Let’s face it who likes to do cold calls?  They’re intrusive, low percentage and add steps to your sales cycle.  Below you will find 10 ways to warm up your leads and get you closer to the close.

1. A Valid Business Reason – one of the best lead ins to a call is to have a valid business reason.  Hint: it’s about them not you.  It could be something that’s topical in the news that’s related to your prospect’s industry.

2. Third Party Introduction – remember for the most part, friends like to do business with friends.  Getting in the door is half the battle.  Who do you know that’s close to your prospect?  Think vendor, friend, colleague.  This is why LinkedIn has become such a powerful tool for networking.

3. Personal Branding Campaign – this is a campaign that helps you become a trusted advisor.  Periodic touches that involve mailing or emailing articles or news relevant to your prospect’s industry or business help position you as more than just a sales guy.

4. Audio or Video email – this will help you stand out of the crowd.  Do a 2 minute pitch that is tailored specifically to your prospect.  Audio is good, and can be done very easily on most computers and smartphones.  Videos are even better, you may want to check out this leading provider of video email.

5. A Light-Bulb Idea – research your prospect’s business find out some of the problems they may be having in their business or industry.  Then find an idea to their solution.  Incorporate with ideas 1,2,3, or 4.

6. Find an inside Champion or Ally – similar to idea number 2.  If you can find someone on the inside to Champion an idea of yours…it could lead you to the decision maker.  Hint: the inside champion needs to look good.

7. Case Studies – everyone likes to read case studies.  They like new ideas and solutions but for the most part do not like being the pioneer.  Use ideas: 1,2,3,4,5 to deliver success stories.  Follow this format for a POWERFUL case study: identify the problem, walk them through the process, shown them the plan, and highlight the performance or results,

8. Neutral Turf – get networked and connected to your prospects on neutral grounds.  Common interests often help you gain credibility with your prospect.  Think, golf games with a 3rd party connector, charity golf tournaments, networking mixers, Chamber meeting, volunteer boards etc.,

9. Send them a business referral.  Connect with them using ideas 1,4 tell them that you’ve been researching their company and that you are sending them a referral.  If you help them with their business first…they are more keen to help you in return…this is called the law of reciprocity.

To some extent to be successful in sales it’s a numbers game.  However, it also depends on what type of numbers.

Coming out of university with a degree in Economics and a Business Degree in Marketing and Finance I was excited to become a stock broker.  I had visions of living the good life just as Bud Fox did in the movie Wall Street – that is until he went to jail.

I had a few friends get into the investment business straight out of school.  They had to do one thing that I was uncomfortable with doing at the time – cold call people.  For me, I felt it was just a losing proposition.  I was 24 at the time and felt that people would not entrust their life savings to a kid with no experience.  And without contacts the only method known at the time was cold calling.  Ask any of my friends (who are still in the investment industry) if they would ever do it again – they would say NO! I couldn’t handle the rejection so I went into banking instead.  A place where there was a steady stream of lead flow traffic…a great place to hone your sales skills.

I have worked in two publicly traded companies.  The ultimate goal of most publicly traded companies is to increase shareholder value.  And how do you do that? Increase sales and increase profits – with more emphasis on the latter.  Needless to say, to keep your job you needed to produce sales.  Both companies generated some lead flow but it was certainly not enough to meet targets. Now I was fortunate enough that I didn’t have managers that followed the mantra of more cold calls would equate to more sales. For most of my career I was left alone (which was a good thing) as long as I made my sales targets.  How did I do this?  By employing a couple of concepts:

It’s not how many calls you make…it’s how many leads you get. Making cold calls is a brutal way to try and achieve sales results.  Why? because a large percentage of the people on the receiving end of that call are not in the buying cycle.  It’s purely an exercise in inefficiency.  With technology these days it’s much easier and cost efficient to develop lend generating systems.  Leads are much different than cold calls as leads are in the buying cycle.  Implement tactics that generate leads for you.  Then use the next concept.

Apply the 80/20 rule to everything you do. Which in a lot of cases, 80 percent of results are for the most part derived from the top 20 percent of activities.  So in the case of lead generating tactics, eliminate the tactics that generate minimal results but use up precious time.  For example, leads clubs…specifically one’s that require that you go to meetings.  Let’s say you go to one monthly meeting which typically lasts 1-2 hours…to get one lead.  Is that an efficient way of using your time?…maybe at the beginning if you’re starting with zero clients.  But, in 1-2 hours you would normally spend at a leads club I can think of at least 5 other things you could do that will generate more leads.

The point is, if your sales are slumping it’s time to analyze your activities.  Don’t wait till the new year to break bad habits…break them today!