1. When’s the best time to make cold calls?
Cold calling prospects between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. is 71% more effective in booking meetings than calling between 11 a.m. and 12 p.m.
Cold calling between 4 p.m. and 5 p.m. (according to your prospect’s time zone) is found to be the most effective as these are high connection times. Calling between 11 a.m. and 12 p.m. is the second-best option.
2. How many cold call attempts should I make?
Salespeople need to make as many as 8 cold call attempts on average to reach a single prospect.
Cold calling is by no means an easy task, especially when you have to spend your time making at least eight calls for the prospect to even pick up the phone. Cold calling company for windows and doors replacement While it is worth the effort, salespeople must stick to the 3 P’s — patience, perseverance, and persistence — while cold calling.
3. How many cold calls should I make in a day?
A study found that sales reps in B2B tech should average at least 60 calls per day as a benchmark to improve the chances of booking meetings, but they manage to make only 35 calls per day, which is only around half of the benchmark.
As we saw earlier, it takes around 8 cold call attempts to reach a prospect. By making 60 calls every day or 300 calls in a week, you have a chance to reach around 38 prospects in a week.
If an SDR takes around 4 minutes 50 seconds for a cold call (2 minutes for research + 30 seconds for ringing + 1 minute 20 seconds talk time + 30 seconds for voicemail + 30 seconds for CRM update), they can comfortably make 60 cold calls per day in 5 hours. In all probability, you won’t need all those 5 hours because a lot of these calls may go to voicemail.
Pro tip: Use a cold calling tool to organize your 60 cold calls in a day efficiently. The tool will help you in scheduling your daily calls, measure call metrics, and prioritize calls based on the extent of the prospect’s engagement. What’s more, you can also automate tasks like scheduling appointments, follow-ups, call recording, note-taking, and sending text/email messages to leads following the call, which would be highly time-consuming without cold-calling software.
4. How long does it take to make 100 cold calls?
If you want to make 100 cold calls, you could do that depending on what your previous open rate and talk time for each call have been like. Best lead generation company for Air Duct cleaning However, with the above-mentioned time of 4 minutes and 50 seconds per cold call, it might take up all of your working hours.
So, it’s better to place calls to a small number of highly qualified prospects (around 30 or 40 prospects), in which case you can block 1 hour in the morning and 1 hour in the evening to call them twice. This is not only a viable option as opposed to making 100 cold calls, but also has a higher chance of booking meetings.
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Benchmarks for how to talk during a cold call
1. Asking “How have you been?” during the cold call increases the success rate by 6.6x
As per this analysis, salespeople who open their cold calls with “How have you been?” see their success rate of cold calling go up by 6.6 times, as this opening line was found to be acting as a pattern interrupt that would keep the conversation with the prospects going.
2. Salespeople increase the chance of booking meetings in a cold call by using collaborative language like ‘our’ (55% increase) and ‘we’ (35% increase)
Coming across as a team player is essential in making that first impression. So, pepper your outbound calling script with collaborative language like ‘we’, ‘our’, ‘ourselves’, and ‘us’.
3. Opening with “Did I catch you at a bad time?” makes you 40% less likely to book a meeting
While this opener is widely recommended by sales books, an analysis shows that it does the opposite of what it is intended to do — cold calls that opened with this line had a success rate of less than one percent.
4. Salespeople who give their reason for calling are 2.1x more successful in booking meetings
Stating your reason for calling will help the prospect overcome objections like who you are, what company you are from, and why you are calling them.
5. In successful sales calls, salespeople do slightly more talking (55%) than the prospect (45%)
In the initial stages, having a higher talk-to-listen ratio is better as it reduces the effort of the prospects, who are unsure about what it is that you are selling, thereby increasing your chances of booking a meeting.
6. Chances of having conversations with prospects in the first attempt of cold calling increase by 50% on Wednesdays
Wednesday is found to be the best day of the week to make cold calls. When compared to Monday or Tuesday, the possibility of your prospect attending your call in the first call attempt is higher by 50%. However, do not call your prospects on Mondays and the second half of Fridays as the prospects are least likely to attend cold calls at the beginning and end of the work week.
7. Successful demo calls last 30.5% longer than unsuccessful ones
During the demo, make sure that the presentation is targeted and allows scope for more conversations, which increases the possibility of closing the deal.
8. Successful salespeople maintain a pace of 176 words per minute while handling objections, while average reps speed up to 188 words per minute
In a typical sales conversation, Best lead generation company for home improvement company the average talking speed is 173 words per minute, as per this analysis. So, good salespeople do not get flustered and speed up their responses too much while dealing with objections.
9. Successful conversations with prospects have silent periods that last for 8 to 10 percent of the total call time
It doesn’t have to be all talk, talk, talk for sales reps. Just the right amount of silence during your cold call could do wonders for your success rates. However, don’t be too silent as letting silence dominate your conversation could be a deal-breaker.
10. In cold calls, top sales reps have their monologues for only 12 seconds on average
This means that the monologue of top-performing sales reps would contain only about 35 words at a stretch of 12 seconds (if we take the average speaking rate to be 173 words per minute). While we noted earlier that sales reps talking a little more than prospects is good, be careful to not end up going on long rambles during the cold call.