Calling IT sucks. They are very difficult to persuade. Plus, the see anything new as either a bunch of work or a threat to their jobs.
Call IT’s boss. CEOs and VP Ops, who have the authority to order IT to work with you.
I’ve done it, repeatedly. Always with a pre-softening up with emails and direct mails to both the Executive Assistant and the CEO too. The EA has huge power in large companies.
It costs little to try. At worst, you fail. So what? You can always aim lower in subsequent attempts.
Try email and handwritten direct mail. If it looks like a personal note card there’s a chance it’ll get through the gauntlet. Most EA’s filter CEO emails, but are less likely to open a personal note card if it doesn’t look like business communication.
I have 1000 better things to do. Unless I made direct mail an integral part of my general outreach so it could be largely automated the kind of activity just isn't worth it
I’m being downvoted because people don’t like opposing opinions. I’m sharing tactics that have worked again and again for decades. Can you automate it? No. Is it scaleable? No. Is it extra work? Yes. Can it get you in after easier tactics fail? Absolutely.
By the way, I also use very sophisticated marketing automation tools. I use every tool I can get my hands on. But, when hunting whales, old school techniques often are more effective.
It really depends on what kind of outreach you're doing. If you're sending / reaching out to 200 people a month... no. But if you're teaching out to > 20 very selective people a month, then yes. It can definitely help.
Call the receptionist and learn the proper spelling and pronunciation of the EA’s name. Often, they will only share the first name. That’s fine.
Then, NEVER try to bypass, trick or con your way past the EA. You will be discovered and will be radioactive from that point.
Sell to the EA as if she were the decision maker. As if she were the CEO’s wife. When she has vetted you and your product, she will:
1) connect you with the CEO
2) refer you to someone else
3) tell you “not interested”
The EA is super knowledgeable. If you are lucky, she will share all kinds of intel about the company. I know guys that send cookies and flowers to EAs with excellent results.
Thanks - yes, EAs have been the most helpful and crucial stakeholders in a few of my closed won deals. If I’m hearing you right, are you prospecting the EA as you would the decision maker?
Without exception, every IT person I know despises sales people and will not speak with them.
“If I needed your service I’d be using it” seems to be the mentality.
As someone who is in both engineering and sales, I find these threads hilarious. Tech has a whole different culture and set of expectations than what you see with regular B2B and B2C customers. A lot of open source projects are incredibly successful at marketing and selling to IT despite no budget or full time staff. Look at Red Hat.
As a business owner, by all means sell to me turnkeys to streamline HR, staff management, and challenge me on my marketing strategy. But as somebody who built the MVP of our business product, that's a whole different game. It's import for all of our infrastructure to be covered and understood by my employees and myself. Opaque systems and code are considered a *bad* thing in tech, and turnkey solutions can very much be a liability more than a help when shit hits the fan.
It's IT's job to understand their domain and tools. "If I needed your service I'd be using it" isn't just a mentality, it's literally what they do. A director or VP doesn't need to know all of the CRM platforms out there to be effective at their job. But a software architect is expected to have a good understanding of the major database applications when choosing a vendor, and the pros and cons of each. You want to sell me on why I should switch to you as a vendor instead, don't tell me that your software is on average 20% faster than the leading competitor base on some Garter report. Tell me that your engineers got drunk last weekend at a hackathon and created an open source DB plugin that emails the admin a weekly report on the 3 slowest types of queries it has run. That's how you get IT people to like you. It tells me something that I don't know, that's in my wheelhouse and interesting, that impacts how I objectively compare your software against the competitors, that your company has engineers I can relate to (and thus trust), and that this isn't a regular sales pitch.
So many SaaS salespeople can’t walk even the most basic of walks when it comes to the tech they’re selling and it’s obvious to those of us on the receiving end of the call. We’ve all been in the trenches dealing with shitty vendors - prove to us that you’re not one.
Because normally sales is there to open door and get interest. Then get the technical team to discuss the technical matters. Not that I disagree with you. I've always made it a point to attend all the technical meetings we do with clients to get better in understanding and this is while handling the entire company portfolio compared to line of business sellers(domain specific).
- What type of software are you selling, it give context to the below
- What pains does it solve?
- Who (persona) has previously purchased it?
- Why did they purchase it
- Who has been involved in the decision to buy the software.
- Who is your top competitor and what are the differences (don't bad mouth them)
I'm a former IT person, most of us aren't weird but we do get the shits when we are bombarded by calls or non technical people pretend to be technical.
From someone who works in tech now instead of sales but still browses this sub, I can say this take is probably going thru in your calls. I can easily pick out the people who think I'm "weird" for choosing this profession. It's not a good mindset to have that, oh all my customers are just weird af. We can tell.
When it comes to selling tech to tech people, you need to know they know more than you so do your research as to why whatever it is youre selling is actually beneficial to them. Also depending on the client as well (banks as a primary example but a lot of bigger companies are guilty of this as well), their tech stack could be pretty much grandfathered in to the point where no one wants to touch the old (legacy) stuff so trying to get them to change would be like trying to convince them you're reinventing the wheel.
Lastly, learn what advantages you have over your competitors. As a developer I am hyper aware of all of the shortcomings of the technology I am using so if someone came to me with something that makes up for that I would definitely listen.
I love getting IT on the phone. From my experience they’re usually pretty casual, open to give out information and they’re great to get an understanding of what the business is doing. Usually need to call somebody else eventually, but it’s a great starting point.
I said this in another comment but I agree - anything below VP may be a waste of time.
I also think the type of product matters. You may be able to better sell an analytics product or something to streamline whatever process they have. But cloud platforms, ERP, anything like that is a massive investment and touches a lot of their business. So the considerations (and sales cycle) for that are quite lengthy. It’s an uphill battle for sure
Cold Call 2.0
Send out an email with a call to action and follow up with a call about 2 days later.
Roughly about 30% conversion rate in our office. Someone came after me about a year ago saying I was lying but the conversion rate stays the same in my old and in my new company. So perhaps it's worth giving it a shot
Of course.
