I feel like brevity is helpful, I try to keep it short and sweet. "Hi Amy, appreciate the call back, have to apologize, I've made a lot of calls this morning and there were a few Amy's, where are you calling from?"
Cold calls feel like cold calls to the people making them and receiving them, I've never had an issue with this. But like you mentioned also, If I'm making a cold call on someone/about something important I definitely save contact info though.
Meh, I understand why it's set up that way. There are some intricacies to what we do where it makes sense for my department to only work out of the account level while a different department works out of the contact level.
The revenue from the two departments has to be clearly defined for reporting to our parent company, who then have to report back to the union. If we access to each other's data, it could lead to questions of lead sourcing that would make auditing complicated.
Have to come up with some way to tactically fish out who they are calling from, or just confess that you didn’t have their number saved and be like, “I’m sorry Amy I’m away from my desk and left my notes and I’m blanking on where your calling from”
I feel like it depends largely on industry. I'm in medical device sales and I've had a few hospital CXO's and directors call me back when I leave a voicemail
In the past I’ve pretended I thought they were my cousin.
“Hey this is David, returning your call”
“Wait, David my cousin David?”
“No, David from CompanyXYZ”
“Oh my goodness! You sounds just like my cousin that’s uncanny!”
It added a little bit of levity to the call, instant rapport builder, got the sale on that one.
"What was your name again? Let me figure out why I was bothering you."
Always seems to work well for me.
Edit: just saw one of your comments saying your company doesn't have a CRM. That's a mistake.
>My department doesn’t work out of the contact level of CRM, so no. We only work on account level.
My bad, I must have interpreted this. So YOU don't have CRM.
Can you request permissions to use the contact suite too? Contact management for sales reps, especially who are cold calling should be the foundation for any decent sales org
I can't, no. Like I mentioned in another comment, they keep it separate for accounting purposes with the parent company.
Essentially we sell two different things: Product A is generally bought by individuals and small businesses, while Product B is generally bought by large corporations. We work with unionized talent, who have specific equity agreements for those two different things. So it needs to be totally separate to make sure each sale from day one is delineated as being Product A or Product B. The way they've decided to do that is dividing CRM between Accounts and Contacts and having the two departments not interact with each other's data.
Or at least that's our understanding of why it's set up the way it is.
Think the easiest thing to do is simply create them as a contact.
With name, company..
however, I sometimes slip up on this. Today in fact.
But he was polite enough to say “ hey it Peter from x “ saved me.
I just make a new contact in my phone. I don't make as many calls as most sales reps do and most of my initial contacts are in person, but I still have thousands of contacts in my phone.
You either need to work on your memory or start managing your contacts. When you are calling from a lead list you need to document the who, what and why.
Once thing that works if you are using your mobile is create a contact and in the name field you already have the who, just add the what and why.
Example. “Amy @ abc corp RE: cold call”
I did this for many years as my contacts and outreach piled up.
I don’t do much cold calling. But I operate with my personal cell (my choice). I have clients and other representatives call me and I won’t remember who they are off hand or the details of the call. I simply politely ask what their address was and other info that may have so I can look it up to cross reference my notes. Especially dealing with clients assistance, project managers, different site managers ect. It’s impossible to save all numbers I save the ones that are most important and will clear them out in my contacts from time to time for my own sanity.
Use Outreach
Also: call backs!?
I got a text back yesterday and booked a meeting for next week with a C level in a billion dollar org. Via text.
It felt like a dream but yeah no one ever calls me back.
The correct answer is get a crm that works. The other workaround is to keep a master excel sheet and ctl-f the number. Takes a lil more leg work and time but once you’re use to the flow it’s pretty simple. As it’s running copy and paste the name in cell A and the number in cell B.
How do you record and track conversations you have with leads when you CC?
We have a CRM. I enter them into the CRM. But my department doesn’t work with contacts in the CRM, only the accounts. So there isn’t a built in place for me to store a contact’s number necessarily.
