Updated May 2020

Cold calling gets a bad reputation. Sales reps experience annoying, buyers feel harassed, and everyone feels awkward.

But should they really? After all, more than than one-half of senior-level buyers (57%) actually prefer to be contacted via telephone phone call.ane

Perchance the issue isn't common cold calling, merely the way we approach information technology.

Instead of but feeling awkward, why not apply the correct cold calling software? Combined with the correct cold calling script, information technology tin make for a seamless interaction that leaves the buyer feeling heard—and the sales rep feeling confident that they'll close.

Working with the right tools, you tin take your small business'due south cold calling strategy to the next level, achieve your sales goals, and create a seamless selling feel.

In this post, nosotros'll cover:

  • The benefits of using common cold calling software
  • The best cold calling software
    • The foundation: Starting with the correct CRM
    • The phone call: Choosing the best dialing software for common cold calling
    • The nice-to-accept: a CTI
  • How to choose the right cold calling software for you

Up your prospecting game and shut more than deals with these complimentary common cold calling scripts. ☎️


What are the benefits of using cold calling software?

It'due south understandable that investing in cold calling software might seem more suited for a larger company. How much work is it really for your few sales reps to punch the telephone?

But between a good customer relationship management (CRM) software and the actual calling platform, the correct software is crucial to your cold calling success. These software tools will aid your team work efficiently, keep detailed notes, and brand the most of every single pb.

Investing in the right sales software is an investment in the future of your business concern. Not merely are you giving yourself the best shot at closing every bit many deals as possible today, just you're also setting your team up for success as you lot grow.

Detailed notes in your CRM will aid get anybody up to speed on new leads speedily, and having call recordings handy will assistance your new hires get onboarded quickly.

☎️ Pro-tip:

When y'all're shopping for a common cold calling app or software, look for automation features (similar machine-dialing) and syncing that'll brand it and so that data only needs to be entered once.

Now, let's look at a few tools that'll make your sales team more effective—and boost your bottom line.

Remote Readiness CTA


What are some of the best cold calling software options out there?

While you're creating your system for cold calling, in that location are a few levels of software that you'll need to include. Obviously, you'll want some kind of app to make the actual calls, but your toolbox doesn't end there.

The correct CRM can assist you optimize that cold calling app by recording important call data as well as your sales notes and follow-up ideas.

By connecting your CRM and phone software, y'all can create a powerful system for converting leads.


The foundation: Start with the right CRM

The foundation of whatsoever good sales system is a primal hub to keep track of activeness—and that's exactly what a CRM is. A practiced CRM doesn't just track notes your sales team manually enters, it can too remind you about appointments, automatically collect phone call data, and sometimes even ship follow-up emails.

Some of the most pop CRMs include Hubspot and Salesforce. When you're choosing the all-time CRM for cold calling, recollect about what your business priorities are. Your CRM will be foundational to whatsoever sales systems you set up in the future, so keep those integration possibilities in mind.

When using your CRM for cold calling, the well-nigh important factor is training your sales team to take good call notes. Even the most expensive CRM isn't going to help your team if they aren't using it effectively.

For cold calling, your salespeople should, at a minimum, be taking detailed notes—whether the lead answered the phone, what topics were discussed, and any follow-up required. You lot may have other specific requirements as well, tailored to your business organisation and your customers.

Some CRMs that are more than robust actually offer cold calling software besides, which might be worth a try. Just keep in mind that it tin become a "jack of all trades, principal of none" situation.


The call: Dialing software for cold calling

To circular out your cold calling arrangement, yous'll demand a dialing software. This is the software that actually allows your sales squad to call potential customers on the phone—usually, through an app on their computer.

Choose a organization with features that assist your sales team manage their time productively, including automated dialers and integrated collaboration tools.

RingCentral Engage Voice

RingCentral'south probably best known for its all-in-ane communication platform that includes messaging, video conferencing, and even a phone service—in a unmarried app—but did you know it has a sales-focused product too?

If yous want congenital-in integrations with CRMs, ease of apply, and scalability, RingCentral Engage Vocalization is the cold calling solution for you. From its scripting feature to campaign direction and dialing options, information technology's an outbound calling tool designed for sales teams that brand a ton of calls. Here's a quick wait at how it works:

RingCentral too integrates with lots of CRMs and beyond cold calling, it also keeps your squad'southward communication channels—inbound, outbound, and internal—all in 1 place. For instance, hither's what the Salesforce integration looks like:

ringcentral's integration with salesforce with click to dial feature for cold calling

That ways you can consolidate the number of tools yous're using (and spend less time on training for your team). Plus, you don't accept to switch between tabs as much while you're working on dissimilar platforms.

☎️ Pro-tip:

One of the added perks of RingCentral for sales teams specifically is the call monitoring feature. If you lot're preparation new sales reps, or but want to see where your team tin can improve, you can listen in on the phone call (the prospect doesn't hear anything), and even hitting a button to take over the call if your new rep needs a bit of help!

🕹️ Get a easily-on wait at how high-performing sales teams are using RingCentral past booking a product tour:

💰 You can besides utilize this reckoner to see roughly how much your business could salve by using RingCentral to support your team'southward communications with clients, customers, and each other.

🏆 Did you know:

RingCentral is a PCMag's Editors' Choice Award winner because of its reliable service and easy-to-utilise communications platform (amidst other reasons)!

Toky

If chore automation is a priority for you, Toky is an choice to consider. Information technology has a handy automatic dialer and automatic voicemail—for those 76% of calls from unknown numbers that go direct to voicemail.2

Simply exist sure that all of that automation doesn't lead to an impersonal sales experience—encourage reps to maintain their atomic number 82 research on LinkedIn or other online searches and to exist intentional about listening to customers' needs when they do connect.