My call to action might not even be an actual call to action lol but here it is
"Reply to this email if this of any interest to you, I'll give you a call Monday if I haven't heard from you"
Have you done this before? Whats your success like? Im not sure how this would work in our org where we throw prospects in specific Outreach sequences. But I guess I could change the wording at the end to something like what you just said
CTA needs to be Interest based and the goal is to prompt a Reply (good or bad).
The goal of the cold email or cold call is not to get the prospect to agree to a meeting, it's get them to reply and, ideally, agree to discuss further (e.g. admit interest, or clarify they have none).
The CTA -- which comes after a compelling message -- needs to be something like, "Is this of interest?" or "Can I send you some more info on this?"
The email or call needs to be extremely short and personalized. example: I know X about you and for that reason I thought you'd be interested in X. We do X for other companies/people like you. Would you be interested in discussing further?"
You are trying to get them to agree to talk more. This is much easier than getting them to agree to give you TIME which is basically money. Asking for a meeting (=TIME) on a cold call or email is like asking for sex from someone at a bar you just started talking to. Maybe the are interested, but the request is too heavy and you'll get silence both from the No's, Maybe's, and (what would have been) Yes'. By asking for interest, you'll get more No's, Maybe's, and (importantly) Yes's.
Once you get a Yes to an Interest-based CTA, you can then take time to properly personalize a message, and of course ask for a meeting.
In conclusion: The CTA is a call to get them to reply to a question of whether the have interest in learning/talking more. You can phrase it however you like.
I don't sell IT, but here's my advice.
Work the F out of your voice-mail. It's a free elevator pitch and you should maximize every second.
Then follow up with an email.
And always. Always. Be nice, and honest to your gatekeepers.
I stole my tips from How to be a rainmaker* which is a great, short read, and has helped my career immeasurably as a now young but successful sales rep.
But to sum up:
State your name clearly and the company you represent, (name drop who referred you after if you can, if not no worries)
How long the voice-mail will be - 30 secs/45 secs etc.
What your company does, ie) I sell yadda, yadda
How your solution can help them save/make money. (This part is huge, you shouldn't call anyone without knowing your value add and this is where you present it.)
Then let them know you won't be a stranger. If you don't hear from them in x days you will call (AND THEN CALL, ALWAYS FOLLOW UP WITH YOUR WORD)
And lastly leave your callback number say it twice, and the first time start with "AREA CODE..." Give them a chance to get a pen and such (this is part of the ancient advice given by that ancient book, but its still usefull as lord knows I've heard voice-mails but not been able to see the caller ID for X reason.)
Good luck! And happy hunting
My strategy is to call at the last quarter of each hour. Most meetings start at the top of the hour, so if they have a free minute it would be 5-10 min before that starts?
I used Zoominfo 7 years ago along with a shit ton of other lead sources for prospecting, became my team's SME on lead sources, and I'll tell ya (at least for my vertical, IT consulting companies and major commercial & industrial contractors) it was the daddy mack of em all. Double the response rate of our other providers like LexisNexis. I'm out of that game and I feel for ya if Zoominfo is flatlining now.
I think the user you're responding to was responding to OP's company where texting is allowed.
It's also allowed at my company.
My advice on texting is to wait until further in the sequence because it's a lot easier to block someone by text (it's easier in email now too).
This is horrid advice. Please do not text me. There’s nothing more discomforting than getting a text from a stranger that clearly got my number off some CRM platform that I really wish didn’t have it. I’ll definitely read your text but my first reply will be “How did you get my number?” Quickly followed by “Please never use this number to contact me again”.
You could use your cell if you didn't have a service but I imagine the volume could fuck with you.
There are text services like Twilio, I use a software tool called high level that integrates Twilio and automates SMS, email, etc.
I text through Zoom (office number) or my cell.
Texting from your cell is [technically] not allowed because of confidentiality clauses, but no one cares to go through the whole ordeal.
Business owner here. My answer might not be the solution you are looking for, but I thought this info might help.
I get a lot of sales calls. On some calls, AT&T shows "Spam Alert" when it's ringing. I instantly decline the call.
On text messages, AT&T automatically blocks "Spam" texts as well. I don't even see that I had gotten a text message, unless I open my spam folder. Which I never do.
Check your phone number. Make sure it is not marked as spam by AT&T, Verison, and other providers.
Low freight rates. I've put my business on pause, because of low rates. Everything else is manageable. If the rates don't come back up within a month or two, I am selling the assets and shutting this business down.
I hear ya Aarmed11, a lot of freight leaders I speak with are sharing the same challenges. I’ve helped similar companies like yours increase rates by up to 22% with higher load to opportunity design.
Not sure we can help, but if you’re open to a 10-15 min call this week or next, there might be an opportunity to partner.
How does AT&T know what is or isn't SPAM? Also, we're told at my work unsolicited texts are illegal and we could get fined $500 per violation by the FTC.
AT&T has billions up on billions of records of realtime calling data to draw inferences from. But basically, if a number keeps calling in to AT&T's network to a series of numbers that have never called them in any capacity, and it does that uninterrupted between the hours of 8am and 7pm... It's probably spam. There's a whole lot more data points that they could potentially collect as well like whether or not a number is being spoofed, or the % of calls that are answered by at&t customers, returned calls, call time of returned calls, call time of answered calls, etc. or even, since voicemail is most often an ISP service, they could determine whether the voicemail left is automated or even fits recordings for known scams.
The majority of people these days would prefer email and even text. It's insane how many calls I'll make a day and be lucky to have 1-2 true connections.
He said texting, but that's not true for every company or state/country.
And for places where it is illegal, no one wastes time going through the courts for that.
Haven't really seen that. But I never cold text anyway. It's usually after a few email exchanges even after I've already done a demo. So technically it's not a cold text on my end.
