What is Cold Calling? (Tips and Scripts Included)

Are you failing to reach your target audience on social media? Does your marketing strategy flop, no matter what you try?

Maybe it’s time for a different approach. A way to contact customers directly and let them know exactly how your solution can help resolve their problems.

But, calling someone you don’t know out of the blue just to tell them about how great your product is can feel like an imposition on both ends and can thus be quite stressful.

But, despite how it seems at first glance, a cold call is a great tool in any business’ arsenal. So, in this blog post, we’ll talk about:

• What cold calling is,
• What makes an effective cold call,
• Tips on cold calling,
• Cold calling techniques,
• Cold calling scripts,
• Cold calling examples, and
• Cold calling FAQs.

What is cold calling?

Cold calling is the practice of calling a customer who has had no previous interaction with the salesperson. The term covers both phone calls and door-to-door interactions.

Cold calling has experienced a decline in recent years, both due to the decrease in landlines and the increase of scammers using the technique. However, it is still a valid sales technique, challenging as it may be.

It’s also important to distinguish between cold and warm calling. While in both cases, a potential customer doesn’t expect the call, in a warm call, the customer has previously shown interest in the type of product or service that you’re trying to sell.

By doing some research or hiring a data broker, you can create a list of prospects who are likely to listen to your proposals.

What makes an effective cold call? 

Making a cold call is one of the most nerve-wracking tasks. It takes lots of charisma and persuasion skills, and even then, the chances of success are slim.

A few things that make or break an effective cold call are:

• A pleasant tone — customers are more likely to hear you out if you sound friendly.
• Staying persistent — you’ll need to make plenty of follow-up calls with a customer — don’t give up on them easily.
• Knowing your customer — if you’re calling a business, do your due diligence and research before you call them. If you’re calling a customer, know your customer base, their needs, habits, and common issues.
• Preparing a script — while you should cater to every specific customer, having a general script to follow goes a long way and gets you back on track whenever you’re unsure of what to say.
• Focusing on the conversation — yes, your end goal is to sell something. However, you’ll need to establish a conversation with the customer to build trust and comfort.

How to cold call: 5 expert tips for cold calling 

While cold calling is difficult, the upside is that experience makes it easier. The more you cold call, the better you’ll get at it. In time, as you listen to your potential customers, you’ll naturally understand what kind of approach gets a positive reaction.

As experience is a large determinant of an effective cold caller, we’ve talked to experts about the tips we should share with you today.

Tip #1: Practice active listening

The purpose of a product or service is usually to resolve a problem that a customer has. Therefore, treat your customer as a person with a problem that needs to be heard.

We spoke to Eric Watkins, President at Abstrakt Marketing Group, who shared some valuable insights about active listening:

By actively listening, you put your customer first, which goes a long way. The best way to get your customers talking is by asking them questions. But, Eric warns that some questions are better than others:

Tip #2: Discover pain points and pitch accordingly

As mentioned, most customers will have a problem that you’re seeking to solve. It’s up to you to find out what the problem is and focus on it. As Eric puts it:

After you discover the issue, you need to focus on how your product helps them:

For example, say you’re pitching a TV service provider. During the conversation, you learn that the customer is unsatisfied with the satellite service of their current provider, as they live in a remote area and are experiencing reception problems.

Now, you want to focus on your state-of-the-art satellite service, assuring them they’ll get a signal wherever they are. It’s better to focus on this than, say, the number of channels you provide or the extra internet package, as the customer has not expressed interest or issues in those areas.

Tip #3: Review previous calls

In every job, it’s important to learn from your mistakes. This goes double for cold calling. As Tom Snyder, Co-founder & Managing Partner at Funnel Clarity, tells us:

Cold calling can be stressful in its own right, so it’s easy to miss important details while on the call itself. Reviewing previous calls and taking notes on what worked and what failed can make a significant difference in the future.

Tip #4: Practice with role-play

If you’re new to cold calling and you need to get the hang of it, or you’re experienced but want to refine your skills, a mock cold call can help. As Tom says:

It’s generally good to pair up with a more experienced colleague and have them play the customer. They’re sure to have more knowledge of what an actual customer would say in a given situation. 

