Author: divyaprasad

If you’re looking to expand your customer base through cold email outreach, Mass Emailing Tools can save time and effort when reaching out to potential customers through cold email outreach.

It’s important to choose a mass emailing tool that complies with anti-spam laws and ensure you have the recipients’ permission to email them. But before diving into the specifics of cold emailing, let’s take a moment to define what a cold email is.

The concept of a cold email

Cold emailing is a way for businesses to contact people they haven’t talked to before. It’s a good way to find new customers and sales opportunities. But it’s important to do it the right way. If you just send the same message to everyone, or if your message looks like spam, it probably won’t work. Getting thebasics of cold emailing right, is very crucial to your sales strategy.

To be successful with cold emailing, you need to personalize your message and target the specific designation and/or functionality you’re emailing. This means taking the time to research them and their needs. By doing this, you’ll have a better chance of getting a response and building a good relationship with your customers.

Nonetheless, before we step into the world of how to go about delivering cold emails in bulk, we need to understand the advantage and disadvantages of cold emailing. Below we have collated the pros and cons of why cold emails are essential to meeting your sales target.

Pros of Cold Emails:

Reach: Cold emails allow you to reach many people quickly and easily.

Cost-effective: Cold emails are relatively inexpensive compared to other forms of marketing.

Customizable: You can personalize your cold emails to make them more effective.

Trackable: You can track the success of your cold emails through open and click-through rates.

Easy to automate: With the help of email automation software, you can easily send out large numbers of cold emails.

Cons of Cold Emails:

Low response rate: Cold emails often have a low response rate because the recipients may not be interested or may not trust the sender.

Risk of being marked as spam: If your cold email is marked as spam by the recipient, it can harm your email reputation.

Negative impact on your brand: If your cold email is poorly written or perceived as spammy, it can damage your brand’s reputation.

Legal issues: Cold emails must comply with anti-spam laws, and failure to do so can result in legal consequences.

Time-consuming: Writing effective cold emails and managing email campaigns can be time-consuming and take away from other important tasks

After weighing the pros and cons, we now realize that cold emailing is not passé! You can still optimize your outreach with cold emails. The trick is to master the art of Cold Outreach.

The Art of Cold Outreach

To master an art in any field, knowledge of tools, weighing their pros and cons, using both to your advantage when required depending on the situation is very crucial to your strategy. Moreover, there are no shortcuts when aiming to be a master of your craft! So let’s learn from Max what he discovered during his research.

Max, a young marketer, was struggling to decide whether to use mass emailing tools or personalized emails for his company’s cold outreach efforts. He wanted to find the most effective way to generate leads and reach new prospects.

Max researched the pros and cons of mass emailing tools and discovered some benefits.

Primarily, they are time saving and can reach a larger audience compared to personalized outreach efforts. Mass emailing tools also offer analytics and A/B testing options to optimize campaigns.

But Max also discovered some drawbacks to using mass emailing tools. They lack personalization, which can come across as impersonal and decrease the likelihood of a response. There is also a risk of being marked as spam if too many emails are sent, or they aren’t well-targeted. This could negatively impact the effectiveness of the outreach efforts.

After weighing the pros and cons, Max ultimately decided to use a winning combination of mass emailing tools and personalized outreach.

He made sure to incorporate some personalization and testing to optimize his campaigns while still reaching a larger audience with mass emailing tools.

In conclusion, mass emailing tools have their advantages and disadvantages for cold outreach efforts. However, it’s important to consider these factors and determine the best approach for your specific goals and target audience.

What is Mass Emailing? How to Send Messages to Large Audiences?

Mass emailing is when you send one email to a bunch of people all at once. It’s often used by companies to advertise or promote their stuff. To do this, they use special email services to help them make the email look nice and track how many people open it.

It’s important to get permission from the people you’re sending the email to. If you don’t, they might mark it as spam and that could hurt your reputation.

Tip: Ensure your email gets noticed and read by being a bit creative and making it engaging and personalized. Write a catchy subject line, craft a message that resonates with your audience, and provide a clear call to action.

But, even with a great email, if it doesn’t reach the recipient’s inbox, can be quite disheartening!

Two very crucial yet effective ways to ensure that your cold email is received by the recipients are:

1. Ensure your email is Whitelisted.
2. Learn ways to navigate around spam filters.

What is Whitelisting and its importance in cold outreach?

Whitelisting is an important aspect of email communication to ensure the recipient receives important emails and avoids missing out on critical information or opportunities.

How do you get your email whitelisted?

This is a very simple approach!

When you send out cold emails, even when mass emailing, ensure that you select your targets carefully from the given companies. For example, if the product requires the VP of engineering decision, then make sure you filter contacts with those designations and its equivalent when cold emailing.

How to Navigate Recipient’s Spam filters

What makes an email a spam email in a recipient’s inbox? Spam emails are basically unsolicited or unwanted messages that are sent in bulk to many recipients.

When you get into cold emailing in bulk, certain precautions need to be taken.

If you want to avoid your emails being classified as spam, it’s important to follow some best practices for email communication.

Obtain consent from recipients before sending emails, if not then ensure it targets a few people in that organization only.

Create clear and accurate subject lines that catch the eye of the recipient to avoid them sending it to junk.

Avoid misleading or deceptive content.

Include an option to unsubscribe from future emails.

Criteria when using Mass Email Tools

Follow the below criteria when using Mass Emailing Tools and max your Cold outreach strategy:

WhiteListing: To ensure that your emails are delivered to the recipient’s inbox, your organization should be whitelisted in their server. This is the only way that mass emails sent by these mass servers will land in the inbox.

Double Opt-in: When using mass email tools, it’s crucial to require double opt-in from every recipient. This means that the recipient has confirmed their email address and explicitly opted in to receiving communications from your organization.

This not only helps improve email deliverability, but also minimizes the risk of being flagged as spam. Mass email tool providers clearly state in their EULA that double opt-in is a must. Without it, they will not take responsibility for email delivery. Double opt-in is important not only for legal compliance, but also for building trust with your subscribers.

Email Open Rate: To meet the double opt-in requirement, you need to have sent the recipient at least two emails which they have opened. The industry average open rate for mass email tools is around 5-8%. This highlights the importance of choosing the right email delivery platform – 95% of all your efforts before email sending can be wasted if you choose the wrong platform.

Failure to meet any of the above criteria, such as whitelisting and double opt-in, will result in emails landing in spam. Following these key requirements, you ensure a successful mass email strategy and meet your target audience effectively.

Cues to the Perfect Strategy to optimize your Cold Outreach

Perfect Timing: How to Use Time Gaps to Your Advantage in Emailing

Lightning Fast, but at What Cost?

Mass email tools can send hundreds of emails in a matter of seconds, but that speed can be a double-edged sword.

If your emails are all identical and sent at the same time, spam filters may flag them as suspicious and prevent them from reaching your audience.

Timing is Everything

To avoid triggering spam filters and improve deliverability, it’s important to consider the time gap between each email.

A few seconds or minutes between emails can make all the difference, allowing your emails to bypass spam filters and reach your intended recipients.

Finding Your Match: How to Choose the Right Email Platform for Cold Outreach

When it comes to cold outreach, not all email platforms are created equal.

Popular mass email platforms like Hubspot, Pardot, Mailchimp, and Sendinblue may not be the best choice for cold outreach campaigns.

These platforms are designed for marketing campaigns and lack the advanced features and automation necessary for successful sales strategy of cold outreach.

Don’t Settle for Second Best

To get the most out of your cold outreach efforts, consider using a platform specifically designed for this purpose.

Platforms like Salesloft, Outreach.io, and Clodura.AI offer a range of features to help personalize your emails, automate follow-ups, and integrate with your CRM tool to improve your outreach success rates. offer a range of features to help personalize your emails, automate follow-ups, and integrate with your CRM tool to improve your outreach success rates.

Choosing the right Email server and their benefits

Full Control Over Email Server: When you use your own email server, you have more control over email deliverability and sender reputation. This means you can monitor your email activity and ensure that your emails are delivered successfully.

Use Your Own IP and Domain: By using your own IP and domain, you can increase credibility and trust with your audience, which can improve email deliverability. This is because emails sent from your own IP and domain are less likely to be flagged as spam.

Avoid Spam Filters: Purpose-built platforms often impersonate sending one email at a time to avoid being flagged as bulk email and help ensure emails reach the intended audience. This can help you avoid spam filters and reach your audience more effectively.

Risks and Limitations: While there are benefits to using your own email server, there are also risks and limitations such as the need to monitor server health and stay within rate limits to ensure higher deliverability. Additionally, using your own email server requires technical expertise and resources.

Conclusion: So, to sum it up, while mass email tools are fast, they require whitelisting and a double opt-in process to avoid being blocked or sent to spam. Further, for cold emailing, it’s better to use purpose-built platforms that allow you to send emails at a slower pace, but with higher open rates, achieving the goal of email outreach, which is engagement. After all, the whole point of sending emails is to get people to open and read them, isn’it?

Discover a range of platforms for effective cold outreach and email communication with this comprehensive list below:

Email Marketing Platforms 

Mailchimp

Clodura.AI

Constant Contact

Outreach.io

HubSpot

SalesLoft

AWeber

Mailshake

Sendinblue

Reply.io

GetResponse

Lemlist

Campaign Monitor

Yesware

ActiveCampaign

Woodpecker

ConvertKit

Mixmax

Drip

PersistIQ

FAQ’s

Q: What are mass emailing tools?

A: Mass emailing tools are software applications that allow users to send bulk emails to many recipients at once.

Q: What are the pros of using mass emailing tools?

A: Pros of using mass emailing tools include saving time, reaching a large audience, tracking and analyzing email campaigns, and personalizing emails.

Q: What are the cons of using mass emailing tools?

A: Cons of using mass emailing tools include the potential for emails to end up in spam folders, the risk of sending irrelevant or poorly targeted emails, and the potential for recipients to unsubscribe or mark emails as spam.

Q: How can I make the most of mass emailing tools?

A: To make the most of mass emailing tools, you should focus on creating engaging content, personalizing emails, segmenting your audience, and testing and analyzing your email campaigns.

Q: Are mass emails effective?

A: A mass email service is an efficient way to reach a large audience and engage them through personalized email content. It provides direct access to your customer base and enables you to track email performance, experiment with different strategies, and optimize for higher click-through rates and conversions.

According to Jill Konrath—a sales strategist, speaker, and author: “Sales is an outcome, not a goal. It’s a function of doing numerous things right, starting from the moment you target a potential prospect until you finalize the deal.”

Direct dials are one of those numerous things that a sales executive needs to do right and that too at the right time, of course! Being direct is always a sign of confidence and clarity. And, as the wise say, “clarity is power.” So, when the sales executive is approaching their prospect, clarity has to be one of the superpowers in their overall sales strategy. This clarity is often the result of thorough knowledge of what a sales executive is speaking to his/her prospect, why he/she is speaking what he/she is speaking, to whom, how, and at what time.

This knowledge finds its roots in the actionable insights derived from the accurate data of B2B direct dials that AI-powered lead generation platforms provide to sales executives. Direct dials, therefore, become the first step that a sales executive takes when he/she embarks upon her ambitious sales project.

At a time when data is available at our fingertips and it is almost like a data-data-everywhere situation, why do we need to discuss how to find your prospect’s direct dial number? We need to discuss this because though data is easily accessible, it does employ many gatekeepers to protect it. Also, governments across the globe are getting stringent about data privacy policies. Therefore, even if data indeed is easily available, it is often difficult to find accurate data. To alleviate this pain point in the B2B sales process, we need to discuss how sales executives can find direct dial numbers easily and in the right way.

In the absence of accurate direct dial data, a sales executive has to call the switchboard and wait for the right person at the other end. When a sales executive has the direct dial number for his/her prospect, she does not have to wait for the right person to be on the call and it becomes quite easier to connect to the key contact.

As per the research Funnel Clarity conducted, it takes 80 seconds to dial the switchboard whereas a direct dial call takes only 45 seconds. A sales executive needs to make 20 dials per prospect while calling the switchboard, whereas direct dial only requires 12 dials per prospect. In a direct dial, there are 147% chances that a sales executive gets to talk to a vice president on the very first instance as opposed to talking to a telephone operator or a secretary when calling the switchboard. Simple statistics would reveal that using switchboard communication, a sales executive would be able to connect with only 3 prospects as it takes 24 minutes to get to a prospect. On the other hand, using the direct dial method, a sales executive can connect with a new prospect every 5 minutes bringing the number of prospects that have been contacted to 12 per hour as against the 3 using the switchboard method.

The data proves the power of direct dialing. Hence, before we explore how to find the direct dials, let us first understand what a direct dial number exactly means.

What is a direct dial?

It is believed that a direct dial number must be the main office number of a prospect. However, it is just a belief and not the truth. In simpler words, a direct dial number is a phone number that surely answers. It can be a decision-maker’s mobile number or an alternative number.

When a sales executive calls this number, he/she can directly talk to the person he/she is trying to connect with. It eliminates the need to first talk to the operator or the receptionist.

In principle, “direct dialing” is a process that helps sales executives accelerate the entire sales prospecting process as it empowers them with accurate and verified data. This accurate data gives them the confidence to approach the prospects without any obstacles in their way. They do not have to deal with the gatekeepers or the switchboards or even the laws concerning data privacy. When they get verified data from trusted platforms like Clodura, there is nothing that can stop them from reaching out directly to the decision-makers. In comparison to switchboard calls, direct dial numbers help sales executives optimize the sales cycle for speed and accuracy, be more productive, and close more deals.

How to find direct dial numbers?