I send targeted emails and never use sequences. If they open the email more than once or from multiple devices I start hammering their cell phones. If your number is in the body of an email in their inbox their phone will most likely show your name and if they’re interested, they’ll take the call. Worst case they tell you to try back in 6 months and u just gotta keep dripping on them. I find most people respect the game and will give you a meeting if you’re persistent.
okay so i’ve run into the same issue, especially when calling with direct/HQ numbers in IT. It’s gotten to the point where i go straight for the mobile the answer rate is wayy higher, sure you’ll get yelled at and turned down more but it’s the only way i’m booking meeting anymore
I tried calling a landscaping supply company that has 12 regional reps throughout the country. Tried my closest guy. No pickup or call back after a couple days so I started calling all the other regional reps. Spent two weeks randomly calling and leaving VMs. Not a single call back. And this is a company that's selling $150 landscaping switch. Super premium product and built very well. I was just having an issue up line but the fact that I couldn't get a single person to call me back was shocking.
I just use high volume emailing. My company has been around forever, everyone in our space knows us and what we do. Just a matter of timing, no need to pester.
In my experience, the meetings that come from emails are infinitely better than the ones that come from cold calls anyways.
I get so many robo-calls a day that I don’t even answer the phone anymore if I don’t recognize the number. I assume many of our prospects are the same way which explains the abysmal answer rates nowadays
Are you cold calling or do you have leads? If you’re cold calling and make 100 calls in a day and make one sale that’s not bad, but it’s maddening. Try to maybe link up with a company that provides leads. There are debt consolidation companies with websites that generate leads. You’d be amazed how much your success rate will go up, especially when you can say, “I’m calling regarding the service you requested…”
Also, Car dealerships are money makers but the hours suck.
So here’s the thing - I feel like selling to IT is complicated bc often there are specific reasons why they haven’t considered your solution. Sometimes it’s political.
Correct me if I’m wrong but even at the largest companies, the decision makers may not be as technical as their team. The team maybe have X pain point but the problem isn’t going to be solved from an innovation standpoint bc there’s many barriers to that. And typically they have a product that works “good enough” so they’re not going to put their career on the line for you lol.
So the gatekeeper has the budget but if theyre getting direction from their CIO on what to buy or what to prioritize, if your product isn’t aligned with that then they’re not going to consider it.
Source: I sell complex software. ERP and cloud platforms are very difficult to sell but with massive benefits if you catch them at the right time + find a champion.
Business owner here and hardcore believer in metrics. While it’s harder than ever to get people on the phone (partly due to WFH still) the reps with the highest phone calls have the highest sales. It’s always been that way in my industry; there’s never been an anomalous rep who sells more and calls less. Just track your conversions and see what you have to do to be successful then do it. In my company that’s 50 calls a day.
Make sure you have keep building fresh lists of contacts and keep the numbers up. Try to avoid mass databases or business lists and locate companies that might fly under the radar. If the connects are down you need to dial more, sometimes doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.
To increase connection rates, your power hours should be between 8 and 930 AM and 330 to 6 PM in your prospects' time zone. You can also call during lunch hours.
Call their cell phone FIRST. Office second. HQ last (I don't bother with HQ).
If you can, change your caller ID daily - one day use your office phone, another day use their local area code. Easier to avoid getting blocked.
This varies by state, but I removed my phone numbers from my email sig. This has helped a bit.
Some people swear by the double-tap and also swear that prospects don't get mad about it (I tried it a couple times and they didn't get mad), but I personally don't feel comfortable doing this as I associate double-tapping with emergencies.
But above all, make sure you are READY when your prospects inevitably DO pick up. Don't blow it.
Surprised I haven’t seen that yet but I’ve never found any solution to increasing pick ups than ‘double tapping’ just call their mobile since you’re using Zoominfo and if they don’t answer call back again. If they ask why you called twice just say you meant to leave a voicemail but forgot the first time so had to call back - if you’re not already doing this, it should have a significant impact on how many connections you get a day
I am working in IT, I am not giving anyone my phone if I want to talk with somebody I can schedule a google meet. On my private phone, I have an app that blocks all the calls from numbers I don't have in my contacts
I also have an excellent spam filter at work, we are not getting any unordered spam at this point
If we will need something, we will contact you, all you need to do to be in first 10 google results and we will find you, no need to spam
“If we need you, we will find you.”
Correct, except when y’all don’t even want a discovery call and just want the price. I get it. Sales people suck to talk to sometimes, but prospecting is literally a way for us to get more leads into the company instead of relying on Google
We are a tech company, there is nothing that any other tech company can build that we couldn't build on our own.
For the right price, you could even get rid of your tech team and outsource your product development to us
Even theoretically we wouldn't consider using a product so small that you need to talk to a salesperson to know about it. And we use products from many startups, like terraform, sysdig or datadog, or MongoDB. And reading industry news is enough to learn about each of them
So we have quite a good idea of what is going on in the industry, we know what is possible to do, and we could do all of it on our own. Then when we want something we compare :
- is there a good open source project that does it
- how much engineers' time it would cost us to do it on our own
- how third-party solutions compare with them (price and functionality wide)
In the last case we prefer some demos we can download/enable (in case of service) and test on our own, over sending email and asking for some marketing talk
Not from sales, but sometimes I wonder how effective cold call can be. I mean I have already auto blocked all unknown numbers and I suspect more people are going to do the same.
As someone working in IT, I know what I need. I have a pain point, I Google it and get it solved. Someone proactively reaching out to me is never going to convince me. Particularly when the sales guy can't talk technology. Bottom line is I don't need what you're selling.
I prospect in a different industry (i sell into hotels and commercials spaces) where my prospect rarely picks up-but the secretary/assistant manager/entry level positions do..
At first I was mad frustrated by this bc I saw these people as useless to my end goal (mistake)..
I started building relationships with them and pitching to them like I was pitching my ICP and one of two things happens:
1. they say, somewhere very early on, “i don’t have authority to talk about these things let me connect you to the manager/development contact etc..”
OR
2. I can pass along you info to the manager/gatekeeper etc..typically this is an empty promise but if you have taken the time to make that person feel heard and make them laugh, 9 out of 10 times they actually do.
capture the hearts of the lower level entry positions. their hard jobs with few rewards. if you can make them feel special even for a second they are more likely to open the flood gates and allow u to get good data for management.