When you switch and you play the customer, focus on phrases or questions that a customer would say that you have issues with. Gaining insight into how a more experienced salesperson would handle those situations will improve your approach.

Tip #5: Close with a specific date and time

Cold calling requires proactiveness on your part. Eric talks about the danger of leaving the interaction in your customer’s hands:

Let’s say you’re at the end of a conversation with a customer, and they say they’ll need more time to think about it. 

Instead of telling them to call you back when they decide, try saying something like, “Of course, you need time to make an important decision. I’ll call you back in a couple of days. How’s Friday around noon for a follow-up?”

Eric tells us that this kind of initiative is necessary:

5 Best cold calling techniques to use

Now, let’s take a look at some practices you might want to implement, that will help you boost the success rate of your calls.

Technique #1: Focus on the conversation

Don’t aim to sell your product on the first call at any cost. Instead, focus on building a rapport with the customer.

If the conversation ends with them not wanting to buy, that’s alright. If they need time to think about it, are using a different service, or are just not interested — it’s not a big deal.

The most important thing is to establish rapport and pitch accordingly. If your customer feels like they’ve been heard, you’ll stand out from the crowd.

This means that the next time the customer needs what you’re selling, you’ll be the first provider they think of. A good sales call can pay off months after it’s finished.

Technique #2: Do your research

Don’t pick up the phone too hastily. First, research your customers and the market. If you work in B2B, you’ll want to research the business you’ll be calling.

Businesses are often appreciative of the research you’ve put in. For example, if you work in real estate, and you’re offering a rental of an office building, you could say something along the lines of “I see you’ve been upsizing recently. I was wondering if you’re looking into a larger office to accommodate the increase in staff?”

If you work in B2C, you can’t do much research on a specific customer, but you can do research on the customer base. 

What are their usual pain points? 

What kind of services do they require?

This knowledge will help you establish focus points in your call.

Technique #3: Nurture your leads

Lead nurturing is another important technique to use while cold calling. If a lead already has a contract with a different company, check in from time to time. Eric made a point of how useful this technique can be:

Of course, you’ll want to provide new information with every call. For this, you’ll need to keep notes for every prospect and review them before every call. When contacting a lead, you want to avoid repeating the same information every time.

Instead, give value to every call by providing information you haven’t talked about before. This gives justification to every call you make and keeps the prospect interested.

Technique #4: Find a creative opener

First impressions matter. Therefore, in the first few seconds of a cold call, you could gain or lose the prospect’s interest completely.

Make your wording friendly and even humorous — it will help you stand out. “How are you?” is a perfectly fine opener and will get you some good responses. However, it’s rather generic. 

Surprisingly, “How have you been?” has been observed to be the most effective opening in a cold call, according to a Gong.io study on cold call openings. 

Even though it’s just slightly different from the previous version, this question implies familiarity. Right off the bat, you put yourself in a position of knowing the prospect, while putting them in a state of slight, “good” kind of confusion.

Or, as Eric suggests:

Technique #5: Build a prospect list

Now, this technique will effectively turn your call from a cold call into a warm call. After all, warm calls are generally more effective than cold calls.

Say you’re calling to pitch your company’s security system. If you call long-established businesses, chances are they already have one in place (not that there is no value in calling them too, as we saw in technique #3).

However, any new business will probably be searching for one. With that in mind, you can use social media to scout potential clients or use data brokers, as we mentioned earlier.

Cold calling scripts 

To ensure a cold call flows without any issues, it’s good to have a script to come back to whenever it seems like there’ll be a lull. 

Now, this isn’t to say you should follow the script word for word — on the contrary, that would be terrible for your call. 

If you’re just reading from a script, it’s easily noticeable, which makes you seem uninterested. Instead, most of your conversation will have to be somewhat spontaneous, as you’re looking to cater to every individual you call. 

You can use the script to take note of the most important points you want to mention during the call.

Best cold calling script in general

This cold calling script is applicable to any kind of solution you provide. There is room to tweak it a bit to fit your niche and business’ needs, but it’s a great starting point for any cold call.

