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Scaling Up Sales with Cold Calling 2.0

June 4, 2015
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min read time
Sam Aparicio
Sam Aparicio
Co-founder & CEO, Ring.io
Scaling Up Sales with Cold Calling 2.0

Cold calling 2.0 is the rare case in which the sequel turns out to be much better than the original. When you cultivate your pipeline and prime your prospects for a call, you have a much better chance of success.

So you’ve tried cold calling 2.0, and the results are promising. Your reps are pleased to be dealing with more qualified leads, and the bottom-line benefits are showing up clearly in your sales data.

Now it’s time to scale, and you need the right strategy to get the job done effectively.

At Sales Hacker NYC, ToutApp’s Daniel Barber introduced the “Sales Feedback Loop”, a process he uses to continuously improve ToutApp’s sales process. If your sales team is trying to scale up their cold calling 2.0 efforts, this process can work for you too.

1. Iterate Your Ideal Customer Profile

You probably have an ideal customer profile or at least an idea of who your ideal customers are.

Cold calling 2.0 is a process of opportunity. It’s great for targeting the customers you already know you’re looking for, but it also allows you to expand your opportunities. Sometimes, that means getting more specific, and personalizing for key segments of your existing target group. In other cases, it means branching out to target totally new market segments.

The important thing is to keep evolving. Iterate your ideal customer profile by looking for ways to personalize, and identifying opportunities to find new targets.

As Daniel Barber puts it, “the future of sales lies in achieving personalization at scale.” It’s a worthy goal, and one that perfectly sums up the intersection between today’s technology and the realities of the modern market.

From there, you move on to your outreach – the calls and emails you use to fill your pipeline.

2. Give Your Team the Tools to Succeed

Outreach is a crucial element of cold calling 2.0. The testing opportunities really open up from there. With the right tools, you can increase productivity while continuously testing things like messaging and targeting.

Consider email automation tools like ToutApp to optimize the lead qualification process. Automation provides email templates, easy a/b testing, and analytics so your reps can grow their skills over time.

With cold calling 2.0, you can also gain a major advantage by providing your team with better calling tools beyond just their cell phones. Your telephony platform improves productivity with tools like power dialing to quickly run through lists of prospects, and voicemail drop to leave prerecorded voicemails when prospects don’t answer.

On the management side, these tools give you more opportunities to coach your team effectively.

3. Track the Right Metrics

No matter which cold calling strategies you’ve used in the past, you likely tracked at least weekly qualification calls and monthly qualified opportunities. That’s a solid place to start.

As you scale, you’ll want to take a more granular approach to the metrics you track. Train your focus on the most important details, and look forward to develop a predictable, reliable process.

ToutApp’s analytics dashboard

Given the importance of qualifying leads with cold calling 2.0, you’ll definitely want to track items like email open rate and number of connects.

The big ticket item, however, is your lead velocity rate. Bottom line, how does your qualified lead generation growth look month over month? This metric is important because it will determine just how fast you can scale.

One of the great things about scaling cold calling 2.0, besides the productivity benefits, is that it should be very easy to get your reps on board with the process.

With qualified leads, cold calling becomes much less intimidating, and much more efficient. Your reps will be free to spend more timing closing deals, and you’ll have all the tools you need to coach them effectively throughout the growth process.

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