Outsource cold calling – Is it right for your business

CRMNext shares that 69% of buyers accepted one or more cold calls from a salesperson in 2022, showing that it is still an effective method for a sales team. Outsourcing cold calling is a common method that businesses use to increase efficiency and win more sales. In this article, we will look at how you can outsource your cold calling and if it is right for your business.

What is a cold call?

Firstly, it is important to distinguish what a cold call is. A cold call is when a sales representative will contact a prospect through a phone call as the first point of contact. This is the first time that a potential customer will become aware of your business and the product or service that you are offering. Forbes highlights that the cold call success rate is about 2%, meaning it will take a lot of calls before having a successful one. This can take up a lot of time for your sales representatives, which is why outsourcing your cold calling may be the way forward.

What does outsourcing cold calling entail?

Outsourcing your cold calling is when you give the responsibility of your cold calls to a third-party company. They will take over the cold-calling process for your business with a dedicated team of professionals working on behalf of your company. This will allow your business’s sales representatives to focus on different methods to generate prospects.

Different types of cold calling services:

There are multiple different types of cold calling services that businesses can choose to get done out of house. These include:

• Lead generation cold calls – Make calls to generate new leads for your business.
• Appointment cold calls – Attempt to schedule meetings with prospects.
• Direct selling cold calls – Sell your product or service directly to the customer on the phone.

There are multiple steps you should take with your cold-calling partner to make sure you get the best results for each of these services:

Define your target audience – Your out-of-house partner should have a clear insight into who your target audience is.  Clearly define whom you are targeting and share your customer persona with your partner to ensure you try to obtain high-quality leads.

Define your brand image – You will need your outsourcing partner to be able to reflect your business’s tone and brand image when they are making calls on your behalf. Make sure that you define what your brand image is, explaining your business’s beliefs, values and tone to make sure you are being represented well.

Share “do not call lists” – If your business has a “do not call” list, make sure this is shared with your partner. For example, you do not want your partner to call prospects you are already engaging with on other platforms as it may become overwhelming for them.

Choose the right company – Research the company that you are looking to outsource your cold calls to and find out their track record. Make sure they are a company that has proven itself to generate good results through cold calls. Moreover, find out if the company values and ideals match your business to ensure a consistent service is provided.

Benefits of outsourcing cold calls

You will get invaluable benefits by outsourcing your cold calls such as:

Boost in productivity – Outsourcing your cold calls will give your sales representatives the opportunity to focus their resources on other sales tasks, helping boost your business’s productivity and efficiency.

Decrease your costs – While you may not realise it at first glance, outsourcing your cold calls can help decrease your costs. Menemshagroup highlights that businesses spend around $2000 to provide coaching for cold calling alone. If you outsource your cold calls, costs like this will be decreased, lowering your operational outflows.

Get better lead generation results – Get better lead generation results as your team will focus their efforts to generate leads from other sources such as email, while your outsourcing partner will specialise in generating leads from cold calls.

Your partner will follow up – Your out-of-house partner that is doing your cold call process will also follow up with these customers for your business. Usually, it will take multiple calls to talk to a decision-maker which your outsourcing partner will make.

Challenges of outsourcing cold calls

Some challenges you must be aware of when considering outsourcing your cold calling process are:

Risk of a divided focus – When your own sales representatives are making your cold calls, it is easier to make sure they are focusing on the right points like unique features. With out-of-house partners, it can be more challenging to ensure the correct points are being explained on the cold calls.

Difficult to adapt strategy – It can be difficult for outsourcing partners to adapt the strategy your businesses use to interact with customers. Your business may be more disconnected from the cold calling process, leading to the strategy and approach disjointed from your other communication methods.

Less control – With an out-of-house cold-calling team, you will not have as much control as you would with your own sales representatives. Great out-of-house providers will let you monitor and listen to cold calls, however, there will still be less control compared to an in-house cold calling team.

Track your lead generation success with TEB

Track your lead generation methods to easily strategize how to generate more prospects and boost your sales with TEB, the sales automation CRM software. TEB will increase your business’s data visibility, streamline your sales process and help you prioritize the right leads to increase your sales. Get invaluable benefits such as:

• Access control – Provide data access to your outsourcing company by granular level access control meaning they have only access to what you allow them to.
• Drill down on your data – Generate reports to drill down on the data you want to see
• Organise your leads – Organise your leads to view what your best lead source is and how your cold calls are performing.
• Fast lead response times – Set leads from different channels, like cold calls, to be automatically assigned to your sales representatives when they are generated to improve lead response times.
• Track the performance of your teams – View how your teams are performing with how many leads are being generated and how many deals are being won or lost.

Interested in seeing for yourself how TEB will increase your sales and grow your business? Quickly book a demo with us where we can quickly show you first-hand how TEB will transform your business.