As crucial as cold calling is for businesses, it can be difficult for the salesperson to accomplish, especially for generating more sales. In the past, experts have come up with tactics and strategies to increase the effectiveness of cold calling. However, the truth remains that traditional approaches to cold calling are no longer practical. To be more successful with this, you must ditch the traditional tactics you know and embrace the psychological tactics discussed in this article. 

9 psychology tricks you can use to improve cold calling and winning more leads

Open your calls with warm style

Having a warm style to open a sales call ensures that it is more effective and delivers a better result. You could start the call with positive comments, for instance. On the other hand, you can’t be caught starting your sales calls talking about how you’re busy, traffic, bad weather, etc. Use an anecdote such as fun plans for the weekend, the game won by a favorite sports team, great weather, etc., will help you kick off the call the right way. 

Don’t talk bad about your competitors

You will be sabotaging yourself if you talk bad about a competitor during your sales call. When customers or prospects hear you talking negatively about your competitors, they look at you with those traits. It is psychological. They start seeing you as unreliable if you call a competitor unreliable. So, shy away from discussing your competitors or giving a comment about them while making sales calls. Instead, concentrate on your brand and offerings. 

Have your agenda ready and remain in control

Once you get on the call, roll out the ‘meeting agenda’ and ensure to ask if the prospects are okay with you doing that. This will help you stay on track during the call and accomplish the goal you’ve set for yourself. Also, it makes the customer or prospect think they are in control when you are the one controlling the conversation. 

Don’t bombard them with too much information

One mistake you might be making during the sales call is to give the buyers too many options. It will confuse them and become harder to rationalize, select, and make a purchasing decision. Overloading your prospects with information offers little to no benefits to them, your business, or the product. 

In describing the product, minimize the features or options that you are focusing on for the prospect. Instead, talk about the most important ones to them. This helps them make their decision sooner, and they will retain the confidence that they are not missing anything. You should only start to present them with countermeasures when it becomes likely that they will be rejecting the product. 

Position your product smartly

Your product positioning and the way it’s packaged may be to make or break the deal. Framing is essential to selling a product. For instance, $10 may feel like a lot to save on a t-shirt but is negligible on a smartphone even though it’s the same price. On the other hand, relative positioning is sometimes better than pricing when it comes to increasing product appeal for prospects. For instance, at MyOperator, we position our call management solution like this: “Get complete call management system for your business at the cost of Wi-Fi.” It gives people interested in our product a clear idea of the pricing and also leaves a relatable impression that they can remember, improving MyOperator brand recall as well. 

Also, you are likely to make more conversions when the product is seen as a solution rather than a mere commodity. 

Add emotions to your pitch

Most customers don’t make purchasing decisions based on rational grounds. Instead, people buy things mostly because of an emotional trigger and other illogical or hyper-personal reasons that we call sales emotions. 

For example, brand loyalty, nostalgia, sentimental attachments, etc., are some reasons customers make purchasing decisions. So, you can leverage this when persuading prospects about your product as much as you talk about the product’s technical features during the cold call. While you are engaging the prospect, probe them to find the emotional trigger that sways their purchasing decision. Then, as you articulate the product’s value, make sure to use powerful and relevant storytelling marketing.

Stand up please!

During the sales call, one crucial thing you must do is allow your excitement and passion for the product to shine through. You can’t expect to convince the prospect if you are lax and dull in your tone. Your passion has to be infectious through the phone to convince them of what you are saying. One way to do this is to stand up while making sales calls rather than sit in a conference room, or hide in a cubicle. You will be more effective with your sales calls when you stand up and make the call in a common space. It may be more helpful for you to pace around during the call too. 

Precisely convey your product’s value

Every product has its objective and subjective benefits, which are fact-based and emotion-based, respectively. When making the cold call, make it easy for the prospects to assess both benefits. Employ framing and storytelling techniques to make your product stand out from other similar products in the market. When possible, have a formula or ROI calculator at hand for prospects to quantify the product’s benefits. This is useful after emotional triggers fail to push the prospects towards making a buying decision. Whatever the case is, make sure you show that the customer will be receiving value from the product that over-justifies the price. 

Warm up your cold calls beforehand

The term cold calling is fast becoming outdated. There are too many digital resources, social media, and intelligence software available now. So, you do not have to approach a client without an idea of who they are, what they do, their pain points, and how your product can help them. Instead, ensure that you are well prepared for each call by researching all the information you need about the prospects. This will help you discover their pain points and consequently the opportunity for your business. 

Put cold calling on work to get more sales 

Cold calling remains one of the most challenging tasks of a sales representative. However, when it is executed properly with right call management tools, it can yield more sales for the business. The old tactics do not work anymore, but you have nine psychological tactics that you can use to reverse the trend and generate more sales.