Traditional Cold Calling Sucks!

In the previous post, we explored the common mistake CEOs and management make when it comes to growth planning shared by “Predictable Revenue”. Now, let’s discuss why you should stop traditional cold calling and how to implement a new strategy.

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Cold Calling 2.0: The Modern Approach

Traditional cold calling is often inefficient and time-consuming, leading to conflicts between SDRs and AEs due to poor lead quality. As a team lead, it's essential to experiment and develop an effective sales process that everyone enjoys, rather than wasting time.

The Experiment and The Breakthrough

The authors found that salespeople often spend excessive time identifying decision-makers instead of engaging with them. Their goal was to reduce this time. They conducted an experiment:

• Group 1: Sent 100 emails to Fortune 5000 executives with a typical sales pitch (e.g., "Do you face these challenges?")

• Group 2: Sent 100 emails to the same list asking for referrals to the appropriate person.

The referral approach significantly outperformed the traditional one, achieving a 10x higher reply rate. This resulted in a 500% increase in outcomes, generating 11 highly qualified sales opportunities that progressed into active sales cycles.

Simply increasing email volume doesn't drive growth. Focus on streamlining each stage of the sales journey.

Why You Need Cold Calling 2.0

Traditional techniques are becoming less effective due to:

• Buyer Resistance: Buyers are increasingly resistant to traditional cold calls.

• Advanced Sales Technologies: Modern tools make it easier to measure the ROI of prospecting methods.

• Marketing Accountability: Executives demand clear ROI on marketing budgets, often finding that cold calling programs are less productive in revenue terms.

Developing a Team with Cold Calling 2.0 Strategies

Three principles are crucial:

• No Cold Calling: Use new methods to prospect into cold accounts, such as generating referrals to the right contacts.

• Focus on Results: Track metrics like qualified leads rather than the number of dials and calls per day.

• Process-Driven Approach: Implement management practices, hiring, training, and prospecting strategies to make revenue predictable.

Case Study: How HyperQuality Tripled Their Results in 90 Days

HyperQuality faced challenges with low-quality inbound leads from SEO and Pay-per-click programs, such as:

• Budget wasn’t defined or way too small. 

• The decision maker had no idea that some juniors were doing research. 

• The inbound lead didn’t have a clear need, they were just looking around. 

• The inquiry had no timeframe.

To meet growth targets, HyperQuality needed a significant pipeline increase.

The SVP of Sales & Marketing at HyperQuality at that time decided to implement the Cold Calling 2.0 outbound sales process including:

• Dedicated Outbound Role: Created a role focused 100% on prospecting.

• No Cold Calls: Used the Cold Calling 2.0 email process to get referrals.

• Focused AEs: Account Executives focused solely on closing deals and prospecting a small number of key accounts.

The result was remarkable. HyperQuality increased lead generation from two to eight per month with just one part-time SDR.

Slays! Weekly is where you will receive insights from business gurus to help you excel in Asia markets. Stay tuned as we explore how to implement and execute Cold Calling 2.0 in your company!