One thing to note: Toky has a smaller list of integrations, and then you'll probably demand to use a third-party tool similar Zapier to integrate it with certain tools.

Aircall

If recordings and collaboration are important factors in your common cold calling software, you might consider Aircall.

Aircall keeps your entire team on the same page through a shared inbox, where reps can add notes to calls, assign calls to teammates, and add together tasks to each other's to-exercise lists.


The nice-to-take: a CTI

When you recollect near cold calling software, you know you need the dialing software, and nosotros but went over the importance of a good CRM. The missing component? The connection between the two.

Many CRMs integrate directly with your dialing software, and vice versa, but you can as well use a tool chosen a figurer-telephony integration (CTI) system.

A CTI isn't necessarily a required common cold calling software, but if you lot want the simplest integration betwixt your CRM and dialing software, or if you want to runway your phone call outcomes, this might be a blazon of common cold calling software to consider investing in.

For instance, Tenfold is a CTI that simplifies the data entry process for your sales reps past connecting your CRM and your dialing software through a popular-up:

Tenfold is a CTI that simplifies the data entry process for sales rep

When y'all're on an outbound or inbound call, Tenfold will display a pop-up on your estimator screen. In this pop-upward, yous can click-to-telephone call, log calls, and take notes.

The pop-up organisation also lets y'all motility from tab to tab without losing runway of your notes and call data.

A CTI keeps your CRM organized, since team members tin can adhere call notes, recordings, transcripts, and notes to CRM records. That likewise means you can continue better rail of customer interactions and conversion data.


How to cull the right cold calling software for y'all

Every bit with whatsoever software, the all-time one for your team may not be the all-time one for every company. Small businesses take varying needs when it comes to sales tools, so it's important to think nigh which features and factors are the most important for your team.

Here are the top features y'all'll want to explore when shopping for cold calling sales tools for your small business:

  1. Ease of use
  2. Integrations
  3. Metric tracking
  4. Call recordings
  5. Scalability

1. Ease of use

It may seem basic, but if your cold calling software is a challenge to work with, your people won't want to utilise it. The last thing you want is to spend money on a tool that no i is using. When yous're shopping for a cold calling software, be sure to give the free trial a attempt or schedule a quick demo to get a walkthrough of how intuitive the platform actually is.

Don't just consider the sales rep interface, though. Dig a little deeper into the admin settings and cheque to be sure you can easily add users, integrate with your existing sales apps, and access the information you need to measure effectiveness (and so you can have an answer ready if anyone asks "Does cold calling work anymore?")

If any of these steps are challenging to navigate, your cold calling software probably won't easily integrate into your sales call planning process—and it could even get the kind of software headache that forces your team to use annoying workarounds and waste more time on data entry.

ii. Integrations and customer journey tracking

Integrations might seem straightforward—or fifty-fifty unnecessary—if your concern is small now. Simply as you abound, your sales team volition probable need more engineering to help them do their jobs, and it's important that they all work together.

The key is to think holistically when it comes to software integrations. For instance, your sales squad needs to communicate with the entire company, so your internal communications app will ideally need to connect with your cold calling software.

☎️ Pro-tip:

The right CRM is fundamental to connecting all of the apps and tools your sales squad uses on a daily basis, but yous should check the integrations listing of any new product you add to your arsenal.

Another factor when considering integrations is the power to track the entire customer journeying map, from lead to purchase and beyond. Exist sure your cold calling system makes it easy to record activity in your CRM so yous tin can measure every stage of your customer relationships.

iii. Power to rail metrics

In addition to customer journey tracking through CRM integrations, check to brand sure that your common cold calling software has built-in metrics.

Especially as more and more sales teams work remotely and remote piece of work becomes the default for many companies, information technology's important to be able to keep an eye on how your sales staff is doing at a granular level.

Tracking metrics and seeing team activity inside your cold calling software allows y'all to proceed your entire team—remote or not—on the same page and on pace to meet their goals.

4. Telephone call recording

While tracking metrics tin can give y'all the quantitative analysis tools you need to rails squad effectiveness, call recording allows you lot to dig into what is and isn't working through a more qualitative lens.

Telephone call recording tin be a specially useful tool as your team grows, allowing you to use effective calls as training materials (and not-and so-effective calls as coaching opportunities). Y'all'll also be able to bank check in with new team members and assistance them see opportunities for improvement equally they become up to speed.

☎️ Pro-tip:

Use call recordings in conjunction with data to identify why certain techniques—or certain sales reps—are more effective than others.

5. Scalability

Finally, while scalability might not be top of mind for your pocket-sized concern right at present, if you anticipate growth in the hereafter, you'll want to know your options for adding users. Understand the system for adding more users and the costs associated with doing so, before you lot commit to a software for the long term.

Migrating software of any kind can be a painful ordeal, and so agreement scalability now can salvage you from headaches in the time to come.

Find the right software for your common cold calling system

Cold calling might feel like a affair of the past, just with the right software solution, you can bring it up to date and empower your sales squad to meet their goals through common cold calls.

It'south a simple formula—with the right CRM and an constructive calling app, plus a strong connection between the ii, you'll accept the cold calling tools y'all demand to succeed.

1 rainsalestraining.com/blog/infographic-thirty-sales-prospecting-stats-and-what-they-mean-for-sellers

2 prnewswire.com/news-releases/americans-only-answer-half-of-all-calls-they-receive-on-their-mobile-phones-300785490.html

Originally published January 01, 2021, updated Feb 11, 2021