The single biggest obstacle to successful selling is your ability to get your customer to take action. Gone are the days of cold calling—genuine connections with your prospect are your new best asset. Knowing how to build trust and identify the needs of your potential customers is a valuable skill and will help you in mastering the art of relationship-building.
Having a strong relationship with your buyer, you’re more likely to have an influence over them; they respect your experience and value your opinion, and have the potential to become a “long-term” customer.
The Reality of Cold Outreach
Cold outreach is becoming increasingly difficult. Old methods don’t work anymore—mass emailing used to be considered the key to success; targeting as many consumers as possible with the right messaging at the right time was all you had to consider to close a sale. But cold outreach isn't what it used to be. People want to connect with brands; they want salespeople who connect with them, who understand their challenges and offer real solutions. So, it’s time to step away from old techniques.
Setting the Foundation for Success
Cold outreach, like cold calling, forces us to confront rejection, refine our pitch, and ultimately build resilience. The reality is that cold outreaches, while uncomfortable, is exactly what you need to set your foundation for sales success. It only works if you’re willing to turn rejection into an opportunity to connect authentically with your potential customers. Creating genuine, unscripted interactions can lead to meaningful relationships.
Be Relatable
Start your conversations with context. Mention something unique to your prospect, like a mutual industry connection or a recent company event. While most sellers will lead with a solution, starting with a problem is more likely to truly drive engagement. Identifying a specific pain point they deal with daily shows that you understand their specific challenges.
Facing Rejection
And don’t be afraid of objections—most objections are not objections to your solution; they’re objections to the interruption of the cold outreach itself. If you can pass that initial “shock” of rejection by either agreeing or laughing it off is your first step in making your prospect comfortable and shows you’re professional, not just another telemarketer.
According to Gong data, typical openers like ‘Did I catch you at a bad time?’ have a 2% success rate, while context-driven openers with specific, personalized details can reach success rates as high as 11.5%
Mastering the art of cold outreaching isn't just about making calls, sending emails or messages; it’s about practicing responses to objections and getting comfortable with your pitch. While cold outreach might seem outdated—it’s one of the best strategies to help you push past rejection and create a path towards true connection and trust.
Consultative Selling: The Key to Success
The paradox of “People don’t like to be sold—but they love to buy.” (Jeffrey Gitomer, Gitomer.com) can leave you in a tricky situation, especially when it comes to cold outreaches. You know that your product will relieve the pain points of your potential customers but coming off as pushy could make it seem as though you’re more concerned with making a commission rather than helping.
How do we work around that? Consultative selling.
Rather than focusing on a one-size-fits-all sales pitch, consultative selling (also known as needs-based selling) focuses on recommending various solutions to a potential customer that is tailored to their exact needs and pain points.
Build Rapport
Take at least 30 minutes before your interaction to do some solid research—look through your prospect’s LinkedIn or any professional platform that they could be on and gain an understanding of who it is that you’re talking to.
Try to take at least 5 to 10 minutes of your conversation with your prospects to just build rapport before diving into anything business-wise/sales-wise. Lead your conversations with their needs; something relevant to their situations, rather than jumping directly into a sales pitch. As we mentioned, the goal of consultative selling is to understand their needs first. Encourage questions and get them to reflect on their current situation, the more you guide the conversation with insightful questions the more likely you are to reveal where their pain points really lie.
Actively Listen
Focus on actively listening and acknowledge their objections (should they arise)—giving them your undivided attention and engaging in conversation creates space for open dialogue and will help you gain understanding of their needs, as well as build trust.
Only after you’ve identified their pain points should you provide a solution. Most sellers will try to lead a conversation with the solution but to truly engage your prospects, start with their specific problem. By doing this, it brings you one step closer to building credibility and showing that you have an understanding of the challenges they face on a daily basis.
Establishing Yourself as a Trusted Resource
Aim to set yourself up as a leader in the situation, whereby any person from the company you’re reaching out to can come to you for questions; that way you are creating recurring inbound leads for yourself—if you’re not multithreading your deals then you’re pigeonholing yourself, because why would you rely on one person for everything if you are able to rely on multiple people? For example, if the person you initiated contact with leaves the company then all the hard work that you put into that sale gets thrown down the drain.
Mastering the Art of Closing
In conclusion, the art of closing a deal stems from your ability to tailor your approach to your client. Taking the time to understand them and their pain points goes a long way. Starting your research from the bottom can help you uncover these pain points—reach out to the people who have their feet on the ground and then take that information higher up. Everyone has their own priorities within a company so these pain points can easily go unresolved and this gives you your chance to capture their attention as well as weave deeper into the business you’re reaching out to. So, when it comes to sale day—you’ve already spoken to everyone who needs addressing, word has spread about your solution and at this point it becomes a no brainer.
Ready to make genuine connections that lead to sales success? Book a free consultation with us today!
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