By 
If you have the sales skills to generate new business for your company and can reach the decision makers in a company, as a salesperson, you have little time to implement a successful first contact with this person. Decision makers are sold all the way around every hour or so. Like clockwork, potential companies or vendors are reaching out to these people with all sorts of product offers ranging from SEO services to bulk email software and who knows what else.
So, as a salesperson or salesperson, you need to be able to differentiate yourself in a split second when contacting these people on the phone. Here are some ways to go about it and make sure your cold calling campaign is lucrative and fruitful. How do you ensure this? Below you will find some explanations and tips to do it.
The 7 second rule
Cold calling has what I call a “7 second rule”. This means that when you cold call a new prospect, you as a sales professional have about 7 seconds to differentiate yourself from any other competing sales company or individual that contacts this person on a daily basis.
How do you do this?
There are several ways that a cold call, early on, can lend itself to a high success rate and could catch the attention of the target party.
1. Get down to the person’s level – People hate being sold to. Therefore, as a sales professional, you must come across as a human being and personally connect with the individual. How can this be done? First, when you cold call someone, act like it’s not a cold call and you’re not aiming to sell the product. Instead, you should have a goal of establishing a relationship to start the sales cycle.
2. Understand that the secretary is very, very important: As a sales rep, it’s imperative that you befriend the secretary or assistant of the person you’re trying to contact. Not many sales reps do this, and subsequently greatly reduce your chances of cold calling success.
A secretary, most of the time, is a cold call and being able to reach the decision maker implies the implementation of a sales cycle. Consider this a sales cycle of a sales cycle. A secretary or assistant to a decision maker will not accept it on the first or first phone call. Instead, she uses the first two phone calls as a precursor to asking them to make the formal introduction.
3. Be mentally prepared to lose the business – When you cold call, you need to understand that you are “rolling the dice”. If you treat every call like it’s the Super Bowl, you’re not going to do well. Allow yourself some room for failure, and when you talk to the prospect, don’t let them get the feeling that you’re nervous. Once a prospect smells this, they don’t stand out from the 100 other companies trying to sell them and they’re not going to start the sales cycle and subsequently have the opportunity to generate income through this avenue.
Bottom line, take a chance with your presentation as if everyone is playing it safe, you should be the one to try different tactics that give credibility to both you and the product or service.
4. Be Mentally Prepared for Lots of Rejections – When starting a cold calling campaign, you need to be mentally prepared to put up with your fair share of strong rejections, as not everyone is always welcome on a sales call. If you project a rejection on the prospects you’re going to call and then expect rejection, your campaign and presentation will miss the mark.