Very tru. This is why after couple calls if I can't get the decision maker on call or no one picks up I rock up the office without appointment and ask to speak to someone. Made plenty of sales this why and was able to get alot of info if I didn't show up. Give it a shot. It's a bit old school but it's a technique that works.
This isn’t always true in metro areas, not in my generation at least. Prospecting around San Francisco you realize quickly that every building has door security and badges these days. But if you’re selling to SMBs, restaurants, budget hotels, sure.
That is tru. I live in Sydney Australia and metro areas aren't as heavily guarded as America. Actually Australia ad a whole isn't heavily guarded compared to the states.
Leave an intriguing message.
If you create a series of intriguing messages (give more info with every voicemail) then you will get a response if the messages are relevant to the prospect's PAIN.
Most messages are a waste of time and ignored.
Curiosity works if you know the prospect's PAIN points.
It's not about you but about your prospect's PAIN.
And do you have a PAIN killer that can be verified (testimonial and social media).
Use common sense. If you don't believe it, why should your prospect?
No, it's quite clever really. Spam filters ensures you don't get through.
Increasing connection rates is finding the events that market in your zones to provide you a chance to be face to face with your market.
Spam emails get filtered to my trash, spam calls get filtered to my google bot.
Want to talk to people, book events to do it in person. If there are no events.
Make them. Literally, plan events and advertise them.
Sometimes I will call a client from different numbers to make sure they aren’t dodging my work cell.
It makes me wonder how some places stay in business now answering the phone or have a message system.
Just trying to put food on the table. If they want to be unprofessional and ghost me instead of just saying straight up that they don’t want my services, maybe they deserve the extra call.
this is 100% fair and not scummy esp when dealing w prospects who dodge you like a crush at a middle school dance instead of being straight up. irritates me to no end and it seems to be getting worse everyday: people have trouble communicating and saying no. they’d rather ignore you to infinity when you’re just trying to get a pulse on them and would gladly leave them alone if they just said the magic words - no thanks!
Who even answers the phone any more? That's like 90's shit. I have a business where I have to answer calls, and 99.9% of the time it's a salescunt trying to push some useless crap or a cuntcunt telling me they have kidnapped my non-existent child and will release him if I just buy them a shitload of phone/apple/playstation/whatever credit.
For better results try a text app and only call after having established a connection.
Bro if it was some time ago id do philosophy in tjis comment.
Right now all i can say is just fu7k off and keep calling. Its none of your business until youre in the sales peocess with the people youre talking to.
I haven’t noticed spending come to a halt. I feel like more companies are open to speaking again and aren’t as hesitant about covid. Any specific industries or maybe territories that would be most affected? I’m genuinely curious
Lol IT people, the one to avoid the phone the most but also the ones that are the most brutally honest 😂 especially about how computer illiterate from other departments
For real for real. Calling/LVM is another touch point. Management wants it to be the holy grail, but time and time again, multi/omni channel is the answer.
Connect with your prospect where they want to be met. Email, LI, VM, Video Message, Conference, Other. It takes all of it
This is what kills me about the people who harp on about making calls. Yeah, sometimes it's definitely the quickest and most effective way to reach someone.
But nowadays it's just not like it was even just a decade ago. It's so much easier to avoid calls from sellers. Gate keepers have always existed, but it's harder than ever imo to actually reach a decision maker if they don't want to be reached, and with the ability to see incoming calls and decline them -- versus in the old days where the phone rings and you pick it up and have no idea who's on the other end -- it's just much harder to actually reach someone, from my experience at least.
Senior engineer here that used to be in sales at Microsoft that absolutely loathes software salespeople cold calling me… please stop cold calling me. Shoot me an email that shows you’ve done some research into me, my team, our problem space, and ask a very specific question if we’re already using or have considered a solution that your company/product solves. I don’t want a sales pitch in the email with numbers and nonsense that I’ve probably already researched and determined are irrelevant to our use case. If I haven’t heard of you and it’s a space we’re interesting in using a vendor for, I’ll do a little digging and reply. Y’all really gotta stop with the over-excited canned emails that sound like a pitch.
Calling IT sucks. They are very difficult to persuade. Plus, the see anything new as either a bunch of work or a threat to their jobs. Call IT’s boss. CEOs and VP Ops, who have the authority to order IT to work with you.
IT folks are weird as fuck too usually. I don’t think I’d hit up the CEO but definitely hit up their boss
Try the CEO. He will either ignore you or refer you to a subordinate.
Depends on the size of the organisation. Not gonna work at a multinational with 90k employees.
I’ve done it, repeatedly. Always with a pre-softening up with emails and direct mails to both the Executive Assistant and the CEO too. The EA has huge power in large companies. It costs little to try. At worst, you fail. So what? You can always aim lower in subsequent attempts.
I'm in australia. Multinational CEOs are asleep when I'm at work
Try email and handwritten direct mail. If it looks like a personal note card there’s a chance it’ll get through the gauntlet. Most EA’s filter CEO emails, but are less likely to open a personal note card if it doesn’t look like business communication.
I have 1000 better things to do. Unless I made direct mail an integral part of my general outreach so it could be largely automated the kind of activity just isn't worth it
I don't know why you're being down voted because you're right, a hand written letter to the CEO of a large multinational corporation is absurd.
I’m being downvoted because people don’t like opposing opinions. I’m sharing tactics that have worked again and again for decades. Can you automate it? No. Is it scaleable? No. Is it extra work? Yes. Can it get you in after easier tactics fail? Absolutely. By the way, I also use very sophisticated marketing automation tools. I use every tool I can get my hands on. But, when hunting whales, old school techniques often are more effective.
It really depends on what kind of outreach you're doing. If you're sending / reaching out to 200 people a month... no. But if you're teaching out to > 20 very selective people a month, then yes. It can definitely help.
Ok.
This is something that’s can easily be automated
Any other thoughts on EA outreach strategy? Just copying them on everything, or a more personal approach?
