Cold sales are essential for growing your business. But it does get a bad rep. We get it. Nobody’s excited when they get a cold sale pitch—annoyed, maybe.
That’s what happens when you don’t have a solid strategy. There are various ways to make cold sales work for your business. We’re here to help you find your footing.
So, if you want to thrive in sales and not just “survive,”—stick around!
In this article, we’ll be discussing:
- The basics of creating a solid cold sales strategy.
- Different approaches to cold sales.
- Why cold emails are important in sales.
- Overcoming common obstacles in cold sales.
Understanding Cold Sales Strategy
In its basic form, cold sales are selling a product or service to prospects that didn’t have prior intentions of buying from your business. It can be a bit intrusive and ineffective.
Some might say it’s a trivial strategy. But, data says otherwise. According to studies, cold sales bring up to x percentage ROI. That’s higher than most marketing strategies like SEO.
To get the results you want out of cold sales, you need to understand the fundamentals of what makes a great cold sales strategy starting with the following:
- Personalization: Cold sales work because you connect prospects at an individual level. Research their pain points, provide value, and build a relationship with them.
- Market insights: Position yourself as an industry authority. This means being aware of the competition and how you fare against them.
- Being Compliant: Never cold sale to prospects that don’t want your business. It can ruin your reputation and cause you
legal problems. - Qualify Leads: You get better results if you’re cold selling to prospects that are possibly serious about making a purchase. Qualify leads by analyzing their behavior.
- Analyzing Data: Analytics helps your business make data-driven decisions. Each metric can identify where you can improve, what strategies to keep, and what to let go.
You can easily translate these fundamentals over to any cold sale strategy you want to use. Let’s take a look at popular ways of doing cold sales.
Different Approaches to Cold Sales Strategy
Cold selling is a versatile marketing strategy. You could use it in a variety of ways. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to cold sales.
Some might have more success using certain strategies. To help you with the research process, here are the common cold sales strategies:
Phone Calls
Cold calling is probably the first thing that comes to mind when we say cold sales. Businesses calling prospects trying to sell products or services.
Oftentimes, this strategy can be a little pushy. Before calling a number, you need to ensure they’re not on a “Do Not Call Registry.”
If you’re in B2B, you get a higher chance of pushing leads further down the sales pipeline if you call the right people—decision-makers. So, when you do get their valuable contact info, focus on their pain points, deliver value, and analyze the data,
Social Media
Social media marketing is a type of inbound sales strategy you could leverage to attract prospects passively. This is typically done with targeted content.
Unlike phone calls, social media campaigns cover a broader range of prospects. You’d be trading personalization for wider reach and better engagement.
Inbound sales strategies like this bring in better-qualified leads. It’s cost-effective and relatively cheaper than aggressive campaigns like pay-per-click ads.
But, this method produces results slower than outbound marketing strategies like cold sales or cold email.
Events and Networking
Going to events, sponsoring one, or meeting prospects face-to-face is a game changer for cold sales. But you can’t focus on handing out business cards or pitching products.
If you’re in a situation where you get to meet prospects in person, it’ll be the perfect opportunity to build relationships. Learn about their pain points and tailor in your sales pitch to meet their needs. This humanizes your business and makes it more authentic.
Advertising
If you want results fast, advertising is the way to go. There are different ways you can advertise products and services, including PPC, social media ads, display ads, and sponsorships.
PPC or pay-per-click campaigns are by far the most popular types of ads. Advertisers pay for each click on their ad. But you also have to bid on keywords related to what you’re selling.
This can get expensive, especially for competitive keywords. Luckily, there’s an alternative where you can get traction from competitive keywords organically—content marketing.
Content Marketing
One of the best ways to build your brand’s authority, regardless of industry, is through content marketing.
It’s a long-term inbound marketing strategy that can get you leads and sales through quality content that resonates with your target audience.
The key here is creating content that provides immediate value to your prospects by solving pain points.
Doing so keeps you top-of-mind. It also helps you improve your website’s search engine optimization.
Consistently creating quality content that addresses the needs of your prospects can help you attract and convert leads into loyal paying customers.
Cold Email Marketing: A Key Component in Cold Sales Strategy
Cold sales emails are revolutionary in the world of sales. It holds the benefits most of the other strategies have, with little downsides.
For example, cold emails are a great alternative to cold calling as it avoids being intrusive and pushy. It’s also the most used medium of communication today, especially for decision-makers.
Here’s a quick rundown of what you need to know when it comes to cold email.
The Power of Cold Email
Cold emails transcend industries. Any business could use it. In fact, it’s essential not only for growth and sales but to maintain your customer base as well.
We can personalize, automate, and measure cold email campaigns. And we can use it to reach a plethora of business goals. This makes it one of the most flexible strategies out there.
For sales teams, cold email is a powerhouse in lead generation. Data from Quickmail shows the average open rates for cold emails are at 44%.
With a solid email strategy, your cold email response rates could go up to 20% or more. But, that’s just for the first-touch emails. Follow-ups can have a whopping 55% response rate!
The best part is, email is something we can easily automate based on the behavior and responses of our prospects. So, how exactly do we craft the perfect cold email?