Before AI’s coming into being, B2B business was about calling the switchboards, the receptionists, or any available random office number. Many times, the numbers were wrong or unreachable. And, at times, sales executives had to work hard to get the right number from the switchboard or the receptionists. However, in that pre-technology era too, there were some smart companies who understood the importance of direct dialing. Therefore, they used to invest their precious human resources to get this information. The sales executives needed to be constantly engaged in getting the number of decision-makers and establishing meaningful contacts. This method did see some success, but it lacked the possibility of scaling up. Also, it did not facilitate regular data updates. And, eventually, with the inevitable data decay, the entire exercise proved to be a waste of time and energy.

With the arrival of AI, though, the picture did change considerably. The enterprises now had the access to the top sales intelligence tools that gave them accurate data on the direct dials. They could scale up their business in no time and taste the sweetness of rapid growth. But, this easy accessibility of data too is fraught with many challenges. Many enterprises cannot decide on the right type of vendor that may offer them accurate direct dials within their total addressable market. As a result, they lose competitive advantage, and soon, the sweetness of the rapid growth tastes bitter. Let’s explore then how to find the direct dials in the right way.

Use sales intelligence tools

Sales intelligence tools or B2B direct dial phone database tools give the sales department B2B direct dials for companies either for a monthly fee or free. Depending upon the size of the business, one should choose the tools that are right for them. Free tools often have limitations of accessibility and accuracy. However, when you explore dependable AI-powered platforms like Clodura, finding direct dials no longer remains to be a hard task. Clodura offers:

With the use of such tools, sales executives can make more connections in less time and focus their attention on closing deals more efficiently and faster.

Online resources

If you are just starting and want to taste the power of direct dials without any extra cost, online resources are good options to find direct dials as they are freely available. Some of the most common online resources to find direct dials are:

Switchboards and administrative assistants

Old is gold may prove just right sometimes. When you cannot find direct dials by any intel tools or online resources, resorting to switchboards or administrative assistants may bail you out. Just give a simple call to the switchboard, make a clear and graceful representation of your company, and ask for the direct dials politely! The switchboards or the admins may have the exact information you’re looking for!

Contact other people at your prospect’s organization

This is yet another interesting way to find out the direct dials. You can reach out to a former colleague or a friend who works in your prospect’s organization. When you’ve not been able to find direct dials with sophisticated tools, this method of asking directly and politely often works like magic!

Purchase the data of cell numbers

There are several vendors that sell B2B direct dial phone databases. Sometimes, this is cheaper than subscribing to a lead database. While buying such a database, you must verify that it complies with National Do Not Call Registry (DNC) laws. It is also recommended to ask for sample direct dials to verify their accuracy and authenticity.

Ask the key contact directly

If you don’t want to take the route of intel tools, asking the number directly too is one of the great ways to find the direct dials. You can politely express your intention to talk to them about how your product can improve the pain points of their business. You can ask for their time and contact number to talk about it over the phone. You can do this in person or via cold email or social media direct messages.

Check the prospect’s email signature

This is a smart way to get the direct dials. If you’ve been in touch with your prospect via email, this method comes in quite handy. Just search the communication in your inbox, check the email signature, and most likely there should be the number along with the other information like title, address, company name, etc.

Why are direct phone numbers important in B2B?

The quick answer to this question is direct phone numbers have to do with overall sales numbers. Yes, sales numbers are directly connected to the direct phone numbers sales executives can manage to have and connect with them too.

In other words, when the number of direct dials gets reduced, sales numbers too get decreased. Let’s then count some more reasons why direct phone numbers are important in B2B. Direct dials:

Save time

There are many statistics out there about this. It is clear that when you are conducting your daily sales activity with direct dial numbers, you will have 4-6 times more connections than when you are exploiting traditional methods of calling the switchboards or the receptionists.

So, for example, you are constantly calling the switchboard for an hour, and you get 3 connections out of that one-hour conversation. Whereas if you have the access to direct dials, you can straightaway call them and that would take the number of connections to 12 or more per hour. There is a clear increase in the number of connections made with the direct dials in comparison to connections made without them. Direct dials save the sales executive’s time and energy that went into researching the phone numbers, calling them, and again calling the direct dials to establish the connection.

Direct dials make sales executives self-sufficient as they don’t have to rely on the switchboards or the receptionists or the admin assistants. This generally does not happen when they do not have direct dials. The absence of direct dials makes them do myriads of things that they are not supposed to do to increase their productivity. Easy accessibility to the direct dials saves their time and allows them to do what they are supposed to do—sell effectively and more.

Allow sales executives to target decision-makers

An ideal sales executive is one who loves to spend time with decision-makers. And, why not? Ultimately, it is these decision-makers who are going to say that BIG YES to your perfect sales pitch, who have the purchasing power, and who are going to sign that fat check that you have been dreaming of for all these days! Direct dials by default then become the most important factor in the sales journey.

Imagine a world where a sales executive does not have direct dials. The smooth ride that we just talked about would turn into the daily grind, chaos, uncertainty, and complete loss of control. In the absence of direct dials, sales executives have to talk to anyone who is available. They are compelled to talk to anyone who is assumed to be interested in their solutions. Also, it is a tough game out there to convince the receptionist or the switchboard operator or the admin assistants to share the number of a VP or any C-level executive. Even when you have a direct dial of any of these C-level executives, it can be challenging to sell. Imagine what would happen if you do not have the direct dials. What chance do you stand to get to them? Almost zero! Hence, having the direct dials of the decision-makers is an essential part of everyday sales activity. A sensible sales executive understands this quite well and makes sincere efforts to have meaningful conversations during each call.

Empower sales executives

And you think that direct dials are only about statistics and numbers? Look more deeply. Numbers and statistics may be part of it, and an important one, but their most important function is to be the wind beneath the sales executives’ wings! When the sales executives have the access to direct dials, the entire sales floor comes alive. It feels so magical to feel that competitive spirit coming alive again within the minds and hearts of the sales executives. They just want to get things done HERE and NOW. They can no longer sit on that perfect sales pitch that they have prepared with so much passion and hard work.

They have razor-sharp clarity on what they are doing, why they are doing it, and when they are doing it. They have total faith in the data of direct dials which is going to make them win the battle for sure. They are now confident that the dreams of getting that commission check soon would indeed come true. This feeling of empowerment to have the access to the decision-makers is a real game-changer in the overall sales activity. No enterprise can afford to let it go as it is one of the most significant ingredients that keep the operational efficiency of the business to its maximum. The sales executives feel more confident and empowered with the easy accessibility of direct sales. That confidence and ease make them present their perfect sales pitch quite effectively and efficiently.

Help reduce call reluctance

Do you remember that math class of yours? You neither liked the subject nor understood it. You were reluctant to go to the school when there was that threatening math class! And, one day, there was that teacher who came, taught you math, and made you the math wizard! You were up in the morning, ready to go to school and rock that math class. Math has become your identity since then!

Direct dials are like that teacher. They empower the sales executives who are completely dejected by constant rejection and unwelcoming responses over the call. Direct dials give them the hope to hang in and the courage to walk again. They just do not have to invent the stories to convince their minds that all is well! They don’t have to tell their minds to do some more research or spend some more time networking or calling the switchboard some other time to get to the decision-maker. In a nutshell, sales executives do not have to give in to the temptations of procrastination.

With access to the direct dials, the mind gets a booster dose of hope and enthusiasm. Now, there is no more delay or call reluctance caused by the inaccessibility of the data of direct dials. There is again a party on that sales floor that went into silence due to the lack of access to direct dials!

Improve connect rate and increase sales productivity

The connect rate is the average number of calls a sales executive needs to make just to establish telephonic contact with the desired prospect. In other words, if a sales executive needed to call 20 times to the switchboard or the receptionist to get the number of a VP, then those 20 calls are dimmed as the connect rate to get the VP on the phone.

As per the data, on average, the sales executive needs to make 18 calls to get one connection. Hence, the average connect rate comes to 18 calls per connection. In a hypothetical scenario, in a team of 25 sales executives, each sales executive makes 52 calls per day for 250 days a year assuming that the business works for 250 days a year. With these many calls, conversations per year would come to 18,055. Now, if each of these reps can just drop one call per connection and make 17 calls instead of 18, the number of conversations increases by over 1,000. It means the sales team gets 1,000 more potential sales and that too with a decreased amount of time spent calling. And how can this rate be decreased? The simple answer is by having easy access to the direct dials.

When sales executives have the access to direct data, the number of calls to make a connection gets reduced automatically. As per the studies, when reps have a direct dial at the level of the director, there are 46% chances of connecting with the director. And, when they have the access to direct dials at the level of VP, they are 147% more likely to connect to the VP. The access to direct dials eliminates the need to research and spend time finding out the correct switchboards or the assistants. When a sales executive talks to the VP or the director directly, it makes him/her much clearer and more confident in making solid preparations for his/her next move—to present the perfect sales pitch that is likely to close the deal. Studies have shown that direct dials increase sales efficiency by 375%.  And, when you try AI-powered solutions like Clodura’s you will realize for sure that numbers indeed don’t lie.

It is quite possible that these numbers vary from company to company. But the heart of the matter is direct dials are essential to get the decision-makers on the call and get the ball rolling for good!

How to get past the gatekeeper and reach the decision-maker faster?

They say that the kettle is hotter than the tea. At times, sales executives need to live this adage in a real sense when they try to reach the decision-makers. Typically, gatekeepers are often executive assistants, receptionists, and office managers who are tasked with the responsibility of protecting the premises and the privacy of the who’s who. The best gatekeeper is, therefore, the one who is disliked by everyone who wants easy access to both the premises and the C-level executives. It is exactly like the ideal villain in a movie who is thoroughly hated by the audience!

But a smart audience knows quite well that it is just a movie and that there’s no point in disliking or hating that “villain” after the show is over. Similarly, gatekeepers simply do their job and have nothing to do with you personally. Seasoned sales executives know this quite well and therefore, their stringent gatekeeping does not become an obstacle in their efforts to reach the direct dials either physically or emotionally. Let’s explore the ways to get past these sincere gatekeepers and reach the decision-makers faster.

Use the gatekeeper as a resource

If you can change your perception of the gatekeeper, half the battle is won. And it is the quite easier and right thing to do if you can see them as humans as well as valuable resources. When you perceive them as humans, you can see their strengths and weaknesses with some objectivity. That frees you from taking things quite personally. Also, they are important resources in your journey of selling as they hold so much information about your direct dials that may not be easily accessible even if you use intel tools. This approach works and makes them comfortable enough to open up a little more and share the information you are looking for.

Use influence/name-drop

We are living in an age of influencers. It is important to know the influencers if you want to be taken seriously in business. When a sales executive is trying to reach the decision-makers, one of the strategies to get past the gatekeeper is to name-drop someone they are supposed to know. Another strategy is to name-drop the publication related to the decision-maker’s work. This may require doing some background research on your prospects, but name-dropping often works as the gatekeeper does get impressed by your knowledge of the decision-maker and understands the sincerity of your efforts to reach out to him. This makes him share the direct dials of the decision-makers quite easily.

It doesn’t hurt to do your research. The more you know about the decision-maker, the easier it is to connect on a personal level with the gatekeeper and demonstrate you’re not just another cold caller.

Be polite yet confident

To introduce yourself with your first and last name reflects your politeness and confidence. It may sound quite small or simple, but it is this simplicity of communication that is the best strategy to get past the gatekeepers and reach the decision-makers faster. As they say, it is the simplest things that are the most difficult to put into practice. For example, for a sales executive who has already been exhausted chasing his/her prospects, trying to get past the gatekeepers again and again without much luck, it is really difficult to remain calm, polite, and exude confidence!

A sword of targets is looming large over the head of a sales executive, he/she has yet to achieve those targets, and in that scenario, expressions of exasperation and frustration are obvious. It is here that sales executives need to summon all the courage and grace within and communicate with the gatekeepers with as much politeness and confidence as possible. As the gatekeeper too is a sensible individual, your politeness does appeal to her, and it becomes easier to get the direct dials of the decision-makers you have been looking for.

Do some research on the gatekeeper

Earlier, we talked about researching the decision-makers to impress the gatekeepers. Now, it is time to research the gatekeepers too. If the gatekeepers’ rank is higher in the hierarchy, and they also happen to be tech-savvy, a sales executive should look up and take notes of the technologies that they might have used in the past. So, when a sales executive is talking to this gatekeeper, he/she can talk about the pain points of the present technology and how his/her product may be the ideal solution. This kind of communication establishes solid trust and respect. The gatekeeper just realizes that a sales executive is not here to entertain or pass time. The gatekeeper also recognizes the fact that a sales executive does mean business and that giving him/her access to the direct dials of the C-level executive may ultimately do more good than harm to their organization. This realization results in easy access to the direct dials of the decision-makers to whom a sales executive wanted to reach by getting past the gatekeeper.

Align with the gatekeeper

To align with the gatekeeper means not to try to get around or bypass them and recognize their inherent humanness and vulnerability. Respect their duty to stop you from having the access to their bosses whose time they’re supposed to save and protect. The moment you start respecting this duty of theirs, the doors to the decision-makers are likely to open faster.

Don’t try to sell to the gatekeeper

The gatekeepers are supposed to ask sales executives the purpose of their calling. If you are a sales executive who is new in the industry, chances are you are quite enthusiastic to close your deal faster. And, if you are an experienced one, but you are in a certain state of mind that you are in a rush to close the deal; you may answer this formal question with your perfect sales pitch! It is indeed a blunder that should not happen. A gatekeeper is not your buyer, and if you communicate this way, it creates a very bad impression of being in a rush and rudeness.  So, the best way out is to answer the formal question with equal formality and grace. It is best to be polite and firm in your intentions to call them as that puts the gatekeepers in the space of confidence and they may share the information you are looking for.

