This is a guest blog by Esben Keim, the Head of Business Development and Strategy at Zisson Wave.
Sales processes are going digital and with new technology comes new opportunities. At the same time, it’s never been harder to convert new customers or to get their attention—to be successful, a combined multichannel strategy is the most effective way forward.
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost), LTV (Life Time Value), and ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) are very common KPIs used in sales and customer acquisition management. Digital channels often support a relatively low cost for recruiting the next customer, and in general are an efficient way to perform sales—if it works, the conversion rate is usually low, with cold emails only resulting in 0.2-0.5% clicking through to offers. Digital channels also support predictable statistics and input for KPI follow-up and are very helpful for professionals.
Digital channels don’t work for all, though, and a blended multichannel dialogue works far better for reaching out to a composed group of customers. To be successful in a blended customer dialogue, you must be good at managing multiple disciplines at the same time. The tech side, with efficient tools supporting quality processes, tracking, workflow, and ease of use are on one side. On the other, recruiting, managing, and motivating people to improve and deliver results over time. Some believe data and technology will further combine to allow salespeople to become superhuman relationship-building machines—but only time will tell!
It’s hard to predict the future, and most businesses must perform and deliver results every day. A systematic approach to cold calling is still an attractive and efficient way to create businesses. After speaking to Stein Dale—founder of Venezu—and his experience with making more than a million cold calls and creating more than a billion NOK in revenue for his clients, I’m convinced about the art of cold calling. Most people don’t like it, but most people don’t like repeating things over and over again. It’s hard to stay focused for the long periods of time that cold calling demands.
Mr. Dale’s experience and advice for successful cold sales can be summarized to several points:
- Make a script, develop it systematically, and tailor it to your audience.
- Be precise and short, and keep it simple—only one message.
- Use your voice to “create pictures” for your listener.
- Have a system for supporting efficient and focused dialogue.
As Mr. Dale says in his last point, be systematic. Efficient technology and routines are musts. Access to information about who and when to call, and the message that’s being delivered, is a must. A system with access to information like automatic logging and routing, calendars, one-click access to previous conversations in multiple channels and, of course, a tracking process tailored to the message supporting the final goal for the activity, will help you achieve your goals.
To learn more about cold calling and meet Mr. Dale, join the Zoho webinar “Cold Calling: Best Practices” on October 11th, at 9.00AM CEST (Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish time). The webinar will be held in Norwegian.
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