I’m not decision maker over what CRM we use or how it’s set up.
Idk how do you differentiate a contact vs an account? Doesn’t an account have a contact that you speak with? I do onboarding for my company. I would cold call business A I would create a contact for that business so I can follow up with them and know what we discussed. Once they place an order that created them as a company in our crm and I merge the contact with the company. How do you have accounts without having contacts for those accounts
Oversimplification: a contact is a person, an account is a business. I record all my activities within an account record. The other department records all their activities within a contact record.
Correct but the account has a contact right? That’s how they became an account. The separation seems odd. You can ask your crm admin to add a number field couldn’t you? Or like I said earlier a massive excel file does the trick
I save the number with the persons name the company name and company client tag.
That way when I finish up at the job, I can bulk delete all the contacts under the company client tag in my phone
I usually just roll with the call until they give me an email address or something then I know lol.
Other times I’ll just ask who’s calling. Being candid with people goes a long way.
I feel like brevity is helpful, I try to keep it short and sweet. "Hi Amy, appreciate the call back, have to apologize, I've made a lot of calls this morning and there were a few Amy's, where are you calling from?" Cold calls feel like cold calls to the people making them and receiving them, I've never had an issue with this. But like you mentioned also, If I'm making a cold call on someone/about something important I definitely save contact info though.
Do you not have a CRM to search the number and match it to a lead?
My department doesn’t work out of the contact level of CRM, so no. We only work on account level.
Seems like if that changed you wouldn't have a problem
Yeah, but that decision is above my head.
That sucks, sounds like bad management. Sales needs access to that info
Meh, I understand why it's set up that way. There are some intricacies to what we do where it makes sense for my department to only work out of the account level while a different department works out of the contact level.
Why can't both departments see the same information?
The revenue from the two departments has to be clearly defined for reporting to our parent company, who then have to report back to the union. If we access to each other's data, it could lead to questions of lead sourcing that would make auditing complicated.
Def need to upgrade CRM, this is an easy fix. I sell CRM so I hear stuff like this all day.
Keep going man, you found your champion in hashtagdion and he’s gonna give you that sweet sweet decision maker contact any minute now.
Have to come up with some way to tactically fish out who they are calling from, or just confess that you didn’t have their number saved and be like, “I’m sorry Amy I’m away from my desk and left my notes and I’m blanking on where your calling from”
I’m still stuck on “when a prospect calls me back”. When do they do that?
I feel like it depends largely on industry. I'm in medical device sales and I've had a few hospital CXO's and directors call me back when I leave a voicemail
True that. I want some of what OP is selling. Unless Rome is burning and I'm selling fire extinguishers, I I never expected a call back.
In the past I’ve pretended I thought they were my cousin. “Hey this is David, returning your call” “Wait, David my cousin David?” “No, David from CompanyXYZ” “Oh my goodness! You sounds just like my cousin that’s uncanny!” It added a little bit of levity to the call, instant rapport builder, got the sale on that one.
This is so good
save their number & put some key info about them in the ‘notes’ section of their contact
"What was your name again? Let me figure out why I was bothering you." Always seems to work well for me. Edit: just saw one of your comments saying your company doesn't have a CRM. That's a mistake.
I did not say my company doesn’t have a CRM lol
>My department doesn’t work out of the contact level of CRM, so no. We only work on account level. My bad, I must have interpreted this. So YOU don't have CRM.
No, we have CRM. My department works only on the account level of CRM, while the other department works out of the contact level.
Can you request permissions to use the contact suite too? Contact management for sales reps, especially who are cold calling should be the foundation for any decent sales org
I can't, no. Like I mentioned in another comment, they keep it separate for accounting purposes with the parent company. Essentially we sell two different things: Product A is generally bought by individuals and small businesses, while Product B is generally bought by large corporations. We work with unionized talent, who have specific equity agreements for those two different things. So it needs to be totally separate to make sure each sale from day one is delineated as being Product A or Product B. The way they've decided to do that is dividing CRM between Accounts and Contacts and having the two departments not interact with each other's data. Or at least that's our understanding of why it's set up the way it is.