Leverage ego bait content tactic

It is quite common nowadays to receive various types of marketing emails that address you by your first name. That is the basic example of what they call ego bait content. It is basically stroking the ego of the target audience. In other words, it is about making them feel special and intimate with your business and convincing them that you matter the most in the entire scheme! Now, that may sound philosophically bankrupt if you don’t mean it, but this tactic of ego bait content often works wonders when sales executives are trying to get past the gatekeeper.

Some of the examples of such content include relevant editorials that accommodate prospects and their businesses; Google form or any type of questionnaires that require the participation of the prospects; any kind of series of articles that talk about the uniqueness of their products or services. This tactic is not only helpful in creating great content, but it is also helpful in getting to the decision-makers without facing the challenges of gatekeeping.

The authentic, polite, and respectful tone of the content is sure to win the hearts of the decision-makers. You no longer have to keep requesting the gatekeeper for the time of the boss as the boss is already impressed and waiting for you inside the cabin. Go fast and close the deal even faster!

Call outside business hours

Well, if you have done all that you could to get past the gatekeeper, but he/she is not cooperating, this is the last tactic you can try. However, the chances of success with this tactic depend largely on the market you are targeting and its working hours. Typically, the decision-makers arrive early and leave late at their work. So, if you want to bypass the gatekeeper, these two-time slots are the best to call. Also, if you are taking the email route, it is best to shoot an email on Saturday morning or schedule the email so that it reaches their inbox on Saturday morning. The reason for choosing this time is many C-suite executives prefer to check their email early on Saturday morning before going for a relaxing weekend! They can have a weekend to process the content of your email and the next move could be that much-awaited meeting at their office!

If nothing works, chat the bot

In essence, chatbots are there to help buyers. But they can be used by the sales executives to sell as well! Well, chatbots may not be the smartest tools to get direct dials, but when nothing has worked for you, they can be tried. If they do not have much to offer, they do not block sales executives either. So, they can be explored smartly to find out relevant information about the target decision-maker.

Searching dials from name directories

T. Barnum, an American showman, businessman, and politician once said, “Nothing draws a crowd more than a crowd.” This quote is erroneously attributed to Mark Zukerberg in some publications. However, irrespective of who said this, modern businesses have taken this quote rather quite seriously, and rightly so. There is not a single business owner who has not become brand-conscious in the era of social media and influencers. This consciousness inevitably results in getting their businesses listed on the right industry directories. This listing on the authentic and right directories validates their social existence and empowers their marketing campaigns. It also helps them spread brand awareness and generate genuine interest for their products/services in their target market.

Ever since the Yellow Page has come into being, business owners made it a point to show up where end consumers are finalizing to buy their products or services. So, how would you get access to these directories and find your target direct dial? Well, these directories are often found at a place where users undertake competitive research on the products and services available in the market. These directories often occupy the number one ranking on the leading search engines as they use competitive primary keywords.  All the businesses often get themselves listed on these directories without fail as this listing does bring huge traffic to their sites. They can enjoy the same attention and demand as the top link on the search engines without getting into the tedious and relatively lengthy SEO exercise.

In the B2B space, these directories often work as the direct dial phone number directories that sales executives can use to the fullest to reach the decision-makers faster and better. In fact, the decision-makers very much want to be visible and be approached and that is why they are there on those directories.

There are many intel tools that have dial-by-name directory features in their products. Very often these tools use predictive text technology wherein callers only need to press a key for each letter. So, if a sales executive wants to search for the name John, she should press the numbers 5 (JKL), 6 (MNO), 4 (GHI), and 6 (MNO). The moment this information gets entered into the database; a sales executive can have the desired direct dial. This is the basics of these tools, and it may vary from tool to tool. Also, there are many types of B2B directories that can be used to find direct dials by name.

Sales executives can search for numbers from the name directories.

     1.   Rank on page one

There are many digital directories for businesses that want to connect with various B2B businesses. When you are looking for dials in this space, it is best to target those directories that rank on the top page. Ranking on the number one page has the benefits of higher visibility and exposure to qualified, conversion-ready users. There are many leading B2B businesses that are searching for world-class solutions for their pain points. They very much appreciate it when sincere sales executives contact them directly to pitch their products or services. Try these B2B directories that rank high on the search engines and reach the decision-makers faster.

    2.   Rank for multiple software services

Many sites are built to serve the purpose of a directory for software business listings and reviews. They are excellent resources for sales executives to reach the direct dials as many businesses are listed on these sites to reach out to their target audience who are not even aware of such solutions. Such sites rank for their multiple different services as they have a unique directory for each service. They employ a competitive primary keywords method to rank on the top page. Hence, the chances of finding the direct dials are pretty high using such directories.

    3.   Rank for specific terms

There are businesses that prefer to get listed on the directories that rank for specific terms like “best CRM software”, “best revenue attribution SaaS product”, and many other keywords that end-users prefer to use on the search engines. The businesses that get listed on these directories are ambitious players who want to maximize their return on investment. So, if you have a product that can fulfill their ambitions, they are quite a good catch to have in your sales kitty!

    4.   Focus on B2B niches

The sales executives cannot afford to limit themselves to a specific directory. While more comprehensive directories may provide the sales executive with various types of direct dials, directories that focus more on B2B niche space also offer many possibilities of getting the access to direct dials. These directories often have segments of industry and sub-service.

    5.   Rank for everything B2B

Well, who can deny the charm of the sites that offer everything that is B2B out there? You name it and they have it. They list products, services, markets, directories, reviews, forums, and resource hubs. There are many big players who prefer to be listed on such sites for greater visibility and exposure. If you are a sales executive who has to reach their targets, searching direct dials on these sites is the surest way to get the dials who want to play it big and grand.

These are some of the points that sales executives should keep in mind while searching dials by the name directories. Typically, the businesses that are listed on these directories are businesses that do not believe in vanity metrics. They do mean business seriously and sincerely. So, when you find the direct dials via these directories, the chances of closing the deal with them are higher than with those who are just there on the top page for the sake of it.

Final Thoughts

All the studies and statistics clearly show us that direct dials do increase the overall efficiency and productivity of the sales executives. There are several ways sales executives can find these numbers. It is often said that the sales executives should not rely on just one of the ways to reach the direct dials. Though this traditional belief may have some merit in it, it is essentially rooted in the space of insecurity and inefficiency. However, there are many AI-powered platforms like Clodura that offer a one-stop solution to help sales executives reach the direct dials without getting into the “normal” grind.

Clodura’s robust solution equips sales executives with more than 55 million verified B2B direct dial numbers. And, they do not have to buy them separately. Clodura’s AI-powered one-stop solution takes care of this along with many other functions to empower your sales productivity.  This huge and verified data eliminates the need to call the switchboard and the gatekeepers. This means it helps improve the call connect ratio and increases the number of conversations rather than the number of calls to start those conversations!

While it is true that sales activity is essentially about a combination of many things. It requires both effectiveness and efficiency. Hence, direct dials may prove effective in reaching the decision-makers faster; they may not necessarily improve the sales executive’s efficiency to prepare the perfect sales pitch. But, what it does is it gives the sales executives enough time to work on their efficiency levels. When these efficiency levels improve, there is an evident increase in the business profitability too. And, that indeed creates magic! Place your precious trust in robust solutions like that of Clodura’s and see that magic unfolding for yourself!  So, now you know quite well how to find your prospect’s direct dial phone number and where!

To attract prospects to a brand’s digital channels is tough. There are a number of moving parts in the entire task, and a variety of ways to get the job done. However, while most people exhaust the conventional methods for b2b lead generation, such as newsletters and email marketing, there are some powerful tools that are often overlooked. Some of these include:

eBooks for lead generation in B2B industries

If your business belongs to technical space or the B2B industry, then an eBook can do wonders for lead generation. This is because people from this sphere love to learn, and gain expertise from others who share the same platform. However, the key here is not to market your services or product, but rather inform the reader. Taking the otherwise approach can easily result in a blunder. An ideal eBook that is meant for promotion and lead generation should have a neutral tone and carry valuable insights about the business. A great way to make the eBook accessible to the visitors is through a landing page where they are requested to input basic details such as their name and email address to get a free copy of the eBook. An eBook is not only good for lead conversion, but it also allows your visitors to learn about your business, as it reflects your business values. Most people don’t just become patrons of business because of its products and services, but because of the principles it stands by and encourages.

BigData for Marketing, Sales, and Lead Generation

Even if you have been ignoring Big Data for a while now, the time is about to come soon, when you won’t be able to do that any longer. As more and more companies are making use of emerging technologies, you will have to embrace them too, in order to survive in the increasingly competitive market. Big Data has become one of the most indispensable tools for marketing, sales, and b2b lead generation Strategies is simple- it is super powerful and super accurate. Here is how Big Data can be helpful:

• Approaching Leads at the Right Time: One of the biggest advantages of using big data is that it provides detailed information on all your leads. Using the same you can send the right message to your customers, at the right times. You can learn about your leads, their behavior, their likes, and dislikes. By coupling digital behavior of the leads with your existing CRM systems, you can learn about the topics your leads are interested in, and then send content that is more of their liking.
• Organization:One of the biggest challenges that many companies have to face is keeping track of their leads. Depending on your business, there can be tons of information on leads to organize. Since outdated systems and tools are no longer efficient, Big Data and Data Analytics hit the nail on the head. Using modern data analytics tools, you can target your prospects easily, and monitor progress with better accuracy.

Webinars for lead generation

Webinars are another powerful way of lead generation. However, these are often overlooked and underestimated. The principle behind webinar organization is akin to releasing an eBook- it can educate a visitor, and offer valuable information, and the tips and tricks of your trade. One of the best things about webinars is that it barely costs anything. Plus, there are a number of websites that allow you to broadcast a webinar, for free, quickly. It is not hard to develop an interest in the people with quality content, and this – webinar can be a gateway to your leads. All you need to do is come up with an interesting and informative topic, and promote in on your social media handles, newsletter, and network. At the end of the seminar, you can also recommend the viewer to download your eBook (the link can be provided on the same page). Again, it is important here that you don’t promote your own business in any manner. Rather you should just focus on offering knowledge that you have, and leads will convert for you automatically. Other popular lead generation methods that you can try are as follows:

• Emerging Technologies: Smartphones, for instance, have become the most preferred medium for accessing the Internet. Thus, by optimizing your web content for smartphones you can reach more leads, and improve conversion ratio.
• Blogging: Not only your company should have a blog of its own, but you should also guest blog to reach a wider audience easily, and fast. There are a few things to keep in mind though- the content should have some relevance to the audience; it should contain unique/useful information; lastly- the post should be shared on your network as well.
• Software and Apps:Apple App Store is growing by over 1,000 apps per day, and its top rival- Google Play Store has over 1 million apps today. This only shows that people use apps for just about everything. Thus, by creating a useful app for your customers, and offering it for free, you can actually generate leads.

Myths About Lead Generation

When learning about how to find prospects, it is also helpful to be aware of some popular myths that are floating around. Here are some of them:

1. Social Media is the Holy Grail of Leads: Social media is an important platform for finding leads, but it is not as effective as it is often made to believe. You can’t get benefitted from it significantly, at least not unless you use some Data Analytics service or tool for better targeting.
2. You Should Not Pay For Leads: If you are able to get quality leads for a price, then there is no harm in paying for them. Think of these quality leads as an investment in building trust, and avoiding impersonal tactics. Besides, you have to invest time and energy otherwise to generate leads anyway, which indirectly translates to an investment of money.
3. Once Enough Leads are Generated, You Can Forget About Them: For most successful businesses, acquiring and developing leads is a never-ending task. You can never have too many leads, and since there is no perfect automation process, even with the use of software and tools, you must never stop working towards improving lead generation.

One of the most important lessons that you will learn through your trials and errors with lead generation, is that some practices are better suited to some businesses than others. For instance, if your business caters to the elderly, then social media is not going to the best platform for lead generation. Conventional media, such as TV or radio will be better suited for your situation. Similarly, if you run an IT company, then webinars and eBooks, can be quite yielding than other methods. Lead generation doesn’t have to be too hard. However, you should be prepared to wait patiently, as results are not often reflected fast. By trying different kinds of strategies, you can find those that work for you, and from this point on, it only gets better.

The Monday morning huddle at Delridge & Co. was gloomier than usual. It was getting progressively difficult for the sales executives to reach out to the clients. They were wasting significant time cold calling with a low conversion rate. The sales management trainee, who was entrusted with the responsibility of formulating a new list of leads, noticed that the contact details of potential customers were scattered and outdated. She decided to create a new consolidated database of prospective clients. However, most of the contact details that she received from the team were not valid anymore. She was also unable to find accurate information of new target clients whom she thought could be converted into customers. As she reported the issue to the management, three challenges came to the limelight: absence of accurate information, ambiguous targeting leading to low conversion ratio, and lack of innovative ways to pursue new clients. In essence, the company did not have an efficient sales pipeline.

These are some of the common challenges faced by the business development teams of several B2B companies. If you relate to any of these challenges, this article’s for you. In this article, we will deep dive into various aspects of B2B lead generation including the best lead generation platforms that could be a game-changer for you.

What is a Lead?

In a business scenario, a lead is any individual or entity who has shown some indication of interest in the services provided by you. It can be an inquiry call, a query text on your website, comments on social media, or any platform where you advertise. Other than explicitly being interested in your company, they could be someone looking for direction where your services and products are positioned. Assuming you get a comment on the Google My business page asking about the service prices, go ahead and pursue the lead. They are probably evaluating options available to them. This does not mean that you can sit passively and expect good leads to come to you. As competition hits peak, you will have to proactively approach customers and identify challenges for them before they can. The process of identifying these potential customers is called lead generation. You take your customer through a journey once they knock on your door. Customers may leave at different points in this journey, and some might stay with you until the end. A lead is any customer taking the journey from being interested in your business to becoming your paying customer.