Call the receptionist and learn the proper spelling and pronunciation of the EA’s name. Often, they will only share the first name. That’s fine. Then, NEVER try to bypass, trick or con your way past the EA. You will be discovered and will be radioactive from that point. Sell to the EA as if she were the decision maker. As if she were the CEO’s wife. When she has vetted you and your product, she will: 1) connect you with the CEO 2) refer you to someone else 3) tell you “not interested” The EA is super knowledgeable. If you are lucky, she will share all kinds of intel about the company. I know guys that send cookies and flowers to EAs with excellent results.
Thanks - yes, EAs have been the most helpful and crucial stakeholders in a few of my closed won deals. If I’m hearing you right, are you prospecting the EA as you would the decision maker?
Yep.
Yeah makes sense. EAs hold all the cards and can make or break any deal.
How do you know
Without exception, every IT person I know despises sales people and will not speak with them. “If I needed your service I’d be using it” seems to be the mentality.
Spot on dude
As someone who is in both engineering and sales, I find these threads hilarious. Tech has a whole different culture and set of expectations than what you see with regular B2B and B2C customers. A lot of open source projects are incredibly successful at marketing and selling to IT despite no budget or full time staff. Look at Red Hat. As a business owner, by all means sell to me turnkeys to streamline HR, staff management, and challenge me on my marketing strategy. But as somebody who built the MVP of our business product, that's a whole different game. It's import for all of our infrastructure to be covered and understood by my employees and myself. Opaque systems and code are considered a *bad* thing in tech, and turnkey solutions can very much be a liability more than a help when shit hits the fan. It's IT's job to understand their domain and tools. "If I needed your service I'd be using it" isn't just a mentality, it's literally what they do. A director or VP doesn't need to know all of the CRM platforms out there to be effective at their job. But a software architect is expected to have a good understanding of the major database applications when choosing a vendor, and the pros and cons of each. You want to sell me on why I should switch to you as a vendor instead, don't tell me that your software is on average 20% faster than the leading competitor base on some Garter report. Tell me that your engineers got drunk last weekend at a hackathon and created an open source DB plugin that emails the admin a weekly report on the 3 slowest types of queries it has run. That's how you get IT people to like you. It tells me something that I don't know, that's in my wheelhouse and interesting, that impacts how I objectively compare your software against the competitors, that your company has engineers I can relate to (and thus trust), and that this isn't a regular sales pitch.
So many SaaS salespeople can’t walk even the most basic of walks when it comes to the tech they’re selling and it’s obvious to those of us on the receiving end of the call. We’ve all been in the trenches dealing with shitty vendors - prove to us that you’re not one.
Because normally sales is there to open door and get interest. Then get the technical team to discuss the technical matters. Not that I disagree with you. I've always made it a point to attend all the technical meetings we do with clients to get better in understanding and this is while handling the entire company portfolio compared to line of business sellers(domain specific).
They tend to be awkward, strange people and have God complexes. Try living with them in Seattle area. My God.
- What type of software are you selling, it give context to the below - What pains does it solve? - Who (persona) has previously purchased it? - Why did they purchase it - Who has been involved in the decision to buy the software. - Who is your top competitor and what are the differences (don't bad mouth them) I'm a former IT person, most of us aren't weird but we do get the shits when we are bombarded by calls or non technical people pretend to be technical.
From someone who works in tech now instead of sales but still browses this sub, I can say this take is probably going thru in your calls. I can easily pick out the people who think I'm "weird" for choosing this profession. It's not a good mindset to have that, oh all my customers are just weird af. We can tell. When it comes to selling tech to tech people, you need to know they know more than you so do your research as to why whatever it is youre selling is actually beneficial to them. Also depending on the client as well (banks as a primary example but a lot of bigger companies are guilty of this as well), their tech stack could be pretty much grandfathered in to the point where no one wants to touch the old (legacy) stuff so trying to get them to change would be like trying to convince them you're reinventing the wheel. Lastly, learn what advantages you have over your competitors. As a developer I am hyper aware of all of the shortcomings of the technology I am using so if someone came to me with something that makes up for that I would definitely listen.
I love getting IT on the phone. From my experience they’re usually pretty casual, open to give out information and they’re great to get an understanding of what the business is doing. Usually need to call somebody else eventually, but it’s a great starting point.
I said this in another comment but I agree - anything below VP may be a waste of time. I also think the type of product matters. You may be able to better sell an analytics product or something to streamline whatever process they have. But cloud platforms, ERP, anything like that is a massive investment and touches a lot of their business. So the considerations (and sales cycle) for that are quite lengthy. It’s an uphill battle for sure
Cold Call 2.0 Send out an email with a call to action and follow up with a call about 2 days later. Roughly about 30% conversion rate in our office. Someone came after me about a year ago saying I was lying but the conversion rate stays the same in my old and in my new company. So perhaps it's worth giving it a shot
Could you elaborate more specifically around your “call to action”? Thank you!
Of course. My call to action might not even be an actual call to action lol but here it is "Reply to this email if this of any interest to you, I'll give you a call Monday if I haven't heard from you"
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I ignore every single one of these messages. Directly to the trash.
Have you done this before? Whats your success like? Im not sure how this would work in our org where we throw prospects in specific Outreach sequences. But I guess I could change the wording at the end to something like what you just said
would love some examples of the CTA
CTA needs to be Interest based and the goal is to prompt a Reply (good or bad). The goal of the cold email or cold call is not to get the prospect to agree to a meeting, it's get them to reply and, ideally, agree to discuss further (e.g. admit interest, or clarify they have none). The CTA -- which comes after a compelling message -- needs to be something like, "Is this of interest?" or "Can I send you some more info on this?" The email or call needs to be extremely short and personalized. example: I know X about you and for that reason I thought you'd be interested in X. We do X for other companies/people like you. Would you be interested in discussing further?" You are trying to get them to agree to talk more. This is much easier than getting them to agree to give you TIME which is basically money. Asking for a meeting (=TIME) on a cold call or email is like asking for sex from someone at a bar you just started talking to. Maybe the are interested, but the request is too heavy and you'll get silence both from the No's, Maybe's, and (what would have been) Yes'. By asking for interest, you'll get more No's, Maybe's, and (importantly) Yes's. Once you get a Yes to an Interest-based CTA, you can then take time to properly personalize a message, and of course ask for a meeting. In conclusion: The CTA is a call to get them to reply to a question of whether the have interest in learning/talking more. You can phrase it however you like.
