The days of the cold call as we know it are over. As VP of Revenue and Operations at ReTargeter, it’s my mission to help everyone in our organization make stronger connections with prospects more quickly and efficiently. During this process, I’ve found that cold calling is inefficient (and often ineffective) for two main reasons:

 1) Poor Use of Precious Time

Many sales organizations spend a staggering amount of time looking for companies to pursue, for the right prospects within those companies, and finally, for the prospects’ contact information. When a call is finally made, it’s often wasted on an uninterested recipient. Not the best foundation for a successful business relationship.

2) Lack of Relevance

Not only is this process time-intensive, it is often completed without significant insight into whether prospects are interested. And given how frequently people change jobs, it’s virtually impossible to say if the data is up to date before the call is made. 

By addressing these two flaws in your sales outreach, you can build a stronger business, faster.

ReTargeter’s Approach to Warming Up the Cold Call

Whenever possible, we avoid cold calling. We have built a strong referral business, but referrals alone are not enough to achieve our growth targets. We want our sales practices to reflect our business, which is about focusing online display ads on the right audiences. Online, relevancy resonates, and targeted outreach is always more effective than blind contact. We abide by the same philosophy when it comes to sales outreach. Data.com helps us get there. Here’s how:

1) Do Your Research

We target companies based on a number of factors including revenue, number of employees, and website domain type. We target prospects by department, title level (e.g. C-level or director-level), or specific job title. 

We want to work with people who we truly believe we can help. By conducting initial research on leads using Data.com, we can determine who would be a good fit for our services and focus our sales efforts accordingly.

2) Use Reliable Data to Target the Right People

We know who the best fit is, so our targeting is extremely accurate. That means we can have more relevant conversations right from the beginning. And because Data.com updates all of its data in real time, we can be confident that the leads aren’t out of date.

Once we've targeted our ideal company, we find people in the marketing departments, and, rather than cold call, we send relevant emails tailored to the company and the prospect.

3) Gauge Interest by Interaction

We determine the prospect’s level of interest based upon email engagement, which we track through Salesforce. We then prioritize the prospects who have demonstrated the most interest and focus our phone outreach on them.

4) Leverage Social Insights

Before picking up the phone, we review available social channels to get to know our prospect better. When we finally do make a call, it’s not cold at all.

5) Personalize the Sales Process

Because no two potential clients are alike, we keep our sales process very flexible. Different needs require different solutions. After identifying our ideal prospects, we address their unique needs by engaging in open dialogue, which allows us to make more beneficial recommendations.

How Does It All Come Together?

The initial research we conduct has allowed us to scale lead generation without increasing the number of employees tasked with generating leads. Selling primarily to our ideal clients also decreases the length of our sales cycle while increasing our close rates.

Focus and relevancy are deeply integrated into all of our outbound efforts. We use our own products to serve our online ads to the right people, and we use Data.com to ensure our sales outreach consists of intelligent, informed interactions.

What is your company doing to end the cold call?

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Vik Duggal is VP of Revenue and Operations at ReTargeter, where he oversees day-to-day operations of the business and is responsible for the revenue strategy. ReTargeter is a full-service display advertising platform specializing in retargeting. You can find him on Twitter and Google+.