Cold Calling is dead... Kind of

Cold calling is dead. Call connection rates are about 2-3% for most sales teams. That means a rep needs to make 33-50 dials before they even get to speak to a prospect.

So, waste of time right.

Well, sort of.

It’s hanging on by a thread because everyone understands the value of speaking to prospects.

The value of a conversation is so high, sales leaders are willing to take the trade off that is 3 per day at the most.

What that means is that prospecting has become a volume game. Reps are pressured to make more and more dials as fewer and fewer calls get answered. That creates a terrible work life for sales reps. They’re making dozens of calls. They know it is pointless. Then, after thirty-seven calls, they finally connect with someone and because they’re not mentally prepared for it. The call is terrible. It doesn’t convert.

So what does this all mean?

Cold Calling is dead…. Well, sort of.

It’s dead in the next 2 years unless we can find a way to increase the dial to connect rates. If we can do that, we increase the number of conversations we have, which means more meetings and finally more revenue.  

To illustrate this let’s say you’re in an environment that has a dial to connect rate of 50:1. If you improve that to 25:1 that would lead to a 100% increase in revenue.

If you could get from 50:1 to 15:1 you’d see a 233% increase in revenue.

If you could get from 50:1 to 10:1 you’d see a 400% increase in revenue.

“But Matt, that’s impossible, I’m never going to get a 10:1 dial to connect rate.”

Our clients do. Actually they have rates even better than that. Here’s a snapshot of those below

How the hell do you do it?

Simple, we only call people that we know answer the phone.

We don't call people that don’t answer the phone because it is a complete waste of time.

Now this stems from a theory we had, that has since been proven out. That is, there are two kinds of people in the world. People that answer the phone when they don’t recognize who’s calling, and those that don’t.

We’ve found that behaviour pattern to be highly consistent over time.

What this change in approach does for a sales team is not just significantly reduce time to revenue but there's a number of other flow on effects.

• Reps get better faster because they have more conversations faster.
• Reps feel like they are being productive. It’s no longer a requirement to bash your head against a wall all day
• They expect people to answer the phone. Therefore, when someone answers, they are more prepared..
• They no longer have to slog through hundreds of dials in order to hit arbitrary activity targets
• That means morale improved
• Tenure is improved
• You get the picture.

So just start calling people that answer the phone, and reach out to the others through email and LinkedIn.

If you want help setting this up, let me know.