How to make a successful cold call in 8 simple steps

If you work within sales, recruitment, marketing and advertising, or something of equally high-pressure, then at some point you will have to make a cold call to a prospect or potential customer.

This might seem like an outdated method when we can send an email to a thousand strangers at the press of a button, but in actual fact, your phone is still your greatest ally.

Customers in the UK currently receive more than 60 million cold calls and texts a day, and research indicates that 92 percent of all customer interactions still happen over the phone. So, even though cold calling has an often wavering relationship with the public, you can ignore the doom-mongers who say that it is ‘dead’, because it absolutely isn’t.

Targeted cold calls are still your best bet for making immediate contact with a prospect and winning them over to your proposition. Yet, despite the importance of cold calling, 85 percent of customers claim to be dissatisfied with their phone experience after having spoken to a sales professional.

The fact that so many potential customers are responding negatively should send a shiver down the spine of every sales professional in the UK. Why should it worry you? Because if you and your team aren’t winning over customers, then how are you going to convert them and hit those all-important targets?

But if you’re not the greatest sales-person in the world, or harbour an active dislike of cold calling, how can you even begin to master this so-called ‘dark art’ and ensure you get the response you’re hoping for? 

Expert Market asked consumers about their worst cold-calling experiences and used these real-life examples to create a best-practice guide to help you make the most of every call. Just follow these tips and you’ll soon be on your way to cold calling success.

Read the September 2016 issue of Business Review Europe magazine. 

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