If you had someone tell you to try cold calling as a marketing strategy for your B2B company, you might have laughed it off, but is it viable?
Because of the differences between marketing business-to-business and business-to-consumer, cold calling is still a very successful strategy for B2B marketing if it is performed correctly.
In the rest of the article, we will look at why this is the case, learn what makes cold calling what it is, see why it does not work as well for B2C marketing, and look at some strategies you can use for your efforts.
Why Is Cold Calling Still Effective for B2B Marketing?
When approaching a customer cold, a marketer’s considerations differ greatly from when the customer is another business.
The most crucial difference is that in B2B marketing, the marketer should have an excellent idea.
What the other business needs, and how the marketer’s company can provide it. This differs from the much more chaotic nature of B2C cold calling, which can seem very random and disruptive to the recipients.
You will still need to approach the situation correctly to achieve the most success in cold calling while marketing B2B. We are going to look at a few tactics, but in the meantime, all of them can be distilled down into three points:
- Good research
- High volume
- Calculated timing
What Is Cold Calling?
A cold call made by a marketer is one where the recipient of the call has made no previous indication that they want to work with your business. In other words, not only are you approaching the customer rather than the other way around, but the customer has not previously given your company their contact details, filled a request for a quote, or anything like that.
Although this may seem like a tactic from a bygone era, it is still a solid marketing strategy. A report from the RAIN Group Center for Sales Research found that 82% of buyers in a B2B setting accept meetings from prospecting sellers. However, less than half of them find the meetings valuable, showing that cold calling is one of the most vital links in the chain.
Why Doesn’t Cold Calling Work as Well for B2C Marketing?
When marketers cold call potential customers in a B2C scenario, they are doing so with considerably less information about what the customers want. This means that the subtler tactics that the marketer needs to use are very different, and the success of the sale hinges to a very large extent on establishing an interpersonal connection rather than solving a problem.
What Is the Best B2B Cold Calling Strategy?
If you plan to incorporate cold calling into your B2B marketing strategy, do not just jump into it unless you have prior experience. You will still need to do it in the correct way to get that sale. Let’s look at a few of the main things to consider.
Know Your Customers
If you are cold-calling businesses, hopefully, you are not just going down a list of them in alphabetical order. However, you are instead focusing on companies that do potentially need what your business is providing.
This already gives you a massive edge compared to cold calling B2C, but you can take it further. When you research their needs, workflow, current products or services, and who the influential individuals within the organization are, a finely tailored cold call can be as appropriate as if they were the ones who had come to you for their needs.
Put In Volume
If you have tried cold calling before, whether B2B or B2C, you know how demoralizing it can be when people keep telling you they are not interested or hang up the phone.
You need to accept that this is often the reality of cold calling and that the best way to move past it is to put in a very high volume of calls simply. For example, if only 30% of calls are valuable and you make ten calls, you will have three successful calls, but if you make 200 calls in total, you will have 60.
Perfect Your Timing
The art of phone conversation has almost been distilled down to a science. For example, you can get the best results by keeping calls shorter than 15 minutes, with around 11 minutes being the best performing duration. Consider how long your talking streaks are, how much silence you let creep in, et cetera.
Final Thoughts
We have learned today why cold calling is still a viable marketing strategy for B2-B companies and looked at a few things you can address to get the most success out of your cold calls. So now it’s time to hit the phones.
