Confronting the challenges of cold-calling strategy head-on.

By William Dunkerley

In ad sales departments cold calls often get the cold shoulder from the staff. Many sales people look at them with disdain.

It's easy to see why. If a salesperson calls a good customer, it can be a rewarding experience. There might be an already friendly relationship. An atmosphere of mutual acceptance prevails. There is a positive expectation of a good sales result. It's all good and nice.

Challenge 1: Sales Staff Reluctance

But with the dreaded cold call the story is different. The prospect may treat the caller with indifference. Many times it's worse. The cold contact initiative might be viewed as intrusive, unasked for, and unwanted. Some prospects can react with rudeness or hostility. And a positive sales result? The salesperson is likely starting from square one. There is no positive expectation.

That's just the start of the problematic experience with cold calls. There's more. The advertiser could already be spending ad dollars elsewhere, and be very satisfied with the results. The prospect may prefer other magazines to yours. And those other publications may have made a point of denigrating your magazine to bolster their own chances for sales success. As a salesperson, you just might be told point-blank that your magazine stinks!

So compare the experiences:

1. A warm and fuzzy call that clinches a deal.

Or,

2. A door slammed in your face with hostility.

It's easy to see why sales staffs gravitate toward servicing existing accounts as opposed to making cold calls. There's an aversion to cold calls that comes from experience. And if a salesperson's income is related to sales results, this increases the aversion.

So that's looking at it from the salesperson's point of view. What about your position as publisher?

Cold calling is actually very important for any advertising-driven publication. Generating a steady influx of new advertisers is certainly a good idea. Some attrition among existing accounts is inevitable. You need new accounts to replace them. New accounts are also vital for revenue growth. Sure, you might be able to achieve some growth by upselling the advertisers you have. But if you end up selling them more advertising than is productive, you might injure your relationship with the advertiser.

How to motivate your sales team to make more cold calls is the question. Making the task more palatable for them is the answer.

Here's how I analyze the matter:

There are three ingredients for a cold call. First, you've got to identify prospects to call on. Second, you've got to qualify each prospect: Would the company benefit from advertising in your magazine and does it have the ability to pay? Third, you've got to make the ice-breaking sales call.

Challenge 2: Identifying Prospects

Often, a publisher will expect an ad salesperson to do all three, and often to do them in one fell swoop: identify a prospect, call to qualify him, and then make a sales pitch.

My suggestion is to try separating the first two ingredients from the third. Continual compiling of a prospect list is an administrative function that involves monitoring who is advertising in competing publications and searching online for companies that produce products or services that would interest your readers. A salesperson does not have to do that. Relieving salespeople of that task can start to take the sting out of cold calling.

Challenge 3: Qualifying Prospects

Qualifying the prospect is another task that can be broken off from the cold call. In the pre-smartphone era it might have been expeditious to combine this function with the sales overture. It required getting in contact with the prospect, most often by phone. That usually necessitated "penetrating the screen," which meant getting past a secretary or assistant whose job was to screen you out! But there were good techniques for doing that.

Now, however, you are more likely to encounter the prospect's voicemail, or a live person telling you to send an email. What do you do then?

I've found that conducting a survey can be a successful form of approach. This should not be done as a ruse or a trick. I'm talking about a legitimate survey that could serve a dual purpose: producing valuable content and qualifying a prospect. It would be conducted by someone other than a salesperson, either on your staff or an outside provider.

Here's a hypothetical example:

You publish a magazine for professionals who conduct virtual meetings. Readers range from organization executives who produce virtual conferences for members, to schoolteachers and administrators, to C-level executives keeping in touch with their boards.

Advertisers are software vendors, service providers, consultants, equipment manufacturers and retailers, presentation coaches, and anyone else selling products or services in this market.

Advertisers and prospective advertisers alike are inclined to share an interest in how this industry is doing. What are emerging trends? What are people in the industry thinking? It's industry intelligence.

This is how a survey might go (either as a live phone call, voice mail message, or email):

Hello, I'm Quinn Quinloe, now preparing an exclusive report on industry trends in the virtual meetings field. I'm with VMVM (Virtual Meetings Virtual Magazine). In return for answering a few questions, I'll send you a free copy of the report when it's complete. First of all, as of now, how do you see the overall market: growing, static, declining? What segment of the market is your company in? In other words, what are your products or services? Will you stay focused there, or will you branch into related segments? What looks most promising for you? In acquiring customers, does advertising work for you? What form works best? Is there anything you'd like to add about how you see the market now and in the future? I'd be glad to treat your answers with anonymity if you wish.

There, that will give you most of what you need to qualify the prospect. What's left is to estimate the company's ability to pay. Internet research should help you with that.

Keep in mind that you've actually got to follow through and create and distribute the research report. Otherwise your credibility will come into question. This shouldn't be a one-shot survey. The research can be ongoing. Your report can be published annually, quarterly, or monthly, depending upon the volume of new data you collect.

The information that the data collection will provide to your sales team, however, will qualify a prospect in advance of a cold sales call. It will also give them a strategic glimpse into the prospect's company that will help in formulating the best sales approach.

Challenge 4: Filling the Compensation Gap

So now we've taken even more sting out of the cold call for the salespeople. There's one last issue. It concerns compensation. If your salespeople are compensated to any extent based on their sales volume, the cold call still presents a problem. Literally, the individual's time is money. If the time is spent calling on existing accounts, it's going to pay off. Time spent on cold calls will fall short. As publisher you've got to find a way to fill that gap. A fixed bonus for each cold call made to a qualified prospect might do the trick.

Next time we'll take a broader look at the matter of compensation for ad salespeople as we move toward formulating OKRs (objectives and key results) for them.

William Dunkerley is principal of William Dunkerley Publishing Consultants, www.publishinghelp.com.

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