With not only a marketing background, I have a lot of experience in selling capital equipment and developing new markets. It was then with disgust that I was told by a client that he is having trouble with his sales staff as they don’t like to cold call.
Their excuse was that during the mad boom times, customers rang in enquiries. Maybe I am ranting but in my opinion, the office takes the enquiries and the sales team has two roles, build strong relationships with existing customers and creates new sales opportunities. Knocking on doors of potential new customers is one of the best ways to research what the marketwants and how to respond to changing times.I understand that knocking on doors can be challenging and you may come head to head with someone having a bad day however these tools will assist you in increasing your conversion rate to make your cold calls red hot.Research your existing sales: this is a simple way to increase your sales rapidly and decrease sales cycle. By looking over at the industries and type of businesses in your client list, you should be able to discover why they use you and start to begin targeting this sectorUse marketing material: If you can leave quality customer focused marketing material such as catalogue/flyer/Marketing video with the potential client, it gives them time to discover if your product/service will benefit themUse social media such as Linkedin to create connections with companies in your target market to help forge brand loyalty.Finally work with your marketing department to optimise the company website to make it more attractive to prospective clients, Use email marketing for regular sales promotions and send them to all your contacts in your database.By researching your marketplace, your customer needs combined with indebt knowledge of why your existing customers should your goods, Cold calling should never be a problem.
P.s If it still is, maybe sales is not for you!