5 Cold Calling Trends To Keep You Competitive In 2023

Outbound sales, especially cold calling, is a constant arms race of tactics and technology. 

As the saying goes, “to be the man, you gotta beat the man.” In this case, “the man” just happens to be every one of your competitors on every single call. Any edge you can get could be the difference between hitting or missing your quota. Every second wasted could be an opportunity lost. 

To help keep you as competitive as possible, your friends at FluentStream have put together this list of the top trends and tools you should be implementing this year. After all, the sales game is always changing, always escalating, and only those who can adapt will make it big. 

1. TAKE ADVANTAGE OF LOCAL AREA CODES

Local presence dialing is a sales tactic that matches your outbound phone number to the area code you dialed. Why is that so important, especially in the cutthroat game of cold calling? Bcause surveys have found that people are 4x more likely to answer a call from a local number

That’s four times more connections with the people you’re calling, four times the opportunities to make your pitch, and four times the likelihood you’ll hit your sales quota.

For example, say your office is based in Austin, TX. That gives you easy access to 512 or 737 area codes (if you're lucky), but what happens when you try to connect with prospects in Seattle or New York? They take one look at your caller ID and send you straight to voicemail. That’s what happens. 

Of course, area code matching only works if you already do business in the area. That's what keeps it from being number spoofing (which is both illegal and highly icky).

With one change, local area code matching gives you all the perks of being a local business without all the hassle of making splashy announcements or opening new locations. Plus, with FluentStream, there are no complicated settings you need to set up or manage. Just let us know the markets you care about most, and we’ll find the perfect local phone numbers to make sure all of your calls go out looking as friendly and local as the lemonade stand next door.

2. PRE-RECORD YOUR VOICEMAILS

When you’re in the cold calling business, it’s inevitable that you’ll be getting sent straight to voicemail. A lot… 

Hearing that beep over and over again can get discouraging quickly, making it increasingly difficult to nail your script with excitement and confidence hour after hour. 

FluentStream’s Voicemail Drop feature immediately puts this problem to bed by allowing you to pre-record sales voicemails and then “drop” them right into your prospect’s inbox. Leave your best pitch every time.

The time you’ll save by not individually recording every voicemail is impressive in its own right, but the true benefit of Voicemail Drop is its effect on team morale. Never again will your salespeople be worn down by the constant cycle of listening to voicemail greetings and pretending this isn’t the 20th time you’ve left the same message today. Now everyone stays fresh, ready to step into the spotlight when your prospects actually pick up the phone. 

Using Voicemail Drop, our own sales team has seen more callbacks and a 60% increase in call volume each day. I’m sure they’d love a chance to teach you the ways of their success.

3. INTEGRATE YOUR PHONE SYSTEM WITH SALESFORCE

These days, having a phone system that integrates with Salesforce has gone from a hot trend to a necessity. Dialing prospects becomes both faster and more convenient. Tracking leads, call data, marketing campaign results, and regional patterns goes from a logistical nightmare to an automated process. 

I cannot overstate the everyday benefits enough

A direct Salesforce integration means you get a screen pop with every call, detailing all the info your Salesforce already knows about them: caller’s name, company, previous notes, etc. 

No more having to awkwardly put prospects on hold while you scour your system for their account. Just think of all the different ways you’ll be able to personalize sales calls when you don’t have to waste everyone’s time hunting for information. Now your team can start every conversation armed with all the details they need to spend less time discovering, and more time actually selling.

Integrating Salesforce with your phones is obviously quite powerful, and that’s why it’s not possible with just any system. You need cloud-hosted communications like FluentStream with the reliability and expertise to meet your company’s unique needs.

4. USE SOCIAL SELLING TO WARM UP YOUR COLD CALLS

No matter how good your trainees are, they’ll inevitably make mistakes. And when they do, it’s a good thing business VoIP systems let you enable automatic recording on your extensions. 

With automatic recording, there’s no he-said-she-said or blind “the customer’s always right.” mantra. Instead, it’s easy to review the call and give pointers on how to handle similar situations in the future.

Don’t have time to review calls with your trainees as soon they happen? Don’t worry! All your recordings are stored in the cloud, ready and waiting for you to pluck them back down to earth and help your customer service agents get even better. 

5. ALWAYS BE READY WITH VISUAL FOLLOW-UP

I won’t lie to you… The amount of effort required to execute this tip is substantial if you don’t already have a good amount of sales collateral onhand. However, the benefits of following up any sales interaction — from cold call to proposal — with meaningful content is more than worth it. 

The underlying psychology is simple enough — everything you say during your first call is just words, but the moment you send over something for a prospect to look at, to hold in their hand, it becomes real. 

Even if it’s just a “thanks for your time” email featuring your company logo and smiling face, always give prospects a visual reference. Ideally though, you’ll be able to provide more substantial follow-up such as an introductory video, product demo, or a one-pager explaining your services.  

Keep in mind as you’re crafting follow-up content that, even if you only sell a single product, the needs of every prospect are unique. Some will inevitably be looking for different benefits than others. So, for each piece of content you produce, try to find ways to make multiple versions that talk about your business in different ways. 

Creating a proper catalogue of collateral to follow up on your cold calls will take time and effort, but the increased level of service you’ll be able to bring to the table is well worth it. 


