Always. Be. Closing. For a long time, it was the motto of any worthwhile salesperson.
But things change. In our modern, digitally-driven world, the script has been flipped a bit.
At ZoomInfo, we care about the sales numbers, but we know to get there we must: Always. Be. Relevant.
When you rush to close a sale, you don’t have the time to harness key insights about your prospects — leaving you high and dry during your sales calls. These tidbits can be the difference between an average sale and a humongous deal.
We offer solutions to discover, organize, and implement priceless insights for your cold calling process.
How to Improve Cold Calls Using Sales Intelligence
More than half of sales professionals (53%) give up easily when cold calling, mostly thanks to phone anxiety and fear of rejection. Getting the wrong name, title, or basic company details from inaccurate data makes this anxiety even worse.
Prospects expect you to know about their business, accurate sales intelligence, combined with a tailored pitch, increases the chance of a successful customer relationship.
A failure to invest in the right tools or intelligence wastes countless hours, puts dents in company budgets, and decreases sales team morale.
What Sales Intelligence Do I Need for an Effective Cold Call?
These data points (some more crucial than others) are essential for any communication with your prospect:
- Name – contact and company
- Title – including department and management level
- Direct dial phone number – to avoid the switchboard gatekeeper
- Email – crucial for follow-ups!
- Location – the closer, the better for meetups
- Relationships with other companies – “Hello, I’ve worked with your partner [insert company], would you be interested in our services as well?”
- Industry – how can your product or service work in your prospect’s industry?
- Tech stacks used – how can your product leverage techs your prospects use?
- Recent company moves – “Hello, congratulations on your recent [promotion, merger, product launch]!”
Steps to Make an Effective Data-Driven Cold Call
With this gathered data, along with a solid prospecting process, you can clear away road bumps in your cold calls. Here are steps to a smoother cold calling flow:
- Before the call: Customize your pitch precisely to your prospect’s interests.
- During the call: Make sure your pitch includes a proper introduction, positioning statement, walkthrough of benefits, and meeting proposition.
- Afterward: Follow up! Emails are the usual go-to, but remember to leave a voicemail if they don’t answer.
Cold Call Example Script Using Sales Intelligence
This is a great script for directly tackling a prospect’s pain points. But this sort of implementation can’t happen without knowing where and how to get the right sales intelligence.
“Hello [prospect], this is [your name] from [your company], How are you today?”
“First I want to say congratulations on your promotion! Being a director is an exciting position. I work with information security executives in software companies looking to optimize their cybersecurity tools. Does this also sound like you?”
“Does your team still use [antiquated digital tool]? I want to hear what challenges you face in your typical work day with [said tool].”
“I’m hearing that you could use a leg up in your security systems. Would you like to set up a meeting so we can further discuss how I can help you with that?”
For more on cold prospecting, explore sales outreach texting.
How Can I Get the Right Intelligence for My Cold Call?
Gathering prospect insights isn’t just finding names, numbers, and emails. You have to find out exactly who you are calling, what their company’s goals and strategies are, and why they would be interested in your product or service for effective selling.
Find the Exact Prospect Data You Need.
The ZoomInfo Search function helps you discover companies and contacts fit to purchase from your organization.
With its advanced filters, you can narrow down potential leads exactly in your target audience. These findings are able to be exported to your favorite sales tool, and your searches can be saved for future research.
Be the First to Know About Your Target Audience
Setting up Alerts saves you time finding new potential leads and staying up to date with relevant news.
You can set up customized triggers to track exactly which companies and contacts you want to stay on top of. Alerts tracks news, technologies, and funding specific to your targeted selling campaigns.
Our Intent tool pinpoints vital information for possible purchasing decisions from targeted audiences by tracking content consumption.
With signal filters, you can find information that completes the puzzle to your selling strategies. Intent helps time exactly when you should jump in for a value proposition, and offers a subscription option to consistently receive fresh intel.
ZoomInfo Solutions Just for Sales
Sales professionals have their own unique goals and workflows, which means they need solutions tailored to their specific tasks.
ZoomInfo offers solutions that integrate with CRMs, sales engagement platforms, and other popular sales tools. Here is what is offered for better, more efficient salesflows:
All-in-One Sales Acceleration
Our brand new solution Engage improves campaign efficiency by streamlining communications and managing touchpoints.
Engage tracks email activity from receivers and identifies which ones have the most engagement. Calling time is also optimized with an integrated autodialer and a bank for pre-recorded voicemails.
So let’s say you’ve put together a solid email campaign and it’s ready to go out to your targeted prospects. After they’re sent to your filtered contacts, the Engage feed alerts which receivers opened your emails and engaged with attached content.
With the integrated communication functions you can place cold calls to the most engaged prospects, leave voicemails, and send follow-up emails. And after the hard work is put in, you can view and analyze gathered analytics showing the most optimal calling times, salesflows, and engagement tactics
Website Insight Tracking
Our Chrome extension ReachOut gives direct access to contact and company intelligence while you’re browsing the web.
It gives in-depth insights when you’re browsing company webpages or LinkedIn accounts without having to switch tabs. These insights can be pushed into CRM or SDR tools with the exporting function.
If you’re browsing IT security company sites, you’re able to see their company profile, employees, recent news, technologies used, and hierarchy structure. You find the decision-makers with their contact information which you can then export into your CRM for future outreach.
Final Considerations on Using Sales Intelligence for Cold Calling
Cold calling in itself is already an old-fashioned sales tactic, but utilizing insights with digital tools brings the practice into the 21st century.
Hurrying the sales cycle for a close, instead of taking the time to connect, often dissuades prospects within the early buying stages.
Investing in sales intelligence drives sales reps to act meaningfully — even in cold calling. This helps build more significant customer relationships that last.