Cold Calling for B2B Software Sales?

#1

Good morning guys! I need some quick tips on making cold calls in B2B software sales.

I do all cold outreach and so far ONLY through email and Linkedin. Nearly nobody I speak to from that outreach knows our brand/company. It is a competitive space with many options for this software, and while we are probably one of the best (if not the best), we’re pretty pricey.

1-5% of companies contacted schedule a call, and out of those, I would say 85% are quality leads/people who are truly interested in the solution.

Now, I want to try cold calling. I have no strategy and wanted some feedback. How many people would you call per company targeted? Would you mention you are calling others? Any tips on scripting? Any general ideas/time of day to call, etc.?

#3

We always advocated cold calling, but cold calling well is difficult.

For scripting, our talk track had two key things. 1, we said the entire thing up front. No dancing around with the “Hi, how are you?” pleasantries. I get that you want to be kind, but the kindest thing to do is be respectful of their time and be forthright with your reason for calling.

2, we always posed our request as a request for help. Diving in and asking for a meeting right away soured a lot of folks. Instead, we would often say “I’m hoping I can ask for your help. I saw you lead X team, and we work with similar teams at companies A, B, and C to do bla bla bla. Who should I be directing my outreach towards for bla bla bla on your team?”

Because of this, we either got really good advice or a meeting with who we called. Follow up emails now had a touch of credibility and social proof (your boss pointed me to you and said you’ve been doing this for a couple years) which created good downstream effects.

#4

Just to add to the good advice by Doyle and Akhil: I recommend researching the prospect well. Have a look at the company’s business priorities and understand the lingo they are using. Check the contacts’ LinkedIn & Twitter feed to see the topics he/she is active on. Search for events the contact participated.

Then link this to your value proposition.

#5

Hi all,

Thanks for the advice in the thread

I have followed these steps and whereas it has led to a good bump in conversions at the time of demo, the replies for emails are still miniscule.

So the current situation of my product sales [product is trimpixel.com BTW] is that :

  1. I have a low email response rate
  2. I have a decent conversion rate post virtual demo

Please suggest

#6

We’ve tried cold calling with our team as well and I have to say it has amazing ROI. Also currently looking into some automatic prospecting where a company/agency (it’s called Sales Booster by Leadspicker) reaches out to appx. 1500 prospects in our name and the potential customer book a call with me through calendly. Works great too