Cold calling script for real estate

In real estate, your value proposition could be a number of things. Your customers could be looking to buy, sell, rent, etc.

In the real estate industry, doing research to make a warm call is often needed, but that does not exclude the necessity of cold calls.

Cold calling script for sales

In a sales call, your focus is more on the solution that you’re selling. However, the friendly tone and conversational atmosphere still apply to these conversations.

Cold calling script for B2B

For B2B calls, it’s important to do your research on the business you’ll be calling. Showing knowledge of the inner workings of the company can give you an edge over other callers.

What are some examples of cold calling? 

Let’s fill in some of those scripts and take a look at what some real-life cold calls might look like.

Example #1: The perfect call

Sometimes, you might achieve success on the first try. If you keep a good tone and follow our tips, your call might look like this:

Example #2: Uninterested customer

Still, most of the time, your conversations might sound similar to this:

Example #3: A business already under contract

Here, we’ll be taking a look at a B2B exchange.

Cold calling statistics 

As the practice of cold calling diminishes, so do the statistics regarding it. Still, there’s some pretty interesting data out there. Here are a few stats we thought you should know:

• Top-performing callers widely outperform the rest, according to RAIN group’s research on sales prospecting. Top callers get around 2.7 times the conversion rate and 1.8 times more quality outcomes.
• 94% of consumers think that unidentified calls are scams and for a good reason. According to Hiya’s state of the call report, consumers get, on average, 144 spam calls a year (which is 1 every 2–3 days), and more than half of them are actual scammers.
• If a lead submits an inquiry, and the sales representative doesn’t contact them within the hour, the chance of contact drops by over 400%, according to CallHippo’s month-long study on cold calling.
• In the same study, we learned that the chance of contact increases the more you call. From the 1st to the 6th call, the chance of a prospect answering jumps by more than 40%.
• In Gong.io’s analysis of over 100,000 cold calls, they concluded that wording is crucial. Using “our” instead of “my” was 55% more prominent in successful cold calls.
• In the same study, it was shown that the most successful calls are those that are the most interactive. In successful calls, there were 77% more instances of a switch in who was talking.
• Finally, the Gong.io study showed stating the reason for your call in the opening has a 2.1 times higher success rate than withholding it for later.

FAQ about cold calling

If you’d like to know more about cold calling, here are a few things you might be wondering about.

What is the best time for cold calling?

In a report by CallHippo, a virtual phone company, they analyzed over 15,800 phone calls made over a 30-day period. 

They found that the best time to cold call is between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m., while the second best time is between 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. 

Before 8 a.m. and after 5 p.m., there are steep drops in response rates.

The best day for cold calls is Wednesday, with the largest number of conversations established on the first attempt. The worst day to cold call is Friday.

When is cold calling legal and when is it illegal in the US?

In 1991, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). It outlined a national DNC (Do Not Call) list and made regulations for people who are not on that list.

If you cold call in the USA, you can only call between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m., you must introduce yourself and your company, and explain the reason behind your call. 

You mustn’t cold call any number from the DNC list.

There’s also the Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), which is almost the same as the TCPA, except it requires callers to keep their own DNC list, besides the national one. Any customer who says they don’t want to be contacted will be put on that list. 

How many cold calls should a cold caller make per day?

It really depends on the number of leads you have. Generally, the previously mentioned CallHippo statistics show you want to call a lead 6 times to have the highest chances of contact.

So, how many people do you call per day? Depends on the job and the day. Generally, however many people you should call, multiply it by 6, and you’ll get the number of calls you should make.

Some companies ask for 80, some are content with 30. If you have 10 leads for the day, that means you’ll be doing 60.

Improve your cold calling processes with Plaky

Keeping track of all the potential clients you are trying to reach can be tough. With a project management tool like Plaky, you can manage all the information you need for successful cold calling. 

Plaky has a contact list template, which can be very useful for organizing a list of your potential clients. It enables you to:

• Keep track of client’s information all in one place,
• Assign clients to team members,
• Organize clients into groups, and
• Add files (such as cold calling scripts) to tasks.