What are the different types of B2B Leads?

As discussed above, leads come from multiple sources, and these leads are of different types; not all leads are at the same level in the sales funnel. In order to effectively respond to a lead, you need to classify these leads according to their level of interest. That’ll help you prioritize and understand which lead needs immediate attention.

Warm leads

Warm leads include people or companies who have explicitly shown interest in your products/services with a possibility of converting them to being paid customers. The interest could be indicated through:

– social media networks
– filling up query forms
– subscribing to your newsletter, etc.

These leads want more information and are highly likely to convert to customers. They require timely nurturing before they translate into sales.

Cold leads

They outrightly reject your calls/emails/other marketing outreach initiatives. They do not have an interest in your products or respond to your efforts. As you nurture them over a long period, only a few of them may transform into warm leads.

Information Qualified Leads (IQL)

They are ready to provide initial contact details and are looking for more information on what you have to offer. They might not be completely aware of your solutions and are looking for information more than anything. Once the IQL provides their contact, your marketing automation platform will lead them to the page to download the offer. Further,

the lead will receive extra information. These cold leads have a very low priority when it comes to follow-ups. The sales and marketing team can then offer the lead the opportunity to understand more about the company and how the company can help them solve their problem. Many IQLs will not move on to the next stage once they get their required information.

Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)

This type of lead is a prospect who has interacted with the marketing team’s efforts. MQL is a contact who fills out a landing page form for an offer. The marketer can continue marketing to this lead, providing more information and awareness about the company, or could guide the MQL to the decision stage by offering demos, free consultations, or coupons.

Sales Ready Leads (SRL)

An SRL is a lead qualified by the marketing team for proactive conversion as the lead has specific pre-decided criteria. Both marketing and sales teams agree on these criteria. There needs to be a high synergy between the sales and marketing teams. Different companies have different standards for qualifying a lead as SRL. It can be formed according to the flow of the leads you have. Some of the commonly used criteria are:

Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)

SQL is when an individual has moved from MQL and is ready to take your service or buy your product.

Member Service Request Leads (MSR)

An MSR lead is a consumer-generated lead when a new member signs up for your service. They can be valuable, as they allow you to engage with them straight away. The company would allow its consumers to interact with their agents in their area. Although these leads will have less information than other leads you may receive, they are an excellent opportunity to begin working with a new client in your area.

Lead Generation: A Deep Dive

Now that we have understood what leads are and the different types of leads, let us take a closer look at the process of lead generation. Lead generation involves collecting potential customer information such as name, email, company name, and job title, and utilizing that information to target them with customized sales pitches or ad campaigns. Earlier, lead generation was random and non-strategized, and the number of conversions depended on unpredictable factors, resulting in low conversion rates despite significant efforts and resources. The current lead generation model aims to reduce the gap between resource spending and practical conversions.

Understanding Lead Generation in this day and age

Lead generation is the process of attracting potential customers and creating opportunities for future sales. Initially, many companies relied on cold calling to generate leads, but this approach had a lower conversion rate and relied heavily on sales representatives. As marketing and sales philosophies evolved, companies recognized the importance of lead generation, leading to a more structured approach where marketing and sales departments work together. Marketing plays a vital role in the process, tailoring methods to prospects’ needs or identifying areas of challenge for customers. These activities are largely carried out through digital channels, employing a mix of inbound and outbound marketing methods.

Two reasons contributed to a complete revamp of the lead generation process:

1. Accessibility of information
2. Scope of the internet

Previously, sales representatives reached out to potential buyers to educate them about products and services. Today, customers have access to abundant information and proactively search for solutions. They use various online and offline channels to research and educate themselves about challenges and potential solutions before engaging directly with company representatives. Customers are no longer interested in traditional sales pitches; they seek companies with a strong internet presence and engage in inbound marketing methods utilizing SEO and content marketing techniques. The internet explosion has made it easier for companies to research and understand prospective leads. Lead generation also involves nurturing relationships with existing customers, and marketing automation tools have simplified the lead generation process.

Why does your business need Lead Generation?

Compared to how lead generation was done in the past, it has become more structured and effective, making it a top priority for marketers. It is beneficial for companies of all sizes and durations. Here’s why you need to have a lead generation process:

journey from consumer to customer and creates a more structured process where customers themselves provide contact details on the landing page.

To generate leads, you can utilize various strategies. Here are two main categories of lead generation methods:

1. Outbound Lead Generation

Outbound lead generation involves reaching out to potential clients who may not be aware of your products or services. It typically involves salespeople initiating communication with potential leads. Some specialized strategies used for outbound lead generation include:

2. Online Lead Generation

Online lead generation is a popular method that utilizes digital channels to attract and convert potential customers. Here are some approaches to online lead generation:

By implementing a combination of outbound and online lead generation strategies, you can effectively attract, engage, and convert potential customers into leads for your business.

Lead generation is a crucial aspect of business growth, and there are several strategies and techniques you can utilize to generate leads effectively. Here are some key methods and tips for maximizing your lead generation efforts:

1. Outbound lead generation: This involves reaching out to potential clients who may not be aware of your products or services. Strategies like cold calling, outbound email marketing, and social selling can be used to create interest and build a sales pipeline.
2. Online lead generation: Leverage digital channels to generate leads. Content marketing, email marketing, pay-per-click advertising, LinkedIn lead programs, and engaging with paid third-party services are effective methods. Focus on creating valuable content, leveraging email marketing’s high conversion rate, running targeted campaigns, and utilizing LinkedIn’s professional network.
3. Events: Participate in industry-specific events, trade shows, and webinars to connect with potential customers. Webinars, in particular, have proven to be an effective format for generating high-quality leads.
4. Branding & Advertising: Build a strong brand and utilize advertising and promotions to attract inbound leads. Incorporate causes or values that resonate with your target audience to enhance your brand’s appeal.
5. Direct mail: While digital marketing is prevalent, physical mailers or white papers can still be effective, especially for audiences who prefer traditional forms of communication.
6. Referrals: Encourage your existing customers to refer your products or services to others. Implement referral marketing programs with incentives to motivate customers to promote your brand.

To make the most out of your lead generation efforts, consider the following:

The importance of lead generation lies in its ability to:

1. Expand your customer base: Continuously target new personas and demographic categories to expand your market reach and identify emerging trends.
2. Grow your following: Content marketing and lead generation efforts help increase your following, spread awareness, and position yourself as a thought leader, fostering a loyal community around your brand.
3. Increase revenue: A structured lead generation program enriches your sales pipeline, providing more business opportunities and access to new consumer categories, ultimately leading to increased revenue.
4. Enable collaborative opportunities: Lead generation can facilitate partnerships and collaborations with complementary businesses, allowing you to leverage each other’s audiences and reputation.
5. Improve lead quality: By focusing on lead generation efforts, you take a targeted approach to content and marketing, attracting qualified leads and nurturing a broader audience interested in your offerings.
6. Build awareness and visibility: Lead generation techniques and tools help create buzz and generate an interested audience, whether you’re an established business or a startup seeking visibility in the market.

By implementing effective lead generation strategies and leveraging the right tools and techniques, you can generate quality leads, expand your customer base, increase revenue, and build a strong brand presence.

A lead generation funnel is a marketing concept that represents the journey a potential customer takes from being aware of a product or service to becoming a paying customer. It is called a funnel because the number of leads decreases as they move through the various stages, ultimately resulting in a smaller number of customers.

The lead generation funnel consists of three main stages, often referred to as TOFU (top-of-the-funnel), MOFU (middle-of-the-funnel), and BOFU (bottom-of-the-funnel).

1. Top of the Funnel (TOFU): This is the initial stage where the focus is on creating awareness and attracting potential leads. Marketing activities such as content generation, advertising, and promotions are used to introduce the business or product to a wide audience and generate interest.
2. Middle of the Funnel (MOFU): In this stage, leads have shown interest and engaged with the business. The focus is on nurturing the leads by providing more information, addressing their doubts and reservations, and showcasing the value and benefits of the product or service. Free trials, demos, and educational content can be used to further engage leads.
3. Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU): At this stage, leads have progressed further and are close to making a purchasing decision. The focus is on converting them into paying customers. Strategies such as offering trial extensions, consultations, pricing discussions, or incentives can be employed to encourage the final purchase.

Throughout the funnel, it’s essential to provide the right information at the right time, address customer concerns, and maintain a smooth transition from one stage to another. By effectively guiding leads through the funnel, businesses can increase the likelihood of conversion and maximize their sales revenue.

It’s important to note that the specific steps and activities within each stage of the funnel can vary depending on the business and its sales model. The key is to understand the customer journey, identify potential touchpoints, and tailor the marketing and sales efforts accordingly.

Regarding the cost implications of lead generation, there are various expenses to consider:

1. Media & Advertisement: This includes the cost of running campaigns and promotions to reach potential customers. It also encompasses the mechanisms used to capture contact information, such as landing pages or lead generation forms. Advertising on platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn may also incur costs.
2. List purchase: Companies may choose to buy or engage third-party vendors to obtain or generate potential customer lists. The cost of purchasing or creating these lists needs to be taken into account. However, it’s important to evaluate the credibility and conversion potential of these lists to ensure a worthwhile investment.
3. Agency and labor: Some companies may outsource certain lead generation activities, such as cold calling or search engine optimization, to agencies or specialized firms. The cost of engaging these external resources should be considered.
4. Campaign Costs: Creating and executing campaigns, such as email campaigns or visual commercials, involves expenses. These costs can include content creation by agencies or freelancers.
5. Incentives: Offering incentives to prospects, such as white papers or gift vouchers, to obtain their contact information can be an additional cost to factor in.

It’s crucial for businesses to measure their return on investment (ROI) and assess the effectiveness of their lead generation efforts. Using AI-based lead generation software, like Clodura, can help streamline and optimize lead generation processes, providing actionable insights and increasing the chances of success.

Remember that the cost of lead generation should be viewed in relation to the potential revenue and growth opportunities it can generate for the business.

Top 3 B2B Buying Intent Signals to Close More Sales Deals
As sales professionals, we understand the worth of finding companies that have a genuine need for our products, services, or solutions. Finding & approaching companies with a need for your offerings is the right start for your sales prospecting journey.

Buyer intent data is a consolidated data set of various buying signals that tell us which companies or prospects are actively searching for solutions like ours.

These buying signals help you prioritize your prospects from your TAM and tailor hyper- personalized pitches for your outreach campaigns.

Let us look at the TOP 3 BUYING SIGNALS that every sales professional must be tracking and using to win more deals.

1. Hiring Areas:
   Hiring Areas is one of the top sales triggers to identify companies that are building or scaling their workforce in a particular function or around a skill set. Hiring area signals tell us that a company is investing towards building its capabilities in these areas. So, in this case most likely companies would be also investing in new tools, technologies, infrastructure enabling the teams to perform.

Example: Your company has a platform that is used for Data Visualization, or your company provides data engineering services. And you have a list of prospect companies that are building teams in Data Engineering & Data Science. Since these prospects are investing in build their capabilities around Data so it makes real sense to put your data solutions in front of such prospects.

2. Funding:
Funding rounds could be a key indicator to find if a company suits your TAM. Any recent funding round is always coupled with a string of growth & investment plans. As sales professionals, we should find out the future roadmap for these funded companies and position our solutions in alignment with the prospect’s growth plans.

Example: A new round of funding announcement is made by a SaaS product company on your radar. So this is bound to be followed by new initiatives, investments & opportunities in various fronts of a company. Hence it always makes sense to re-connect with the key contacts in the company to discuss the initiatives they are planning post their funding round. And understand how these initiatives turn into opportunities for your company.

3. Key Employment Changes:
Employment changes could be common in your prospect list of decision-makers & influencers. Every new person on board brings in fresh ideas, plans, budgets & opportunities. Hence, it becomes imperative to get introduced to the new person in charge before your competitors do.

Example: On average 25% of your sales prospecting lists keep changing annually because of job changes. Hence it is important to connect with the new prospects and build new relationships because every new appointment is a new door ready to be knocked and opened for new sales opportunities.

Right buying signals at the right time can help you find the best leads and shorten the sales cycle tremendously. Clodura tracks your TAM and helps you discover over 25 buying signals that are served to you on a real-time basis.

Imagine a scenario where Companies A and B have identified similar audiences to target while selling their product or service.

Both the companies leverage the firmographic (company size, product/service, industry, revenue, location, etc.) and demographic (titles of the contact, contact information, social media handles, etc.) data to attract their audiences. However, Company ABC also has access to the audience’s technographic data.

Through the technographic data sources, Company A knows about the tools the prospects use, the purpose served by these tools, the duration of usage, and a lot more. Now, it becomes obvious that Company A has the upper hand and is in a better position to convert these prospects.

Considering that both companies started on neutral, common grounds, Company A emerges a clear winner!

But what is this technographic data? Is it just another fad buzzword going around in the B2B community? Or is it the next big thing that will help your business stand out?

Let’s take a look.

An Overview of Technographics Data

In the present era, technology is the fuel for businesses. As an acknowledgment of this data-driven trend, technographics attempt at segmenting technology, at a granular level, on various parameters.

In simple words, Technology + Demographics = Technographics!

Much like how demographics define people and their habits, technographics define the technology used by the target audience and any related activities. With technographic data, companies can gain an understanding of the company’s technology stack and their intention to purchase any technological solutions in the future.

Technographics not only keeps track of the various technologies employed by businesses, but it also maintains a record of the total number of products or services that they own, what percentage is used on a daily basis, and how recent is the adoption of the said technology.

Thus, B2B companies can exploit technographic data to qualify prospects.