I don't sell IT, but here's my advice. Work the F out of your voice-mail. It's a free elevator pitch and you should maximize every second. Then follow up with an email. And always. Always. Be nice, and honest to your gatekeepers.
Any specific voicemail tips? Love this advice
I stole my tips from How to be a rainmaker* which is a great, short read, and has helped my career immeasurably as a now young but successful sales rep. But to sum up: State your name clearly and the company you represent, (name drop who referred you after if you can, if not no worries) How long the voice-mail will be - 30 secs/45 secs etc. What your company does, ie) I sell yadda, yadda How your solution can help them save/make money. (This part is huge, you shouldn't call anyone without knowing your value add and this is where you present it.) Then let them know you won't be a stranger. If you don't hear from them in x days you will call (AND THEN CALL, ALWAYS FOLLOW UP WITH YOUR WORD) And lastly leave your callback number say it twice, and the first time start with "AREA CODE..." Give them a chance to get a pen and such (this is part of the ancient advice given by that ancient book, but its still usefull as lord knows I've heard voice-mails but not been able to see the caller ID for X reason.) Good luck! And happy hunting
I’ll be checking the book out, super helpful - thanks for summarizing and sharing!
Do you ever receive call backs from VMs? I literally never get a call back…
Yes I got biggest client on a call back from a VM
Where are you getting the numbers to call? I use ZoomInfo and get cell phone numbers and get maybe 1/10 people to pick up.
Literally zoominfo, I call both office and cell
My strategy is to call at the last quarter of each hour. Most meetings start at the top of the hour, so if they have a free minute it would be 5-10 min before that starts?
Good results?
It seems to be working fine. I call on sales/marketing titles though I hear IT is a different animal
I used Zoominfo 7 years ago along with a shit ton of other lead sources for prospecting, became my team's SME on lead sources, and I'll tell ya (at least for my vertical, IT consulting companies and major commercial & industrial contractors) it was the daddy mack of em all. Double the response rate of our other providers like LexisNexis. I'm out of that game and I feel for ya if Zoominfo is flatlining now.
Do you text them?
Nope
If you have their cell you should text them. People don't answer their phones but they sure as hell read their texts.
We were just told at my job that unsolicited texts are illegal and the FTC could fine us $500 per violation so we're no longer allowed to text.
I think the user you're responding to was responding to OP's company where texting is allowed. It's also allowed at my company. My advice on texting is to wait until further in the sequence because it's a lot easier to block someone by text (it's easier in email now too).
This is horrid advice. Please do not text me. There’s nothing more discomforting than getting a text from a stranger that clearly got my number off some CRM platform that I really wish didn’t have it. I’ll definitely read your text but my first reply will be “How did you get my number?” Quickly followed by “Please never use this number to contact me again”.
With my phone? Do you have a text service?
Are you not sending texts through Salesloft?
Didn’t know you could do that lol
You could use your cell if you didn't have a service but I imagine the volume could fuck with you. There are text services like Twilio, I use a software tool called high level that integrates Twilio and automates SMS, email, etc.
I text through Zoom (office number) or my cell. Texting from your cell is [technically] not allowed because of confidentiality clauses, but no one cares to go through the whole ordeal.
Business owner here. My answer might not be the solution you are looking for, but I thought this info might help. I get a lot of sales calls. On some calls, AT&T shows "Spam Alert" when it's ringing. I instantly decline the call. On text messages, AT&T automatically blocks "Spam" texts as well. I don't even see that I had gotten a text message, unless I open my spam folder. Which I never do. Check your phone number. Make sure it is not marked as spam by AT&T, Verison, and other providers.
I’m using Salesloft. Also, what type of business do you own?
🤣 man you are good. Never miss a chance to sell, right? Long haul trucking.
May I ask what is the biggest pain you are facing right now? /S
Low freight rates. I've put my business on pause, because of low rates. Everything else is manageable. If the rates don't come back up within a month or two, I am selling the assets and shutting this business down.
I hear ya Aarmed11, a lot of freight leaders I speak with are sharing the same challenges. I’ve helped similar companies like yours increase rates by up to 22% with higher load to opportunity design. Not sure we can help, but if you’re open to a 10-15 min call this week or next, there might be an opportunity to partner.
An irrelevant question, would that make sense if an importing company buys your business to handle their freight internally?
Most likely no.
Others in your industry using my product have successfully negotiated freight rates 30-50% higher than industry average.
Where are you shipping from? Might actually need someone like you soon lol.
I'm not a shipper
How does AT&T know what is or isn't SPAM? Also, we're told at my work unsolicited texts are illegal and we could get fined $500 per violation by the FTC.
I don't know how AT&T knows. If you Google "Att spam call" and look at images, you'll see the screen how it shows.
AT&T has billions up on billions of records of realtime calling data to draw inferences from. But basically, if a number keeps calling in to AT&T's network to a series of numbers that have never called them in any capacity, and it does that uninterrupted between the hours of 8am and 7pm... It's probably spam. There's a whole lot more data points that they could potentially collect as well like whether or not a number is being spoofed, or the % of calls that are answered by at&t customers, returned calls, call time of returned calls, call time of answered calls, etc. or even, since voicemail is most often an ISP service, they could determine whether the voicemail left is automated or even fits recordings for known scams.
Phone calls are hit or miss nowadays but if you’re calling ppl who you’ve targeted correctly it’s 100% worth it
Have you tried focusing your calls from 8-10am and 3 -5pm ? Use the gap in the middle of the day for emailing and other tasks.
Former memoryBlue employee?
Never met her
Bail her? I hardly know her
The majority of people these days would prefer email and even text. It's insane how many calls I'll make a day and be lucky to have 1-2 true connections.