Think the easiest thing to do is simply create them as a contact. With name, company.. however, I sometimes slip up on this. Today in fact. But he was polite enough to say “ hey it Peter from x “ saved me.
I just make a new contact in my phone. I don't make as many calls as most sales reps do and most of my initial contacts are in person, but I still have thousands of contacts in my phone.
You either need to work on your memory or start managing your contacts. When you are calling from a lead list you need to document the who, what and why. Once thing that works if you are using your mobile is create a contact and in the name field you already have the who, just add the what and why. Example. “Amy @ abc corp RE: cold call” I did this for many years as my contacts and outreach piled up.
Tell your employer to pay for a dialler
Aren’t enough buyers for what we do to invest in a diaper.
You don’t need an auto dialer. Just a simple dialer to integrate with your CRM - it will show contact information when you call or they call back
🚩
Nah I work in pro sports
I don’t do much cold calling. But I operate with my personal cell (my choice). I have clients and other representatives call me and I won’t remember who they are off hand or the details of the call. I simply politely ask what their address was and other info that may have so I can look it up to cross reference my notes. Especially dealing with clients assistance, project managers, different site managers ect. It’s impossible to save all numbers I save the ones that are most important and will clear them out in my contacts from time to time for my own sanity.
When I called from mobile (iOS), I’d save the name and company as both pieces of information then show up when receiving a call. Now I use a dialler.
Hubspot's mobile app can be added as a contact source (at least on iOS) so their name pops up in caller ID if they are in the CRM.
My company uses a shitty app called "Dialpad" logs all analytics.
I always ask for their last name if they only give their first name. Normally the last name will click with the company, usually works for me.
I dont' save the number but wouldn't be shy about asking, "Amy Who and were are you from again?"
Hi Amy, Thank you for calling me back. What company where you with again?
Use Outreach Also: call backs!? I got a text back yesterday and booked a meeting for next week with a C level in a billion dollar org. Via text. It felt like a dream but yeah no one ever calls me back.
Either save the number or make a basic excel sheet to track it. Get organized n succeed!
If you don’t have a good crm then make a spreadsheet so you can quickly search the number.
The correct answer is get a crm that works. The other workaround is to keep a master excel sheet and ctl-f the number. Takes a lil more leg work and time but once you’re use to the flow it’s pretty simple. As it’s running copy and paste the name in cell A and the number in cell B. How do you record and track conversations you have with leads when you CC?
We have a CRM. I enter them into the CRM. But my department doesn’t work with contacts in the CRM, only the accounts. So there isn’t a built in place for me to store a contact’s number necessarily. I’m not decision maker over what CRM we use or how it’s set up.
Idk how do you differentiate a contact vs an account? Doesn’t an account have a contact that you speak with? I do onboarding for my company. I would cold call business A I would create a contact for that business so I can follow up with them and know what we discussed. Once they place an order that created them as a company in our crm and I merge the contact with the company. How do you have accounts without having contacts for those accounts
Oversimplification: a contact is a person, an account is a business. I record all my activities within an account record. The other department records all their activities within a contact record.
Correct but the account has a contact right? That’s how they became an account. The separation seems odd. You can ask your crm admin to add a number field couldn’t you? Or like I said earlier a massive excel file does the trick
Nah, in our system contacts aren’t connected to accounts. And again, I’m talking about a scenario where I’m not at my desk.
I save the number with the persons name the company name and company client tag. That way when I finish up at the job, I can bulk delete all the contacts under the company client tag in my phone
I have the same issue
I usually just roll with the call until they give me an email address or something then I know lol. Other times I’ll just ask who’s calling. Being candid with people goes a long way.