For more tips on how your sales team can increase their cold calling success rate in 2021, contact us at sales@fluentstream.com or by calling 303-GO-CLOUD and selecting Option 1.

Across the country, stay-at-home guidelines are being lifted and slowly, one by one, companies are starting to invite employees back to work. Things may not be back to normal, whatever that word even means anymore, but they’ll certainly be closer to the work environment we’re used to. 

Working from home posed numerous new challenges for businesses, but it also provided an opportunity to try out new ways of “working." 

Some of these, like taking a work call without wearing pants, are better left for when you are working from home. But there’s no need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are plenty of productivity ideas that you’ve been experimenting while at home that can enhance your ability to work when you are back in your office. 

1. Write Yourself Daily and Weekly Task Lists

In our 10 Trusty Tips for Working from Home, we discussed how setting agendas ahead of time leads to higher productivity. While your office has probably fewer distractions than your home, writing manageable task lists at the start of every week and every day is a great way to stay focused no matter what curveballs come your way.

It’s called hyperbolic discounting, and it works the same way that making a shopping list beforehand helps keep you from buying unhealthy or unnecessary food. Especially during the excitement of returning to the office, it’s equally important to stay on-task and not over-commit. Having concrete, achievable goals laid out for both your day and week is an easy way to accomplish both.

2. End Your Day by Starting a Fun Project

Whether you’re working from home or back at your desk, starting a new project can be daunting (especially first thing in the morning). If you’re like me, you tend to procrastinate by getting a cup of coffee, chatting with the receptionist, getting a second cup of coffee, checking ESPN, getting a third cup of… you get the idea.

Instead, try to plan out and even start new projects at the end of your day so you can dive right in the next morning. The fewer mental hurdles there are between you and productive work, the less likely you are to stumble over some distraction or another.

Plus, this strategy allows you to look at your projects with a fresh set of eyes before you get too far to change course if needed. Especially when it comes to editing or long-term planning, I find that looking over my afternoon ideas with a morning mindset saves me from a lot of headaches.

3. Schedule Shorter Meetings More Often

As everyone adapted to the disjointed pace of working from home, it became much more difficult to schedule meetings with multiple people.

Kids needed to be attended to. Lunch wasn’t going to make itself and. And naps, well, naps needed to be taken.

By necessity, team or department powwows were boiled down to the truly essential topics and questions.

Instead of going back to the way things used to be – with meetings so long you had to order food in the middle of them just to keep employees invested – continue keeping things short and to the point. If a question doesn’t involve everyone present, save it for a direct message. If you haven’t yet made progress on a project, don’t bother bringing it up. Questions like “How was everyone’s weekend?” may break the ice, but if your team is anything like ours, they always lead to lengthy tangents.

Much like we suggest setting task lists for yourself every day, always set agendas with your meeting invites and then stick to them.

4. Keep Forwarding Your Calls When You’re at the Office

While working remotely, making sure that your calls were being forwarded to your cell phone was a necessity. Now that you’re back in the office with your beloved desk phone, is it still?

Yes!

No matter how much of the day you spend at your desk, there are still opportunities for you to miss important calls. Maybe you got bamboozled into a string of meetings. Maybe you went out for lunch with a few coworkers you haven’t seen for a while. Maybe you just decided to stretch your legs and take a lap around the office. Whatever the case, having your extension forwarded to your cell phone makes sure you never miss a thing – just like it did at home.

5. Don’t be Afraid to Set Work Time Boundaries

At home, surrounded by partners, kids, and pets all clamoring for our attention, many of us were forced to set “Do Not Disturb” hours. These peaceful, critical time blocks allowed us to buckle down and focus on projects without fear of interruption.

Don’t be afraid to do the same at your office. Coworkers constantly stopping by your desk to chat or ask questions can derail your train of thought just as quickly as a hungry toddler.

For example, I block off the start and end of every week for the administrative tasks I tend to forget. On Monday morning, it helps me set priorities for the week. On Friday afternoons, it’s the time I take to send follow up/reminder emails and be sure we’re making good progress on long-term projects.

6. Work Out Before Work

Stuck at home for months, morning workouts became mandatory if you wanted to combat the lethargy and snack intake of quarantine. They also helped wake up your brain and start every day with a win.

Waking up early to work out before your morning commute may not sound like the most enjoyable thing in the world, but it will allow you to carry the benefits back into your normal work life. I can tell you from personal experience that I’ve only been drinking about half as much coffee since I started doing yoga instead of hitting snooze until right before my morning meeting.

7. Maintain Your New and Improved Work-Life Balance

I just have a grumpy cat to take care of during these uncertain times, so I turned to our very own Marketing Director Eli Gurock to explain how the extended period of working from home has affected his scheduling.

“My wife and I plan meals and child care responsibilities for the week on Sunday evenings. When we were both working from home, we talked about who had early morning or late afternoon meetings and calls so the other knew when they’d need to put their Primary Parent hat on. 

Now that we’re back in the office, those Sunday planning sessions are just as helpful to talk about daycare pick up duties and deadlines for when we each need to be home.” 

One of the most important lessons to take from this pandemic is that sometimes it’s okay to plan more around your family and less around your office. Keep doing what’s best for you and you’ll notice how much more productive you are at work without the added stresses you left behind.

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