Who can use Technographic Data?

Typically, any IT or tech-based company that offers products, services, or solutions can gain from technographic data.

Various B2B and B2C companies make use of demographics and firmographics to gain insight into their clients. However, these two are vastly different from each other and may not even have common points, which could lead to several gaps in understanding the target audience. Technographics is that arm that completes the triangle and intersects demographics with firmographics.

Thus, technographics is highly relevant for the following units of your organization:

1. Sales and Marketing Teams

Technographic data sources the information pertaining to who uses the product or services offered by your competitors. The marketing team can then target these clients across various channels. At the same time, the sales team can set up alerts for when a company adds or drops your competitor’s products. They can also set up notifications for incidents when the company switches technologies or exhibits intention to make purchases through triggers like mergers, initiating funding rounds, moving to a new office, etc.

We Sky-Rocketed our Email Campaign Reply Rates Using Technographics. Watch the video below to learn more.

Sales can use this data to personalize their pitches and tailor it in accordance with the technology used by the target company. The sales and marketing teams can make technographic data an integral part of data exchange through CRM so that the handoff is smooth and efficient.

Leveraging data engineering services can enhance the processing of this data, helping teams to gain deeper insights and improve targeting strategies.

2. Business Intelligence Team

From a business intelligence perspective, technographic data is a goldmine. Business intelligence teams can make use of technographics for risk mitigation activities while also enhancing decision-making skills.

Technographics data can highlight the ebbs and flow of various clients, their profiles, and their purchasing patterns. The research and development departments of the BI team can leverage this information to identify new products and solutions that will be highly in demand, including innovative HRMS solutions.

The BI team can also exploit technographics to add value to the existing data sets like demographics, firmographics, B2B contact lists, and more to create a holistic picture of the client, competitors, and even opportunities to tap into the market potential.

3. Customer Success Team

Customer Success Teams can utilize technographic data to identify minor risks ahead of time. They can achieve this goal by monitoring the activities of the target client and issuing alerts when it appears that the client is testing out the competitor’s technology.

Additionally, they can keep a hawk’s eye on the various purchasing signs and triggers to identify the clients to whom you can upsell. Integrating technographic data with predictive analysis and intention data can be a perfect recipe for locating the clients that offer lifetime value.

Advantages of Technographics

One may wonder, “What kind of insights can a company’s tech stack offer?”

As it turns out, it speaks volumes about the target company. Technographic data can shed light on what technology the company is willing to spend on, the level of expertise that it requires, and other information directly or indirectly related to technology.

If you still want to be convinced, here’s what it means to your business:

1. Hyper-Targeted Prospecting

When you know your client, you know what makes them tick.

One of the biggest advantages of technographic data is that it allows your business to create a highly specific ideal client profile. As a result, you can glean absolute knowledge on the best buyers and hyper-target them.

Technographics add value to your buyer’s persona, thereby making it more granular for targeting and searching for prospects that suit the ideal client profile. If your company practices Account-Based Marketing, technographics is bound to benefit you significantly.

2. High-Quality Sales Conversations

Sales is all about extracting the best results despite the many limitations. Hence, it is vital for the sales teams to deliver maximum value per interaction. This expectation becomes even more realizable with technographic data.

Sales representatives can make modifications to deliver hard-hitting pitches that will be more effective than the generic scripts. Furthermore, technographic data also offers deep insights on how to have informed and high-quality conversations with the clients.

3. Improved Sales Productivity

Technographics cut down on the time and resources spent on profiling and researching ideal clients. The data offers a granular look at the total addressable market (TAM). As a result, sales reps can now expend their energies working on highly qualified prospects that check all the boxes. As a result, they will register better closing rates and more sales.

4. Exploring New Markets

As discussed above, through an assessment of the current technological landscape, the R&D teams can identify various avenues of growth and expansion for the business. Upon identifying the new market opportunities, businesses can work towards developing new and innovative products or services to cater to these requirements.

5. Industrial Competitive Advantage

The illustration shared at the beginning of the post is rather self-explanatory in highlighting how technographic data can offer you a competitive edge in the industry. Technographics allow companies to target their competitor’s customers and to identify any major changes that can motivate any purchase.

6. Better Customer Retention

Merely gaining customers is not the only goal. It is equally important to retain these customers and offer them an unparalleled experience.

Technographic data can help customer success and sales teams identify the at-risk accounts and work with them to propose solutions that guarantee enhanced customer satisfaction. As a result, clients will continue business with your organization.

Furthermore, it can highlight the features offered by your competitors that are attracting clients, and you can introduce the same tools and services to retain these customers or increase your market share.

How to Find Technographics Data?

Upon reading the benefits offered by technographics, you may be all set to drive your organizational growth. However, the big issue stands – where can you find this technographic data?

Naturally, companies’ technology stack details will not be available on any public records or database. Thus, companies will have to create and curate technographic data.

There are mainly three modes of collecting technographic data, which are as follows:

1. Customer Surveys

Data collection through cold calling and email surveys are one of the oldest tricks for gathering client information. Unfortunately, it is also extremely outdated and inefficient in terms of scalability. Further, the customers may not be reluctant to share the information that is relevant.

Considering that some clients find surveys annoying, such a strategy may, in fact, backfire and spoil your brand image. Alternatively, these attempts at collecting customer information may also go unanswered or blatantly ignored.

2. Data Scraping

Data scraping involves the extraction of codes from a website to identify key information. These source codes can help determine the kind of technology used by the company. However, only specific kinds of software leave behind a trail that can be traced to extract useful information. Furthermore, websites may undergo modifications and updates, which the source code may not reflect.

Thus, data scraping can offer only limited tech stack insights, which could also be unreliable.

3. Through Technographic Data Providers

Purchasing your data from technographic data providers is the easiest way to have updated and useful technographic data. Historically, the practice of purchasing database was often looked down upon due to its questionable reliability. However, third-party technographic data providers are now making use of cutting-edge technology to quantify and validate technographics at the required rate. The technological advancement has thereby enhanced the accuracy of this high-volume data.

Buying your technographic data from third-party providers frees up your in-house resources to capitalize on the data while someone else puts in the elbow grease.

A word to the wise: It is highly advisable to purchase from reliable technographic data providers like Clodura to achieve Hyper-Targeted Sales Prospecting, High-Quality Sales Conversations & Higher Sales Productivity.

Below is an example of Finding Hyper-Focused Technographics Information by running a customized query.

If you provide services for Salesforce, Marketo or Oracle Eloqua – Here is how to Find Software Product Companies in California which use either of these platforms.

How to Make the Best Use of Technographics in B2B Environment?

Technographic data sources can be utilized in the following ways:

• Account-based marketing: Identification of opportunities; Personalizing communication; and Prioritizing accounts
• Upselling: Offering additional services
• Market Analysis: Filling market gaps; Developing new products; and Acquiring new customers
• Customer Segmentation
• Customer Journey Customization

Let us understand how to implement technographics in the aforementioned facets through elaborate use cases.

1. Account-Based Marketing

Gaining insights into the client’s technology stack allows your company to identify opportunities, personalize communication, and prioritize accounts while managing accounts.

Identification of Opportunities

With the help of technographic data, you can identify the clients to whom you can sell your product or service as the perfect solution. Passing on this lead to your marketing team can help them nurture the lead until they are ready to make the purchase. Sales teams can leverage technographic data to push for a close.

Several triggers can indicate that your prospect is ready to buy. Some of the commonest triggers include:

• Mergers and acquisitions
• Product launches or features
• Fresh funding rounds
• Change in leadership or top executives
• Online company reviews

In response to these indicators, your company can publish press releases and announcements with content that is closely related to the prospect. Utilize technographics to develop an angle on how the intervention of your product or service can bring about a positive change, engage with the target account, and drive your point home through constant outreach.

Personalizing Communication

Effective communication forms the foundation of every successful business-client relationship. Customizing outreach to present the solution in line with the client’s pain points is the best way to pitch your product. However, in order to do so, the sales team must have a record of the technologies that they are currently using. Technographics offers the requisite insights to make your business communication more personalized and more effective.

Prioritizing Accounts

When selling a product or service, it is all about timing. A successful sale is possible after the marketing team has nurtured the lead, and the sales team has capitalized on the purchase triggers.

Once the prospect is ready to make the purchase, the sales rep must prioritize them above every other account. In this situation, technographic data sheds light on the accounts that are ready to buy versus the accounts that still need to be convinced to make the purchase.

Incorporating technographics with data enrichment establishes an automated process that prioritizes accounts to reach out to the right ones at the right time.

2. Upselling

Technographic data is not only useful for identifying new clients but also helps upsell to existing clients.

Given that you have an understanding of the client’s requirements, their budget, and their goals, you can upsell additional services or products to these customers. The fact that the client is already availing the services offered by you indicates their trust in your products or services. However, it is essential to make relevant recommendations as the client is more likely to make the purchase if the suggested products are in accordance with their requirements. In this regard, technographic data can play a vital role in understanding the client’s current tech stack and the appropriate add-on service or product that may complement it.

3. Market Analysis

Given the highly dynamic nature of technology, it is crucial to stay up to date on the market trends surrounding your offerings. Technographics can help you fill market gaps, develop new products, and acquire new products.

Let’s take a look at how you can achieve the same:

Filling market gaps

Technographic database contains information pertaining to the entire range of companies operating in your sector. Thus, you can have a bird’s eye view of all the companies working in the said industry and their respective pain points. Using this knowledge, you are in a position to identify market gaps and take steps towards filling them.

Developing new products

After the identification of market gaps, it is time to plug them. To do so, you can conduct R&D to innovate and bridge this gap. Developing new products will not only diversify your business but also give you an edge above your competitors. Moreover, your skill in employing innovation to overcome market gaps will also fortify your standing as a brand in the industry.

Acquiring new customers

Using technographics, you can monitor your competitor’s strategy and take notes on what they do right. You can also compare what features or specifications of their offerings trump over yours, making clients opt for their product or service instead. After exploring every positive aspect of your competitor’s business, you can re-engineer and create your own new and improved version for your business.

After incorporating the modifications, you can initiate outreach campaigns to attract these clients and convince them about how your product outperforms their current solution. In due time, these clients will choose your solution, thereby increasing your market share.

4. Customer Segmentation

When you use technographics to identify the technology used by a potential client, you unlock a wealth of information regarding their business processes as well. For instance, you gain an understanding of the problems that they face, their brand preference, budget, their commitment towards overcoming the issue, and other demographic or firmographic.

As a result, it becomes easier for your organization to profile these prospects and segment them on these aspects. Furthermore, it offers you a peek into how tech-savvy these companies are so that you could offer proportionate scalability. While most of these deductions are based on assumptions, they do a fairly good job of segmenting and profiling the customer.

5. Customer Journey Customization

With the help of technographics, you can manipulate and optimize the entire customer journey. Depending on your understanding of the customer, you can make changes to the inbound marketing funnel and nurture leads in a manner that is more suited for them. As a result, you will register greater success in converting these clients into patrons.

Unlike your competitors, who may run aggressive marketing campaigns, technographic data allows you to market your product in a more subtle yet informative manner. When you exchange meaningful and relevant information with the client, they are more likely to choose your services.

Based on the technographic data, your customer journey could be any of the following:

• Complementary: Offer this customer journey if your solution enriches, optimizes, and integrates seamlessly with other technologies that the company is currently using.
• Educational: This customer journey is more suited for prospects that currently do not use any solution. Thus, you may want to start by educating them regarding the advantages of your product and then lead them through the sales funnel.
• Competitive: Competitive customer journey is fitting for clients that make use of your competitors’ products or services. For this journey, you will have to present your product as a better alternative and convince them to switch over.

Clodura: The One-Stop Technographic Data Provider

Are you ready to get started?

Clodura is here to turbocharge your lead generation and sales conversion efforts!

With Clodura, you can access all the firmographic, demographic, and technographic data in a single location.

Clodura takes this valuable data one step forward by integrating it with artificial intelligence. Backed by the powerful AI, all the processes like record matching and cleaning are carried out automatically to present to you a single source of truth.

Here are a few cutting-edge features offered by Clodura that you should look out for:

• Technographic segmentation of over 15,000 technologies.
• Default technology categories like CRM, ERP, CMS, Marketing Automation Platform, etc. readily available.
• Get directly in touch with the decision-makers.
• Vital technographic data allows you to customize sales pitches and run hyper-targeted campaigns.
• Stay a step ahead of your competitors by understanding their products, services, and strategies.

Having all the critical data at your fingertips allows users to build a list based on their technology stacks. You can further refine and filter the database using a plethora of customizable data points.

With Clodura, you will find it easier to segment your prospects and target them at the most opportune moment!

Ka-ching!

Final Thoughts

Technographic data equips your company’s sales and marketing teams with highly qualified leads and also prepares them for possible objections that they may have to handle during the sales process. It puts your business in a position where you can clearly identify the best-selling opportunities and figure out whether your company’s offerings are compatible or competitive for the target client. Further, it gives a boost to your ABM strategies, increases conversion rates, and shortens the sales cycle.

Most importantly, technographic data prepares your business for the future where data will be the cornerstone of all processes and applications. Thus, it becomes critical to adapt to these digital transformations by leveraging technographics rather than falling behind and perishing.

In a nutshell, technographics is the Pole Star that will guide your company’s growth and expansion not only in the present but also in the future!

Here’s some food for thought. When it comes to the sales process (or the prodigal ‘sales cycle‘), who do you think is at the steering wheel? Ask any experienced salesperson, and the answer would be the same – the decision-maker.

With that being said, the speed and accuracy with which salespeople are able to reach decision-makers can single-handedly drive the revenue of entire organizations.

