Art
Siegel

The Art Of Telephone Cold Call Timing

Telephone cold calling is an essential part of your sales success. Cold call success involves starting with a great list and knowing how to begin your call in a way that gets prospects interested. You can also dramatically increase your cold calling success rate by mastering The Art Of Telephone Cold Call Timing.

Now that I have that out of the way, let me also say that I cold call every week, because it is the number one contributor to my over-quota sales. So since I hate telephone cold calling, but I love the results it gets for me, I have developed a few ideas about the best times to make cold calls which get me more results from fewer cold calls:

Telephone Cold Call Timing Tip 1: Avoid The Prospect's Busy Periods

At one time, I sold printing to restaurants. At first, I cold called them as if they were any other business, but only for about two days. I quickly found out that most restaurant owners and managers don't want to talk to anyone but their customers during meal times, from 11:00 AM until 2:00 and from 5:00 until closing. Most restaurant owners do their buying during the morning lull in diners, and then do a little more intermixed with other administrative activities during the mid-afternoon. The pattern is not too different for most retailers, who have the most weekday activity in their stores from mid-morning on, usually with a dip in the late afternoon.

On the other hand, automotive service establishments are flat-out busy first thing in the morning when people drop off their cars and late in the day when they pick them up, with another spike in activity around lunch time. For many types of business, there is a natural cycle to the day that defines when they are most busy serving their customers. Your cold calls, whether by phone or in person, will be much more successful if you identify the peak and slack periods of the day for the businesses you call on, and call only during the slower times.

Observe The Daily And Weekly Cycles

Most business people go through a consistent weekly cycle. First thing Monday morning they go to work on their to-do list with great aspirations of accomplishing more this week than they did last week. Supporting this pattern, more companies have their weekly staff meetings on Monday morning than any other time of the week. If you call on Monday morning, you are least likely to find the person you are calling available, and even less likely to find prospects who are willing to talk.

Friday afternoon is also usually a bad time. Back to the to-do list. Most people are scrambling to wrap up as many items as possible on their list so they get home or to their favorite watering hole without delay. Call at this time, and you're almost certain to get a "Call me next week."

On the other days, mornings are usually a little better than afternoons. Just as the week starts with planning to get things done, and ends with a feverish effort to wrap things up, the typical work day starts with more of a planning structure, and then accelerates to intense work on projects. Your cold call fits in better with planning for the future than it does with interrupting concentration on completing a project.

My favorite and most successful times for cold calling are Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, particularly Tuesday. At these times, people are the most receptive to sales calls that they will ever be.

By the way, when I conduct a direct mail campaign, I try to time my letters to arrive on Tuesday and Wednesday. I avoid Monday. Not only is the prospect less receptive that day, but he already receives twice as much mail after the weekend. I want my letters to arrive when they are likely to receive the greatest attention.

Learn About Other Business Cycles

Many companies measure their results on a monthly basis. They may be willing to talk with sales people early in the month, and then go into a mad scramble to achieve their monthly goals or complete their reports during the last week. At other companies, people are equally accessible throughout the month, except on the first working day or the first Monday, when they hold their all-day monthly planning session. Still others may send all the executives away for off-site planning every quarter.

Whenever possible, try to find out your prospect company's internal schedule to avoid those times when people you want to call on will not be available.

Telephone Cold Call Timing Tip 2: Don't Call When Someone Is In The News

An important part of my cold calling strategy is to scan local newspapers and business periodicals for names in the news. I'm watching for promotions, company events that might suggest opportunities for me, or just names of decision makers I don't already know about. I used to make a list of new names every week and then start calling - but that was a mistake.

I learned this lesson from the prospect point of view. An article about my company appeared in a local newspaper. I was relatively new to the area, so I was looking forward to the visibility it would provide. Sure enough, the morning the article appeared, the phone started to ring, and the calls and letters continued for two weeks.

But most of them weren't what I expected. Most of the calls and letters were from people who wanted to sell me insurance, photocopiers, office space, investments and who knows what else.

I don't mind hearing from salespeople. I'm in sales myself, and I know they are just doing their job. But I found these contacts upsetting. I was mentally geared up to be contacted by prospects, not sales people, so every time I picked up the phone and it turned out to be a sales call, I felt cheated. I also resented the shear volume of calls.

Now, I follow this rule. When someone's name appears in the news, I put them in my cold calling database, but I don't contact them right away unless the news item reveals a problem in their company for which I offer a solution. I wait a month or more after someone's name appears in the news before I call.

Telephone Cold Call Timing Tip 3: Call During Odd Hours

Almost all decision makers work longer hours than their secretaries. If you want to increase the odds of your prospect answering the phone directly, without the clerical screen, try calling before 9:00, after 5:00, or during lunch time. Also try Saturdays and legal holidays. Even if your prospect is not around then, you're more likely to get the prospect's voice mail box, where you can leave a personal message, rather than relying on a secretary to take down your message and pass it along.

Telephone Cold Call Timing Tip 4: Work Lists From The Bottom

Over the years I have used a variety of prospecting lists -- lists of companies in a particular industry, names of prospects, directories -- you name it. And I have usually done what everyone else does: I'd start making cold calls or writing letters to the first name on the list and then work my way down. Often I wouldn't even get to the end of the list before I either had enough prospects in my pipeline or moved on to a different marketing method.

Then it occurred to me that all of my competitors are doing the same thing. It just seems logical to start at the beginning of a list. That means that people who are at the end of lists tend to receive fewer sales contacts than those who are at the front, and when a new list comes out, people at the end are contacted later.

Now I give myself an edge by always starting my cold calling from the end of the list, or I pick an arbitrary point in the middle. And I am definitely closing a higher percentage of the names on each list.

Telephone Cold Call Timing Tip 5: Ask The Best Time To Call

Whenever I attempt a cold call and am told: "I'm sorry, but he is in a meeting," I ask: "What is generally the best time to reach him." The person I speak with will usually give me a day of the week and a time of day when the prospect has more time to receive calls from sales people.

Likewise, when I do get through to a prospect, I always ask the best time to call him or her in the future.

SeaBird Associates Inc
3011 NE 7th Drive
Boca Raton, FL 33431
Phone: 561-750-9233
E-mail: Art Siegel

About Art Siegel