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. 

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.