Let’s understand this with an example. Consider a scenario where an organization deploys 20 salespeople, with each making about 50 calls per day for 280 working days a year. An increase of a mere one phone call in the connect rate of a salesperson would generate 5600 more sales conversations per year (assuming a 10% connect rate).

Read that again. Get it?

And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Not only do direct dials numbers quantitatively boost the conversations with prospective customers, but they also bring unprecedented finesse in terms of closure quality. For instance, a sales executive who uses direct dial is 147% more likely to reach prospects at the VP level. Moreover, it takes only five minutes to connect with prospects by using direct dials, as compared to 22 minutes when using switchboard numbers.

So let’s get to the chase and understand what direct dials are all about, why you should be paying attention to them, and how you can leverage them in your day-to-day sales activities.

Understanding Direct Dials (the ‘What‘)

At the process level, ‘Direct Dialing‘ is a concept that speeds up the process of prospecting customers by enabling outreach to verified desk extensions and cellphone numbers without any facilitation. This enables salespeople to directly contact leads without wasting time on gatekeepers or switchboards. The idea is to acquire or create a verified database of contact numbers, known as ‘Direct Dials,‘ that enable salespeople to connect with decision-makers directly. In this way, they help to optimize the sales cycle for speed and accuracy, helping sales reps to become more productive and close more leads.

Benefits of Using Direct Dials (the ‘Why‘)

On the face value, both math and logic seem to hold up when it comes to direct dials. But are there any real, long-lasting implications of deploying the concept in your current sales scenario? As it turns out, the impact is profound and long-lasting:

1. Higher Probability of Profitability

Direct-dial phone numbers have an immediate impact on the time that it takes to locating and contacting leads. To make things even sweeter, sales reps end up shelling out lesser resources to chase the leads and convert them. All this and more leads to an obvious reduction in the lead acquisition costs. Since sales targets can be met faster through direct dial numbers, the extra time can be invested in expanding the sales funnel by reaching out to more prospects.

What does this lead to? Better and long-lasting positive effect on profits.

2. Boost in Productivity of Sales Reps

Armed with the ability to reach decision-makers faster, connections can be made more easily, and sales reps can instead focus on nurturing the leads. While increasing productivity, this brings an obvious shift in the mindset of sales reps as they go from spending time to connect with leads to building rapport with the customers.

Research suggests that only 33% of the time of sales reps is actively spent in selling activities, with the remaining part of the day being spent in tasks such as management of email lists, data entry, research, and call scheduling. This automatically brings us a logical conclusion that spending time on connecting to cold leads is strictly unwelcome.

3. Reduction in Call Reluctance

Imagine going through the ordeal of making phone calls to random people that you have never talked to before, only to be turned by a human firewall of another person that promises to get your message across but never does. Welcome to Sales 101.

‘Sales‘ is often not about the most hardworking rep. Instead, it boils down to the motivation to prospect and self-promote (subtly). A lack of this motivation is what is known as the ‘Sales Call Reluctance,‘ where an emotional hesitation creeps in when sales reps start self-questioning. And this is often the case when reps lack the necessary data that they need to reach their target accounts. Direct dials give salespeople their required dose of self-confidence and belief to keep the wheels turning.

4. Enablement in Targeting Higher-level Decision-makers

Decision-makers are the lifeblood of all sales activities. Entire sales processes revolve around the accuracy and intensity of engaging with them. While being armed with accurate direct dial data, sales reps are under a righteous impression that they will be able to easily target and reach high-level decision-makers, without having to waste time on alternative strategies. Hence, sales reps are more likely to target the right decision-makers and ensure that the quality of their pitch is not undermined in any way. They are more motivated to aim higher and work harder, boosting results for the entire organization.

The immediate result? Every sales cycle begins with the decision-maker.

5. Easier Sales Enablement and Training

Training and development is an important and never-ending facet of sales. This holds importance, especially for new sales reps who have recently joined the organization and have to go through a comprehensive learning curve. Without the provision of direct dial numbers, sales managers would have to include entire workflows on how to manage situations where sales reps are unable to reach decision-makers. This not only adds another layer of management but also increases crucial metrics such as employee monitoring and onboarding time.

All this can be easily avoided with the decision to leverage direct calling.

Implementing Direct Dials to Boost Sales (the ‘How‘)

If you thought prospecting was hard, consider this statistic – it takes eight phone calls on an average to reach a prospect. So if your sales cycle seems incoherently long, maybe its time to focus on reducing it. And using direct dials phone numbers is the obvious way forward here.

The implementation of direct dial numbers begins with the creation and maintenance of a reliable B2B contact database that contains relevant information heads such as:

Making such a list is the cornerstone of any direct dialing effort. Here is how you can embark on this journey and gather the building blocks of a reliable direct dial number list:

1. Profile Your Ideal Buyers

Since the decision-maker is the core stakeholder of this exercise, it is crucial to learn as much as possible about them. This begins with segregating and profiling them to ensure that resources are invested in only those leads/prospects that are more likely to convert. This is also known as the Buyer’s Persona and should include details such as:

Both the relevance of the questions and the quality of the information gathering process will dictate the success of direct dialing here.

2. Know Your Total Addressable Market

Once you have an overview of the ideal buyer, it is time to gather details of the Total Addressable Market (TAM). It is defined as the total available opportunity for a product or service in current market conditions. Simply put, it is the total amount of money that can be made in the current market and corresponds to the total demand for the product/service. It can be easily calculated by asking the following questions:

TRY IT NOW: CALCULATE YOUR TOTAL ADDRESSABLE MARKET

3. Collect Contact Data of B2B Prospects

The most important and tiring ordeal on the list, this is the defining step of your direct dialing guide. Searching the Internet for accurate details is like shooting an arrow in the dark. The only way to verify the details is to actually put them to use. And by the time that happens, it may already be too late.

Here are a few channels that can help you steer clear of such potholes:

READ IT NOW: How to Use Linkedin to Generate More Revenue

4. Maintaining Data Integrity

The last step of the process is to analyze the list to narrow down the companies even further. This not only cleanses the data but makes the list even more relevant. The idea is to map out any recent triggers or events that validate the use case of your product/service and help you to determine the primary decision-maker to pitch to. And while doing so, other aspects of the campaign can also be catered to. This includes segmentation, prioritization, and formulation of personalized marketing tactics.

And the process does not end here. You have to realize the data on the list will not be intact forever and needs constant care. Companies commonly find that about 30% of contact data decays on a yearly basis. Hence, the data needs to be regularly validated and updated after collection, preferably ever 90 days. The following steps can be followed in such a case:

How Clodura Can Intervene to Make Your Life Easier

There is no denying the fact that manual database building involves considerable time and effort. This often puts it outside the scope of both newcomers and marketing managers who do not want to compromise on campaign performance. Without experience and an accurate sense of direction, it can be a never ending tirade.

Clodura can intervene in such situations (and more) to help businesses to quickly acquire high-quality prospect data. Being an AI-powered solution, Clodura can accelerate and automate the lead generation process by enabling you to find the contact details of decision-makers. The features of the comprehensive platform include:

Hence, Clodura not only helps you to find the decision-makers and connect with them, but it also enables you to book more meetings and enable purchases.

Did one of your emails bounce back?

Don’t worry; it happens to the best of us.

Emails have been a time-honored way of corresponding with people for reasons both professional and personal. You send emails for almost every use possible. That being said, the sphere in which emails have always assumed greater significance is the professional one.

In today’s age, especially, emails are a key component of marketing your business. Email marketing campaigns are born and built to that end specifically, and not needlessly too. According to businesses, it is the most trusted form of corresponding with customers as 77% of them choose email over other channels. For marketers, this is a huge pot of untapped gold because email campaigns bring you the highest overall ROI at 4000%, which means a $40 return on investment for every dollar spent on email!

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But even in the space age, obstacles that may seem plain remain, and a significant one that people encounter is the infamous email bounce. As part of your email marketing campaign, you want to get your marketing collateral out to as many people as you can, who are a part of your mailing list. But in doing so, it’s highly probable for you to find that a substantial portion of them can’t be reached.

So, what should you do when the persistent thorn of the email bounce keeps disrupting your chances for probable business?

A good place to start would be to know what constitutes an email bounce.

What Is an Email Bounce?

An email bounce is what happens when the emails you send out don’t reach the recipient’s inbox for whatever reason. There are various reasons as to why email servers could reject emails. Also known as a non-delivery report, when a server rejects your email, it sends you a bounce in accordance with RFC 5321.

Recognizing bounced emails isn’t particularly difficult too. Most people have seen at least one bounced email in their life without knowing it. For those wondering what a bounced email message looks like, here’s an example of the same.

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This is the standard description of what a bounced email message looks like. It usually contains the issue that caused the bounce, an ID unique to your email, the time and date of the bounce, the email server’s hostnames and IPs, the SMTP error code, and an error message like “A message you sent could not be delivered…” This happens in cases when:

• The email address you sent the email to is non-existent.
• There is an unnecessary number of spaces in the email address.
• The email address itself is misspelled or has a typo.

Bounced emails are an infuriating, yet normal occurrence. Not because of the fact that it can hurt your marketing campaign, but because it can also damage your IP reputation and deliverability. However, it’s only when the number of bounces increases that you should have the proverbial sweat trickling down your forehead.

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For example, an email bounce rate of generally 2-5% is acceptable, but if the rate goes anywhere north of 5% is when you should start taking steps to identify the cause. In fact, the higher your email bounce rate, the deeper your reputation will plummet, and repeated unsolicited emails to unengaged addresses can also lead to your account being suspended by your email service provider.

A bounce is further categorized into types. By knowing the differences between them, you can learn how to avoid and also fix email bounce back issues.

The Different Types of Email Bounces

We know what an email bounce is. But to learn why it happens, we will be taking a hard look at the signs one usually ignores. The reasons why emails bounce are many and range from unresponsive servers, full inboxes, non-existent email addresses, and mails to fake addresses.

Not counting these reasons, there are several more reasons why you could receive delivery status notifications about why your email bounced. Oftentimes, the reasons are temporary (and you can reverse them) — but there are others that are permanent. So that you know the reason your email bounced back, it would bid you good to first understand the bounce categories that any of your bounced emails fall under.

1. Hard Bounce (bounce_hb)

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Hard bounces are what happens when one of your emails become permanently undeliverable to an address. Following one or more failed deliveries, the email is taken off of the sending queue, and the subscriber is unsubscribed. The different reasons why a hard bounce occurs include:

• Incorrect email address: Did you know that 40% of email users revise or change their email addresses once every two years, and 15% do it one or more times a year? This amount of bad data, while certainly not your fault, can always diminish your credibility as a sender. That’s why it is always better to double-check if you have got the email address of the recipient right so that you don’t suffer a hard bounce.

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• Fake email address: A lot of times, people give you fake email addresses to have you get off their back. Maybe you asked them for their address in exchange for something like a backlink or content. The trick here is to go for double opt-in so that you can avoid these bounces.
• Email blocked: This bounce occurs when the recipient’s email server is blocking an email from your server. The following messages could be returned to you.

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Hard bounces can’t be fixed. The one recourse you can take is to remove the email addresses that have hard bounced from your mailing list. If you don’t do so and they begin to stack up, you could even have your emails blacklisted!

2. Soft Bounce (bounce_sb)

A soft bounce is what happens when a server has rejected your email temporarily. They aren’t usually a major point of concern, and most email services resend emails as soon as they soft bounce. The reasons why a soft bounce happens include:

• Mailbox is full: In this case, the email server couldn’t deliver your email because the recipient’s email box was full. Until the recipient clears up some space from their inbox, your email will keep soft bouncing.

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• Server down: This happens when an unreachable server crashes, overloads, or is under maintenance, and you have to wait until the server is back up to send the email successfully.

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• Email size: If your emails are heavy with large files or huge attachments, it could bounce back.
• Autoreply: If the recipient is offline and they have set an autoreply, your email will bounce back.

3. Blacklisted Emails

Did you know that almost 350 billion emails are sent out every day? And of them, 300 billion emails, almost 85%, are considered as spam? That is a terrifyingly huge number. But why are we telling you this? It’s because spam is heavily looked down upon by ESPs or email service providers who exist to protect recipients from the 300 billion emails above. If you or your business’ mails repeatedly come within these spam emails, you could run the risk of being blacklisted.

Email and Spam Statistics (Source: Cisco Talos)

Now, a real valid question that could arrive in your mind is what makes an email blacklisted. Well, they usually happen because of:

• High bounce rates: If your bounce rates are usually high and you don’t maintain a good email list hygiene, your bounce transgressions could start piling up.
• Spam complaints: Complaints are part and parcel of the email life, but if the number of complaints reaches or exceeds a certain level, internet service providers can send your emails to spam folders or even blacklist it.
• Haranguing content: We all know those email subject lines taken from telemarketing sales pitch with “FREE” or “LIMITED OFFER” in all caps preceded by a million exclamation points. No one wants that, do we now.? If you are doing that, stop immediately.
• An increase in email volume or email list size: If your email list has new email addresses being added to it too fast too soon, it’s a signal that you have bought a list. If you send huge volumes of email from the get-go, it could indicate spam.

4. Other Types of Bounces

• DNS failure (bounce_df): In this type of bounce, the email server couldn’t deliver your message temporarily to a recipient’s address because of a DNS problem.
• Challenge/Response (bounce_cr): You receive Challenge/Response replies when the recipient has installed a specific software that accepts messages for them only from the senders they know. This filter sends an automated reply with a challenge (a question or required action) to the email sender, which, if not completed correctly, results in the message being undelivered to the recipient.
• Transient bounce (bounce_tr): Transient bounces are generated by the sender’s email server when the message was not delivered, but the server still might be trying. These are not harmful and can usually be safely ignored.
• Address Change (bounce_ac): This bounce response is received by senders when a recipient has changed their email address and has sent an automatic reply to senders to inform them of their new email address.