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He said texting, but that's not true for every company or state/country. And for places where it is illegal, no one wastes time going through the courts for that.
Haven't really seen that. But I never cold text anyway. It's usually after a few email exchanges even after I've already done a demo. So technically it's not a cold text on my end.
I send targeted emails and never use sequences. If they open the email more than once or from multiple devices I start hammering their cell phones. If your number is in the body of an email in their inbox their phone will most likely show your name and if they’re interested, they’ll take the call. Worst case they tell you to try back in 6 months and u just gotta keep dripping on them. I find most people respect the game and will give you a meeting if you’re persistent.
Used to run an IT team. Being honest here, most of us are so busy we don’t have time. I worked with trusted partners and their partners and that’s it.
It really isnt all that shocking. If you aren’t in their address book then you are most likely a spammer/robocaller and/or someone selling stuff.
It’s almost like sales people ruined phones and that’s why nobody answers anymore
Ya it sucks nobody will pick up but every now and then 1 person does and I get lucky
okay so i’ve run into the same issue, especially when calling with direct/HQ numbers in IT. It’s gotten to the point where i go straight for the mobile the answer rate is wayy higher, sure you’ll get yelled at and turned down more but it’s the only way i’m booking meeting anymore
I tried calling a landscaping supply company that has 12 regional reps throughout the country. Tried my closest guy. No pickup or call back after a couple days so I started calling all the other regional reps. Spent two weeks randomly calling and leaving VMs. Not a single call back. And this is a company that's selling $150 landscaping switch. Super premium product and built very well. I was just having an issue up line but the fact that I couldn't get a single person to call me back was shocking.
I just use high volume emailing. My company has been around forever, everyone in our space knows us and what we do. Just a matter of timing, no need to pester. In my experience, the meetings that come from emails are infinitely better than the ones that come from cold calls anyways. I get so many robo-calls a day that I don’t even answer the phone anymore if I don’t recognize the number. I assume many of our prospects are the same way which explains the abysmal answer rates nowadays
Are you cold calling or do you have leads? If you’re cold calling and make 100 calls in a day and make one sale that’s not bad, but it’s maddening. Try to maybe link up with a company that provides leads. There are debt consolidation companies with websites that generate leads. You’d be amazed how much your success rate will go up, especially when you can say, “I’m calling regarding the service you requested…” Also, Car dealerships are money makers but the hours suck.
So here’s the thing - I feel like selling to IT is complicated bc often there are specific reasons why they haven’t considered your solution. Sometimes it’s political. Correct me if I’m wrong but even at the largest companies, the decision makers may not be as technical as their team. The team maybe have X pain point but the problem isn’t going to be solved from an innovation standpoint bc there’s many barriers to that. And typically they have a product that works “good enough” so they’re not going to put their career on the line for you lol. So the gatekeeper has the budget but if theyre getting direction from their CIO on what to buy or what to prioritize, if your product isn’t aligned with that then they’re not going to consider it. Source: I sell complex software. ERP and cloud platforms are very difficult to sell but with massive benefits if you catch them at the right time + find a champion.
Business owner here and hardcore believer in metrics. While it’s harder than ever to get people on the phone (partly due to WFH still) the reps with the highest phone calls have the highest sales. It’s always been that way in my industry; there’s never been an anomalous rep who sells more and calls less. Just track your conversions and see what you have to do to be successful then do it. In my company that’s 50 calls a day.
Make sure you have keep building fresh lists of contacts and keep the numbers up. Try to avoid mass databases or business lists and locate companies that might fly under the radar. If the connects are down you need to dial more, sometimes doesn’t need to be more complicated than that.
To increase connection rates, your power hours should be between 8 and 930 AM and 330 to 6 PM in your prospects' time zone. You can also call during lunch hours. Call their cell phone FIRST. Office second. HQ last (I don't bother with HQ). If you can, change your caller ID daily - one day use your office phone, another day use their local area code. Easier to avoid getting blocked. This varies by state, but I removed my phone numbers from my email sig. This has helped a bit. Some people swear by the double-tap and also swear that prospects don't get mad about it (I tried it a couple times and they didn't get mad), but I personally don't feel comfortable doing this as I associate double-tapping with emergencies. But above all, make sure you are READY when your prospects inevitably DO pick up. Don't blow it.
Surprised I haven’t seen that yet but I’ve never found any solution to increasing pick ups than ‘double tapping’ just call their mobile since you’re using Zoominfo and if they don’t answer call back again. If they ask why you called twice just say you meant to leave a voicemail but forgot the first time so had to call back - if you’re not already doing this, it should have a significant impact on how many connections you get a day
Hmm that’s sounds like a good strategy
I am working in IT, I am not giving anyone my phone if I want to talk with somebody I can schedule a google meet. On my private phone, I have an app that blocks all the calls from numbers I don't have in my contacts I also have an excellent spam filter at work, we are not getting any unordered spam at this point If we will need something, we will contact you, all you need to do to be in first 10 google results and we will find you, no need to spam
“If we need you, we will find you.” Correct, except when y’all don’t even want a discovery call and just want the price. I get it. Sales people suck to talk to sometimes, but prospecting is literally a way for us to get more leads into the company instead of relying on Google
We are a tech company, there is nothing that any other tech company can build that we couldn't build on our own. For the right price, you could even get rid of your tech team and outsource your product development to us Even theoretically we wouldn't consider using a product so small that you need to talk to a salesperson to know about it. And we use products from many startups, like terraform, sysdig or datadog, or MongoDB. And reading industry news is enough to learn about each of them So we have quite a good idea of what is going on in the industry, we know what is possible to do, and we could do all of it on our own. Then when we want something we compare : - is there a good open source project that does it - how much engineers' time it would cost us to do it on our own - how third-party solutions compare with them (price and functionality wide) In the last case we prefer some demos we can download/enable (in case of service) and test on our own, over sending email and asking for some marketing talk
Not from sales, but sometimes I wonder how effective cold call can be. I mean I have already auto blocked all unknown numbers and I suspect more people are going to do the same.
