Cold Calling Tips to Help Your Business in 2024

3 Cold Calling Tips for Success

Small business owners often wear many hats, making it challenging to find time for things like prospecting for new customers. And if you’ve ever been asked to make a cold call, you might have felt a little apprehensive. After all, cold calling can be a bit daunting – you’re essentially calling someone out of the blue and trying to sell them something. However, cold calling doesn’t have to be scary, and it can actually be quite effective for driving sales and helping your business meet and exceed its goals.

What is Cold Calling?

So what is cold calling? Cold calling is simply the act of making a phone call to someone who you think might be interested in your product or service. It’s called “cold” because you’re not dealing with a warm lead – that is, someone who has already expressed interest in what you’re offering.

Cold Calling in 2024 and 2025?

Times are changing, and while many marketing and sales strategies have evolved towards digital tools and solutions, many businesses still rely heavily on old-fashioned cold calling. So, does cold calling still work in today’s business landscape?

The answer is yes and no. Cold calling can still be an effective way to reach new customers, but it needs to be done correctly to be successful. After all, anyone who could be a potential customer or client will almost certainly own and have access to a phone. So it makes sense why so many sales teams still incorporate cold calls into their sales strategy. Maybe not as much as they did in the 90s, but it can still be found in the mix.

Part of the reason why cold calling could be found in sales strategies as of 2024 can be seen within these cold-calling stats:

• 57% of C-level buyers prefer to be contacted by phone (RAIN Group)
• Cold call conversion rate is above 0 at 2% (LinkedIn)
• 82% of buyers say they have accepted meetings with salespeople after a series of contacts beginning with sales cold calls (RAIN Group)
• 69% of buyers report that they accepted one or more cold calls in 2019. (RAIN Group)

Here are 3 sales tips to help you get prepared for making cold calls.

Who is Cold Calling for?

Let’s face it, cold calling isn’t for everyone. Calling strangers who likely haven’t heard of your company before isn’t for the weak-hearted. Most of the time, they will say they are not interested, especially if the cold caller isn’t professional or respectful. So you must have someone resilient and able to deal with rejection doing your cold calling. Whether you are a business owner down a sales rep, the skills and mindset needed to be good at making cold calls are the same. This is why it’s also important to remember that practice makes perfect. So here are three tips to help start or strengthen your cold-calling journey.

3 Cold Calling Tips

These cold calling tips may seem obvious, but they’re usually undervalued.

1. Do your research.

The first step to successful cold calling is to do your research. You need to know who your ideal customer is and what their pain points are. This will help you determine what to say when you’re on the call so that you can address those pain points. It will also help you know where to look for potential customers. The other most important aspect of doing your research is the ability to personalize your call, helping you to find more commonalities and potentially build a stronger connection.

2. Have a script.

Once you know who your ideal customer is and what their pain points are, you need to create a script. This doesn’t mean that you should read from a piece of paper verbatim, but having a general outline of what you want to say will help keep you focused and on track. Going back to the ability to personalize the call, try to stay natural instead of forming a robotic tone that occasionally happens when reading aloud.

3. Be prepared to answer questions.

When making a sales pitch, there’s always a chance that the person on the other end will have questions. You must be prepared to answer those questions to keep the conversation going and eventually close the sale, or at least book another call. Within your script might be the answer to some common questions or responses that you could potentially hear.

Start With These Cold Calling Tips

Cold calling can be a great way to find new customers for your small business, but you must do it correctly. While most businesses rely on digital marketing strategies to help generate leads, incorporating these cold calling tips into your strategy can help strengthen your overall plan of attack for your business. By following these cold calling tips, you’ll be well on your way to success. Just remember to be prepared—it’s worth it!

View our sales resources if you need help with your sales strategy. Alternatively, you can work with me, benefiting from my sales consulting services, or with a sales professional providing cold calling services. You can also find experienced and not-so-experienced cold callers on Fiverr.