There are many types of bounces, and emails could always bounce back for some reason. While there isn’t much you can do about these reasons and the fact that your emails bounced, there are steps you can take to minimize your bounce rate. Here, we will take a look at some of these measures that can help you improve your delivery rate and keep your bounce rate at a minimum.

Measures to Minimize Bounce Rate

An email bounce rate is calculated as the total percentage of emails sent by you that bounced back because they were undeliverable. And unlike other email marketing metrics like click-through rate and open rate, a high bounce rate is a red flag. You want to keep your bounce rate as low as you possibly can.

So, how do you do it? You obviously wouldn’t shoot yourself in the foot if you knew any better. To minimize the bounce rate, take conscious monitoring on your part of your email campaign for your bounce rate trends. The different ways you could minimize it include:

1. Have a Clean and Straightforward Sign Up Form

Did you know that 50% of marketers say marketing strategies like web forms are their principal source of leads?

Your email marketing campaign is dependent upon the leads you generate. And, in order to send emails to prospective clients, you have to get their contacts. A great way to do this and subsequently increase the success rate of your marketing campaign is by employing the use of a simple sign-up or web form. With as many as 74% of companies using web forms for lead generation and 49.7% stating it to be their highest converting tool, it’s a no-brainer to include them to ease your lead generation woes.

Ensure to not have any more than the necessary fields for people to enter their information and email address. Have a good captcha system in place and make sure that it is not easily fooled by computers or bots. A good example is how lululemon does it.

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2. Check Your Email List for Veracity Before Sending Emails

Many a time, bounces happen because the email addresses that you sent mails to are either incorrect, contain typos, or are non-existent. If your email list hasn’t been updated in a while (in six months), then it’s highly probable that many addresses have become inert, switched off, become inactive. In fact, 51% of businesses have found that data quality is their biggest impediment in email marketing success.

A good way to check the legitimacy of your email list is to appoint the services of a sales engagement platform that provides you with up to date email information. Clodura is a pioneer in engineering sales engagement with its 95% accurate email data. By commissioning our services, you can rest easy with regards to concerns about generic email addresses and be sure that your mailing list is updated and unique.

3. Make Sure Your Email Doesn’t Look Like Spam

No one likes spam. A recent poll conducted by Spamlaws found that 52% of all participants stated spam as a serious problem.

It’s obvious that you don’t want to spam the recipient. But, as it occurs, you still find that your emails are ending up in the spam folder. Why is it so?

This is because there are spam filters that determine whether or not your email looks like spam. But what has that got to do with you? You know that your email is genuine, right? Well, the problem lies elsewhere. With almost 73% of emails being sent out every day constituting spam, spammers are always coming up with new ways to spam, and the filters change accordingly to keep them at bay. So, if your email does in any way resemble a spam mail, you know where it ends up, and why.

This means that you need to continually revise your email template to make sure that it hasn’t assumed any characteristics that make it look like spam. Just doing this consistently can bring down your email bounce rate by a huge margin.

4. Decide Upon a Mailing Schedule

Consistency is key to everything in marketing. It ensures that you remain in your customers’ minds for a long time. And in the age of decreasing attention spans, this is paramount. For example: According to studies, Tuesday is the best time of the week to send emails. So, build a mailing schedule centered around this time and day of the week. Being consistent with this will guarantee that your subscribers always have you on their mind and don’t mark your email address under spam.

However, this doesn’t mean that you send emails every day. By doing so, you will definitely end up landing in the spam folder. First, create a professional email template, decide upon its engagement patterns, come up with a schedule that is periodic, and then follow it to the hilt. This could signify that there’s a fixed campaign agenda so that your messages are expected by both your recipients and their servers.

5. Secure a Good Sender Reputation

“The easiest way to combat poor deliverability is to remove people from your list if they haven’t been opening, reading, or clicking.”– Brendan Dubbels

As seen above in the article, a good sender reputation is important for your campaigns to succeed and ensure regular deliverability because if you don’t, then the chances are that even your genuine, non-spam emails will not reach the inbox of your recipients. A small blemish on your reputation, especially for small organizations, could end up disrupting business and negatively impact customer relationships.

So, how do you ensure that your sender reputation has not gone to the dogs and if it has, how to improve it?

• Utilize email validation systems like the Sender Policy Framework or SPF to warrant that the host domains are licensed so that it helps you build trust in the minds of your subscribers.
• Certain ESPs ask for SenderID authentication because it helps with issues of email “spoofing” and phishing and brings down the percentage number of bona fide emails incorrectly marked as spam.
• Make use of DKIM authentication to make sure that your emails are getting delivered to your recipient’ inboxes.

Key Takeaways

Nobody wants their email to bounce. Particularly not when the ROI is hugely dependent upon it. So, it only makes sense to sort out your deliverability woes as soon as possible. Because if your emails keep landing up in the spam dump or bouncing, your email marketing campaign will never taste success.

Fortunately, there are many measures you can take from using concise sign-up forms, building your mailing list organically to authenticating your company name using reply-to addresses to correct these issues. Ensure that you have all the nitty-gritty covered, and don’t forget to keep track of your emails to view and fix any problems that lower your email deliverability rates.

Did you know that a staggering 49% of buyers prefer cold calling as the first point of contact?

Cold calling is not dead.

On the contrary, it has been found thata large number ofprospects, especially in the technology and professional services, respond well to cold calls.

But does that make your job easy as a salesperson?

Well, to be honest, cold calling, though useful, continues to be one of the toughest aspects of sales. Understandably, it isn’t easy to deliver a practiced pitch to someone who hasn’t shown any interest in your product previously. Besides, no two calls are ever the same – which can make the experience exciting, as well as a little scary at times.

Yet, it is a fact that cold calling remains one of the most effective ways of gaining customers for your business – which is why we have compiled this list of 20cold calling tipsthat will help you deliver more value and connect better with your prospects in the first go.

1. FocusOnYour Voice and Intonation

When you make a cold call, do not sound apologetic. Instead, sound cheerful and energetic, as positive behavior is usually quite infectious and tends to mirror with your prospects, leading to a better response. Remember, in the absence of body language and facial cues, up to 38 percent of spoken communication is comprehended according to your tone or how you mouth your words, and only 7 percent is comprehended from the words actually spoken. Hence, it is vital to ensure that you sound enthusiastic and understanding, instead of being impatient or irritated when you call up a prospect.

Another cold calling tip that works well is mirroring the speech patterns of your prospects from time to time to connect with them better.

2. Speak Slowly& Use Pauses ForMaximum Impact

Very often, we tend to rattle off a stellar script quickly on a cold call, waiting for a positive response from the prospect but end up being rejected. The reason, very often, is that people who talk fast may be hard to understand and come across as under-confident, which means they may not be taken seriously by prospects.

Talking slowly not only helps your prospects comprehend and absorb what you are saying, but it also shows that you are in control of the situation, building confidence and trust.

Speaking slowly and impactfully is an art that you must master with practice to improve your cold calling strategy. If you think you talk too fast,try including deliberate pausesin your speech or use a timer device to improve your delivery.

3. Respect Your Prospect’s Time

When you are cold calling a prospect, you are essentially intruding into their time. Therefore, it is vital to prove your value within the first few seconds of the call or risk being hung upon. Onecold calling strategythat helps in such a situation is asking for permission from your prospects to go ahead. For example, you can ask something specific like, “May I take 35 seconds of your time to [value statement]” to raise your prospect’s curiosityand alsogain their approval to speak further.

Even after the prospect gives you the go-ahead, it is essential to keep your conversation short and sweet, while focusing on the next steps to fix an elaborate meeting or demo wherein you can push the sale. One cold calling tip that we like to stress upon here is creating a targeted list of prospects before you even begin calling. Instead of making random calls, value your time and that of your prospects, by only calling individuals who fit into your targeted lead personas.

4. Ask Open-Ended Questions for a Two-Way Discussion

Cold calling is not supposed to be a monologue, but rather, a two-way exchange of information or conversation. Therefore, it is vital to prepare your calling script in a manner that it contains several open-ended questions, allowing your prospects ample room for response. For example, questions that start with ‘what,‘ ‘where,‘ ‘when,‘ ‘how,‘ etc., give your prospects a chance to share their point of view or experience, which leads to more engaging and personalized conversations.

Once you engage your prospect in a prolonged conversation, using an open-ended question, don’t forget to fill up the small pauses in the conversation with encouraging words that show you are listening to the speaker and comprehending what he or she is saying.

5. Be Prepared for Objections

Did you know that 58% of potential buyers feel that sales reps are unable to answer their questions effectively?

That’s precisely why it is imperative to prepare a compelling cold calling script, before picking up the phone, to objectively list your value-propositionand alsoprepare answers to common objections and questions that may come up during a call.

One of the best ways to do this is by documenting all the objections that have come up in your previous calls and preparing detailed answers to questions about your products and services. You can also exchange notes with your peers to come up with a possible list of reasons outlining why prospects may refuse your product or service,so as tobe prepared in advance to overcome these objections for a successful outcome.

6. Make Use of Voicemails

A large number ofcold calls go unanswered and end up as voicemails. However, many salespeople consider voicemails to be a waste of time, which is not exactly right. On the contrary, an effective voicemail can lead to a call back from your prospect, who is already ‘warm‘ by now, as you have previouslymade contact withthem via voicemail.

But how do you ensure your voicemail delivers the results you desire?

Well, the idea is to be different. We suggest that instead of starting with your name, which is the usual practice, start your message by outlining your value proposition, followed by your name and contact. It is also a good idea to keep your voicemails under 30 seconds, as anything longer will distract your prospect almost certainly.

You can also keep a few voicemail scripts ready and test their efficacy overa period of time. This will not only save you time but also improve your success rate in terms of getting callbacks from your prospects.

7. Use a Local Phone NumberForMaking Cold Calls

When you are making a cold call, it is always best to use a local number to win the trust of your prospects in any time zone. The reason being that customers naturally feel more comfortable receiving a call from a number with recognizable area code.

Another advantage of having a local number is the added convenience for your customers who can reach out to you quickly via local calls.

8. Keep Small Conversion Goals

Your aim is not to close a deal on a cold call. In fact, you should not even intend to sell during the first call. Instead, keep a smaller goal of building a rapport with the prospect on a cold call and discuss the next steps, such as fixing a time slot when you can speak in detail or have a demo.

However, don’t attempt to mold a prospect to your buying process. Instead, suggest the next step, listen to their feedback, and facilitate the buying process for them to seamlessly move them to the next stage of your sales funnel.

For example, say something specific like “Will Thursday at 11 am be a good time to talk?” than saying, “Let’s connect sometime next week to discuss this further.” Your aim is to get your prospect to commit to the next meeting during the first call rather than ending the call on a vague note without any follow-up plan.

9. Follow-Up Promptly

It is a fact that it takes multiple calls to convert a lead into a paying customer. Yet, most salespeople avoid making follow-up calls. Remember, persistence pays rich dividends in cold calling; most experts agree it takes a minimum 7 or more attempts to convert a prospect.(use some other website for stat ref. already used once) – other stats are by Velocify; a general statement has been included instead.

It is also a good idea to send a follow-up email after a cold call. You can always end the email with a direct question to set up a follow-up call to move forward in the sales process. While following up is great, you are also expected to be punctual, which means if you promise a prospect a call back at a specific time, make sure you do that, lest you lose your credibility with the said prospect.

10. Don’t Multitask While Calling

Sitting at your desk and cold calling for hours, repeatedly trying to connect with your prospects, getting through switchboards and IVRs, can be quite dull at times – but cold calling requires a high-level of focus.

Remember, no two calls are exactly similar, and you may lose out on some vital information within a few seconds of distraction. So, don’t let the humdrum of routine tempt you to entertain yourself with other things, such as social media, texting, or daydreaming while talking to prospects.  Instead, follow the good oldcold calling strategyof jotting down notes during your calls to stay focused and take regular breaks to prevent boredom from setting in.

11. Use Sales Dialer to Increase Your Productivity

Sales personnel spend a significant amount of time in cold calling each day. Yet, unfortunately, many of these calls go unanswered, and sales personnel end up wasting time in leaving voicemails and waiting for leads to call them back.

To make things easier, you may invest in a sales dialer, which can boost the efficiency of your sales team immensely. One of the most significant advantages of a modern sales dialer is that it can be integrated with your CRM to give you deep insights on every prospect, saving a lot of time for your sales reps. Predictive dialers are also designed in a way so as to automatically limit abandoned calls and comply with all the local regulations in your area around cold calling. Another benefit is that sales dialers usually match to a local number while calling prospects, which is known to increase the rate of the conversations.

12. Be a Good Listener

Every good salesperson is also a great listener. Yes, cold calling is not just about talking; it is also about listening to your prospects to make them feel valuedand alsounderstand their concerns.

When you listen actively, you keep the focus on the prospect, which is rewarding for both the parties because the prospect feels good talking about himself or herself while you win their trust and also gain information that may help you address their pain points better.

13. Accept RejectionWitha Smile

This may sound a little philosophical, but rejection is part and parcel of your life as a sales rep, especially if you make a lot of cold calls. It is a fact that nobody closes 100% of their prospects – which means you will face rejection many times. However, you cannot let it get to you.

Instead, keep a positive attitude, replay call recordings frequently to understand what went right and what went wrong, and continue doing your job with confidence as there is nothing to feel sad about.

14. Know Your Prospects Before You Call

If there’s only onecold calling strategythat you intend to follow, it must be this – researching your prospects before you call them up. You can use market research and social media to find out more about your prospects and how your product can deliver value to them. This will give you a significant advantage as you’ll be able to talk to them about their business and needs when you call them.