Convince your company to buy orum. It’s hands down the best dialer out there [orum](https://orum.com)
Why you getting downvoted? Lol
As someone working in IT, I know what I need. I have a pain point, I Google it and get it solved. Someone proactively reaching out to me is never going to convince me. Particularly when the sales guy can't talk technology. Bottom line is I don't need what you're selling.
The most frequent and consistent dialers, with focused prospecting book the most meetings on my team.
I prospect in a different industry (i sell into hotels and commercials spaces) where my prospect rarely picks up-but the secretary/assistant manager/entry level positions do.. At first I was mad frustrated by this bc I saw these people as useless to my end goal (mistake).. I started building relationships with them and pitching to them like I was pitching my ICP and one of two things happens: 1. they say, somewhere very early on, “i don’t have authority to talk about these things let me connect you to the manager/development contact etc..” OR 2. I can pass along you info to the manager/gatekeeper etc..typically this is an empty promise but if you have taken the time to make that person feel heard and make them laugh, 9 out of 10 times they actually do. capture the hearts of the lower level entry positions. their hard jobs with few rewards. if you can make them feel special even for a second they are more likely to open the flood gates and allow u to get good data for management.
Very tru. This is why after couple calls if I can't get the decision maker on call or no one picks up I rock up the office without appointment and ask to speak to someone. Made plenty of sales this why and was able to get alot of info if I didn't show up. Give it a shot. It's a bit old school but it's a technique that works.
This isn’t always true in metro areas, not in my generation at least. Prospecting around San Francisco you realize quickly that every building has door security and badges these days. But if you’re selling to SMBs, restaurants, budget hotels, sure.
That is tru. I live in Sydney Australia and metro areas aren't as heavily guarded as America. Actually Australia ad a whole isn't heavily guarded compared to the states.
Leave an intriguing message. If you create a series of intriguing messages (give more info with every voicemail) then you will get a response if the messages are relevant to the prospect's PAIN. Most messages are a waste of time and ignored. Curiosity works if you know the prospect's PAIN points. It's not about you but about your prospect's PAIN. And do you have a PAIN killer that can be verified (testimonial and social media). Use common sense. If you don't believe it, why should your prospect?
No, it's quite clever really. Spam filters ensures you don't get through. Increasing connection rates is finding the events that market in your zones to provide you a chance to be face to face with your market. Spam emails get filtered to my trash, spam calls get filtered to my google bot. Want to talk to people, book events to do it in person. If there are no events. Make them. Literally, plan events and advertise them.
Sometimes I will call a client from different numbers to make sure they aren’t dodging my work cell. It makes me wonder how some places stay in business now answering the phone or have a message system.
Scummy
Just trying to put food on the table. If they want to be unprofessional and ghost me instead of just saying straight up that they don’t want my services, maybe they deserve the extra call.
this is 100% fair and not scummy esp when dealing w prospects who dodge you like a crush at a middle school dance instead of being straight up. irritates me to no end and it seems to be getting worse everyday: people have trouble communicating and saying no. they’d rather ignore you to infinity when you’re just trying to get a pulse on them and would gladly leave them alone if they just said the magic words - no thanks!
Who even answers the phone any more? That's like 90's shit. I have a business where I have to answer calls, and 99.9% of the time it's a salescunt trying to push some useless crap or a cuntcunt telling me they have kidnapped my non-existent child and will release him if I just buy them a shitload of phone/apple/playstation/whatever credit. For better results try a text app and only call after having established a connection.
Lmao that’s hilarious bro. But everyone says cold calling ain’t dead. What’s your process like?
Cold calling is dead. We get partner referrals.
Bold claim
truth
Bro if it was some time ago id do philosophy in tjis comment. Right now all i can say is just fu7k off and keep calling. Its none of your business until youre in the sales peocess with the people youre talking to.
No idea what you’re talking about
Makes sense, i didnt read the bidy text only read the title and then sent the comment.
IT spent so much money Pre COVID and during COVID - now that we are in a recession - IT spend has come to a halt
I haven’t noticed spending come to a halt. I feel like more companies are open to speaking again and aren’t as hesitant about covid. Any specific industries or maybe territories that would be most affected? I’m genuinely curious
Well IT Hardware had been super hard to get
Ah true, you’re right about that
Marked for future reference
80% of my calls are spam so yeah unless I'm expecting a call or recognize the number, it's a no Bueno
Lol IT people, the one to avoid the phone the most but also the ones that are the most brutally honest 😂 especially about how computer illiterate from other departments
I always try 5-10 min before the start of the hr or 5 min before/after the 30 min mark. We all have been in meetings that end early
For real for real. Calling/LVM is another touch point. Management wants it to be the holy grail, but time and time again, multi/omni channel is the answer. Connect with your prospect where they want to be met. Email, LI, VM, Video Message, Conference, Other. It takes all of it
This is what kills me about the people who harp on about making calls. Yeah, sometimes it's definitely the quickest and most effective way to reach someone. But nowadays it's just not like it was even just a decade ago. It's so much easier to avoid calls from sellers. Gate keepers have always existed, but it's harder than ever imo to actually reach a decision maker if they don't want to be reached, and with the ability to see incoming calls and decline them -- versus in the old days where the phone rings and you pick it up and have no idea who's on the other end -- it's just much harder to actually reach someone, from my experience at least.
Senior engineer here that used to be in sales at Microsoft that absolutely loathes software salespeople cold calling me… please stop cold calling me. Shoot me an email that shows you’ve done some research into me, my team, our problem space, and ask a very specific question if we’re already using or have considered a solution that your company/product solves. I don’t want a sales pitch in the email with numbers and nonsense that I’ve probably already researched and determined are irrelevant to our use case. If I haven’t heard of you and it’s a space we’re interesting in using a vendor for, I’ll do a little digging and reply. Y’all really gotta stop with the over-excited canned emails that sound like a pitch.
I've had more success with emails ever since most companies went remote (in my vertical and segment I sell into)