Crafting the Perfect Cold Email
Great cold emails follow a simple formula. Never skip out on personalization. Emails need to have attention-grabbing subject lines. And, it should be well-structured with valuable content.
To streamline your workflow, you can incorporate templates you can easily personalize in your cold email marketing strategy. But, if you want to write your own, follow these best practices:
- Always, ALWAYS, Personalize Emails: Personalizing your emails gives you a higher chance of getting responses from prospects. Before crafting your emails, do your research, find what your prospects are interested in, and offer solutions to their pain points.
- Use Engaging Subject Lines: Subject lines are one of the first things prospects are going to see. In fact, some will open an email solely based on the subject line alone. You can add personalization in your subject lines, be descriptive, and keep it concise.
- Structure Your Content: You need to structure content in a way that makes prospects easily understand what you’re trying to accomplish. A popular way to structure an email includes an introduction intro, the content, and a clear call-to-action.
- Create Valuable and Relevant Content: Producing relevant and high-quality content is great for building trust and authority in your space. Write content that provides immediate value or quickly solves a prospect’s pain points. If they want to go further or scale, they’ll have you top-of-mind.
- Include a Clear CTA: Your CTA should be based on your cold email campaign’s goals. In most cases, it’s to schedule a meeting. But, sometimes, a simple reply from prospects could qualify them further down the sales pipeline or nurturing campaigns.
Managing Your Cold Email Campaign
To fully optimize your cold email campaigns, you need a powerful tool that can automate and streamline the work for you. This is where Instantly comes in—a cold email tool by cold emailers for cold emailers.
Unlike other email marketing software, Instantly provides you with unlimited email-sending accounts—which is great because it offers unlimited email warmups.
You don’t have to separate each sending account for different campaigns either. Instantly’s Inbox Rotation feature allows you to add all sending accounts in one campaign.
Track these campaigns with Instantly’s powerful analytics tool that highlights all the relevant metrics for your campaigns in an intuitive dashboard. You can also compare multiple campaigns at the same time, and A/B test in real-time.
But, Instantly’s best feature for cold sales is its ability to automate cold email campaigns and personalization. Instantly can also be integrated with Zapier to create more advanced automation.
Having a tool like Instantly can help any business scale. However, there will always be challenges that every sales team needs to overcome.
Overcoming Common Challenges in Cold Sales Strategy
Cold sales are dynamic. You need to have a flexible strategy to account for the challenges you need to face. But, the most common hurdles sales teams face include the following:
Dealing with Rejection
If you’re in sales, rejections are something you’ll get used to. In fact, statistics from Time to Hire suggest around 80% of sales happen after at least five follow-ups.
But, if you want to succeed in sales, learn that rejections aren’t the end of the world. You shouldn’t take these rejections personally.
Learn every detail about your products or services so you get an immense advantage when talking with prospects. Tie this in with your sales process or sales playbooks.
And, take every opportunity to train and learn. Ask if there are in-house training or mentorship programs to help you out in your sales career. This is essential to overcoming common objections such as:
- Budget: A lack of budget is one of the main objects you’ll encounter. This is true even for qualified leads that are interested in buying your products or services. There will always be financial risks in investing in a new product. Your job is to convince them that your products are high reward and low risk.
- Authority: Cold sales means giving a pitch to companies that have likely never heard of you before. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t be an authority figure in your space. Convince prospects with social proof, valuable content, and market insight.
- Need: Most of the time, prospects would think they don’t need what you’re offering. Address this concern by asking open-ended questions. Their response should give you cues you can use to evaluate how your products can offer value.
- Timing: In sales, you’ll likely hear prospects say, “We don’t need your service at the moment.” This could just be a scheduling issue. Evaluate how urgent their pain points need to be solved and try scheduling another meeting where you can go more in-depth.
Building Trust with Prospects
Most of our immediate response to a cold sale is to probably say “No.” Right from our childhood, we’re already trained to stay away from strangers. In cold sales, you are that stranger.
We need to build trust first. That’s why cold sales emails are effective. The more content you provide that gives immediate value, the more prospects will trust your authority in your niche.
In some cases, you want to create a cold sales campaign that doesn’t focus on how great your products are. Sometimes, you want a campaign that focuses on helping out your prospects. This can lead to conversations that ultimately push prospects further down the sales pipeline.
Staying Motivated and Persistent
Prospects aren’t likely to give you a chance to show how your products can be valuable to their business. Chances are, they’re used to getting hundreds of cold sales every day.
Think of it as a learned defense mechanism. This demands you be more persistent and assertive. You can’t do this if you’re unmotivated with your job after a few rejections.
Common objections can give you insight on how to respond based on their concerns. But, don’t push it. If you’ve said all you can and they rejected your offer twice, let the prospect go.
Just remember, approach every objection with empathy. Learn the reasons for the objections and respond appropriately. With enough practice, you can handle these objections like a pro.
Key Takeaways
Preparation is the key to success in every cold sales campaign. You need to develop a strategy tailored to your business and your audience. Here are some quick tips to get you started:
- Identify which cold sales approach works best for your business.
- Create a protocol or SOP for dealing with rejections.
- Analyze data to track goals and adjust strategies.
If you want to create a solid cold sales strategy around email marketing, Instantly has you covered! Try Instantly for free today!