasible for companies - especially startups - to pay for hours of research when there is perfectly good software available to do that grunt work for them? And, what if you could take how effective personalized outreach is and then scale it up beyond 30 leads to 10,000+ leads?
Wouldn’t software make my sales team redundant?
Think of software as a part of your team - more of a supercharged sales specialist there to help free up your SDRs to make timely sales calls at the end of the pipeline to close deals.No more people-hours slogging through research - let the tech do that part for you.
Technology has advanced by leaps and bounds over the last handful of decades, and artificial intelligence has changed the game. There are chatbots who engage customers on websites at the first moment of contact. There are technologies that help build buyer profiles. There are even technologies that assess tone of voice to pick up buyer interest during phone calls.
The right software will help you not only save your SDRs time, your company money, and generate data that will help you make better connections with your leads - - it will also identify the hottest leads for you, and implement omnichannel outreach strategies that will connect you to more leads with less expense.
How can software help sales strategy?
If you invest in the right software, it can help to mainstream your prospects and blast the right target audience with effective sales pitches. It can also immediately surface actionable insights to scale across your team - enhancing the performance of all of your reps.Take for example the AI-engine built into Hyperio. By looking at the behavior of each target, Hyperio determines where leads are in their journey, prioritizes when outreach should occur and identifies highly relevant and personalized messages to deliver to them based on current events and their behavior.
Hyperio was built from the ground up to automate as much of the preparation, operations and analytics that weigh down sales teams. Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, Hyperio leverages structured and unstructured data to bring exciting account prospects to the forefront of your sequence and identify personalized contact insights to win the sale.
Skip Cold and Go Straight to Sold
See why Hyperio is on track to become the industry’s most intelligent sales engagement platform and what a truly hyper-intelligent sales engagement platform can do for your team today.Schedule your custom demo. Try Hyperio for free for 30 days, risk free!