To make this process much more efficient, you can also use an intelligent lead generation software likeClodura, that helps you identify companies in your target market and reach out to the decision-makers with complete contact information, including email Ids and direct dials. The software also provides intelligence on 25+ vital buying signs to identify low hanging sales opportunities to close more deals.

15. Measure Your Call-to-Conversion Ratio to Achieve Your Goals Faster

Like all salespersons, you certainly have a sales target to meet.But do you know how many calls will it take you every day to achieve this goal?

Well, you can figure out the magic number of calls you need to make each day to hit your monthly quota by calculating your call to conversion ratio. For this, simply count the total number of calls you made in the previous month, how many of these calls were answered, and how many of those answered callsactually qualifiedinto the next stage of the funnel.

For example, Joe decided to calculate his call-to-conversion ratio and found the following:

Calls Made – 100

Connected to Prospects – 6

Conversions –1

This means that even though Joe has aconnectrate of6%, he is onlyconverting 1 out of100calls he makes. So, if his monthly target is convertingcustomers, by this calculation, he needs to make about1,000calls every month to meet his goal.

To get even closer to your sales goals, we suggest that you craft a compelling sales pitch and tweak it for your prospects after solid market research.

16. Plan Your Schedule

Do you have ten calls lined up for the day with noparticular schedule?That’s a mistake that may cost you some eager customers.

Apart from cold calling, there are several other tasks that you must fit into any given day. These include internal team meetings, strategic planning, market research, customer demos, follow up calls, etc.

To ensure you accomplish everything you have targeted for the day, it is necessary to have a fixed schedule, lest you feel overwhelmed. A good idea is to use the best times in the day (which have higher prospect connect ratios) for cold calling while reserving the remaining hours for peripheral activities.

But, how do you pick the best times for your calls?

By finding out the timings when people are most likely to answer your calls.

Think about it –How likely are you to answer a call from an unknown number at nine in the morning when you have just arrived at work, or, at 5 pm, when you are hurrying to wrap-up the day’s work and leave for home?

Also, you can analyze the call records of the prospects you have closed and check if there is any pattern regarding the number of calls received on anyparticular dayor time.

You will notice that prospects are more likely to answer calls when they are not heavily engaged in work, that is, before lunch or towards the latter half of the day. Use this time to connect with your highest quality prospects, and the remaining time in the day can be used for planning your schedule, modifying your script, sending follow-up emails, etc.

17. Know the Best TimesAndDays To Call

Managing your time can be tricky while cold calling. For example, you may dedicate an hour to cold calling every day but find that your prospects are not always ready to answer your calls when you call them. So, even after your scheduled hour is over, there may be several callbacks, and you must always be ready to answer the phone and do your job superbly.

However, this does not mean that you can’t plan your day at all while cold calling. To ensure maximum results, avoid calling during times or days when you aren’t likely to answer the phone yourself, such as Monday mornings, lunchtime, after 5 pm on Fridays, etc. If you are calling prospects in different time zones, you must also make sure not to call up at an inappropriate hour to cheese them off.

Of course, there’s no guaranteed formula to calculate a golden hour when all your prospects will answer, but research indicates Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to be the best days for cold calling.

Statistically, Wednesday is considered to be the best day for cold calling, with a maximum response rate between 4 pm and 5 pm every day.

18. Make Gatekeepers Your Ally

Do you hate it when a receptionist or secretary answers your call instead of the decision-maker you intended to reach out to?

Well, turn this moment of possible defeat into victory by being pleasant to whoever picks up the phone and seeking their help in reaching out to the right people in the organization. For example, asking something as simple as “I was wondering if you can help me” can open the gates to vital information such as the names of other key personnel in the company and the best time to call them.

19. Prioritize Your Call List

You have multiple calls lined up for the day – but how do you decide whom to call up first?

Well, the most practicalcold calling strategyis calling your highest quality prospects first, during a period when they are most likely to answer your call. But how do you separate the highest quality prospects from others is a question worth considering. For this, you need access to reliable market intelligence that will keep you informed of trigger events that may warm up your cold leads.

For example, if you are a hardware company, news about a business moving to a bigger location may signify an opportunity and give you the perfect reason to connect and pitch your service. To track such trigger events and market intelligence, you can rely on various tools, such as setting up Google Alerts, using Hootsuite to ‘listen’ to social conversions, and using a lead management software like Clodura, that provides you with relevant intelligence about sales opportunities, which could be the low hanging fruits you can immediately aim for.

20. Never Stop Practicing

Practice makes perfect– Truer words have never been said! That’s why it is vital to practice your script in front of the mirror, and over repeated calls, to improve your success percentage.

By going through your cold calling script, previous call recordings, and the common objections raised by prospects, you can pick up subtle cues to refine yourcold calling strategyfurther.

For example, maintaining the right tone and pace while talking, recognizing the verbal cues given by prospects, perfecting the answers to common queries and objections, and tweaking and delivering your cold calling script correctly and confidently in every situation.

Wrapping UP

If you are a sales representative looking at improving your conversation and closing rate, these 20 tips will surely transform the way you connect with clients and help you generate more meetings out of your calls.

However, once again, we’d like to add that you can never convert 100 percent of your leads, which makes it important to keep a positive and resilient attitude towards rejections, learn from them and move on. Even if you face a rude brush-off, maintain your calm, and learn from the experience. By mirroring the prospect’s emotions in such a situation, you are only going to make your day worse. Remember, you are only doing your job, and there’s no time to feel hurt or give up.

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B2B buyers receive hundreds of sales emails daily. The buyers open only a small percentage of these sales emails, and even fewer of them are read. A minimal amount of emails is either opened or replied or forwarded to the concerned person. Or else it is also marked as spam by the buyers.

Despite the challenges, Email marketing remains a powerful and personal method to connect with your ideal buyer. It can be tailored and personalized as per the buyer’s interest to make the communication more relevant.

As per SmartInsigts.com, email marketing is the most effective digital marketing technique and top-ranked channel, beating Social media, affiliate marketing, and SEO.

So, email marketing becomes an essential channel to connect with potential buyers for digital marketers. That’s why building a proper email strategy is the most crucial part of any email marketing activity.

You expect a response as soon as you hit the “Sent” button. Practically, this doesn’t happen. More often, you fail to get a response from potential customers. You have experienced that most of the readers delete the email without even reading or also tend to mark it as spam.

Have you tried to find the reasons behind this? Emails can be one of the reasons for the failure of your marketing campaigns. But the problem is that-most of the sales executives don’t know how to write sales emails correctly.

Emails area medium to build a connect, establish a rapport, and present solutions to tackle the challenges faced by your client.If the email is notable to do the same, then it is a waste of time and effort for your team.

A few reasons, what might be wrong in the email:

Email doesn’t have a structure or flow. Here, the sales executive jumps from one topicto another without a logical flow

Vague subject and lack of context for your potential buyer

Many times, in the opening sentences, the salesperson straight away talks about what the company does. Why would your buyer be interested to know all about this?

Email is too salesy and lacking a personalized touch

Inappropriate call-to-action in between of the email body ruins your email

The content in email is salesperson-centric and not customer-centric

In the end, email without an appropriate call-to-action and having arandom closure

Length of the email is too long and does not have a proper flow

If your email has an attachment, it triggers the company’s spam filters

The results of unmindful emails can be devastating. As a sales representative, you need to learn the ways to master emailing for better prospecting. It is necessary to find out ways to improve email reply rates by testing and trying out different email marketing techniques to gain your customer’s attention & confidence. In this article, you’ll discover how to write the sales emails to achieve sales goals.

1. Personalize-

Mass emails are now an old part of outbound marketing. Customize your email with customer’s name, company name, designation, citing a relevant happening, addressing a specific problem

Mass emailvs.personalized email

Mass Email–

It is the same email sent to an extensive subscriber list yielding a low conversion rate. It is not customized and contains no personalization. These emails are sent to an unfiltered audience that may or may not be interested in your offer.

• Personalized Email– Personalization means a lot for email marketing. It enables the sales executive to send more relevant emails based on the buyer’s interests and information. Personalized emails are better at generating qualified leads and offer a better ROI compared to bulk emails. It improves click-through rates and conversions.

With personalized email usage, you can build a connection, establish a rapport, and offer a tailored solution to your ideal buyer for the problems he is facing. For example- from writing emails with personalized subject lines to behavior-based trigger emails like license reactivation email, sales offer introductory emails, requests for a conference call, demo request, etc.

Example for personalized email:

Hello David,

I tend to reach out, as I came across ACME Corp’s website and noticed that your digital marketing team is publishing fresh, new content now. Generating fresh leads through the website is a challenging task, if not done in the right way.

I’ve been working with many software products companies to help them generate more leads from the web content using our marketing automation platform.

Let me know if we could connect at 3 or 3.30 pm on Wednesday or Thursday to speak more.

Regards, James Lee

2. Research-

It is the next critical step to follow while drafting an email to your potential buyer. As a foundation of the email, you need to dive deep into your research to understand the industry and the potential contacts. It helps you to understand the customer’s current landscape & issues. With thorough research, you can get a sense of the challenges that the potential customer is facing. Your email needs to bring a valuable solution to tackle the problem.

For example:

If your potential customer is looking to bring in the automation in sales teams to improve efficiency and effectivity.

Now automate your mundane Sales task. Drive your sales team performance and productivity with an AI-based automation tool.”

3. Email Structure-

Before drafting an email, visualize your email structure.Preparea rough draftof your email structure, which could be a basic structure of your email. Be clear with what you want to convey to your customers.

Sales email Structure Format:

Here are two types of email formats listed:

Cold email format:

• The subject line – mentionboth the companies – the potential company and your company,who you are. Giving clarity is essential when your lead is completely cold
• Paragraph 1-warm upyourlead. Showwhy youthinkyou wouldbe a good match
• Paragraph 2– detailsonwho you are, the offer your brand, the valueyourproduct offersto the customer. Then throw a reliable supporting statistical data to make your product value clear
• Paragraph 3-ask gently open-ended questions about what exactly your lead looking for
• The sign-off – Show the positive attitude in the last paragraph, asking foracall to action from your potential lead

Sales Letter of Introduction

Even anecessaryconnection request can have a stuffy subject line conveying your main idea without being dry and cold.

• Paragraph 1-Give acombination ofthe enthusiastic praiseandletyour leadknow who you are
• Paragraph 2-Give a general overview of what you are offering and the value your product holds to resolve the current issues faced by your leads. It recommended introducing yourself and company than doing a sales email
• Paragraph 3-Directing asking for the call or meeting; this will add a potential topic of conversation with your buyer
• The signature needs to be direct and straightforward, with no need for extra details clogging up the sales email structure

Sales email structureExample:

“Hi Lisa,

Thank youfor emailing us!

I amJames, working asBusiness DevelopmentManager at Clodura,an AI-poweredsalesengagementplatform for B2B Sales. We help companies to automate the__irdaily mundane sales activity.

As you mentioned the concern that you’re sending your business proposals into a black hole, it struck a note with me. This issue is faced by your sales and marketing team.

Now at Clodura, I help B2B companies to solve the problem, by giving them insight into who engages with us forLeadGen.

I think I can help you prioritize the ideal customer list with more engagement. Can we talk about itonWednesday at3 pm EST?

Regards,

James Lee”

4. Unique subject line-

A good or bad subject line can make or stop a prospect from opening a sales email. It can make or break a deal. It should be creative and exciting enough to prompt the prospect to open the email and read more.It is recommended to use a unique subject line to get your customers to open the email.

Words to Avoid

It is recommended to be direct, be humble, avoid bragging, and boasting. Avoid words and phrases like the ones below listed:

• Anything to do with money.Spam filters will catch these kinds of words- Earn, free, bonus, profits, price, credit, or anything with a dollar sign
• Marketing: –Email marketing is one of the most successful marketing channels used frequently. But that doesn’t mean as a salesperson you need to remind this to your potential lead
• Stop over-emphasizing words: –Avoid using words like – Exclusive, Surprisingly, or such synonyms. Only if you have a ‘special offer’ for a select group of potential buyers, then use any of the synonyms to convey your buyers about it, avoid using these
• Superlatives: –Avoid using words like FANTASTIC, INCREDIBLE, and AMAZING. It is recommended to let your product and the offer do the work. If your product and offering match to your ideal buyer’s requirements, it is undoubtedly getting a response to the email

Proven sales email subject lines by sales executives

To increase the email reply ratios, here are proven salescoldemail subject lines used daily

• “[Introduction] [your name/company] <-_> [_customername/company]”
• “Idea for [an issue the prospect is concerned about]“
• “Trying to connect.”

Here, are three examples ofgreatopening lines to use in your sales emails:

• The context builder:I wanted to reach out, as I came across your website and noticed that your digital marketing team is publishing much fresh, new content now.We’vebeen working with many B2B companies to help generate particularly more leads from the content with our marketing software automation tools.
• The trust builder:My name isJames, working asBusiness Development M__anager atClodura. Clodura is offering lead generation platform for B2B Sales. We help companies to automate the daily mundane sales activity.
• The referral request:Thank you for emailing us!

This email is with reference to your concern raised in the message you have dropped on our contact us form.

As youhavementioned the concern that you’re sending your business proposals into a black hole, it struck a note with me. We, at Clodura, help B2B companies to solve the problem, by giving them insight into who engages with us forLeadGen.

I think I can help you prioritize the ideal customer list with more engagement. Can we talk about itat3 pm EST onWednesday?

5. Straight to the point-

Get straight to the point. Note that your prospects have a short time, so it is recommended to keep your message short and to the point.

6. Embed Call-To-Action-

While creating an email,insertCTA to get more response. Your action should be clearly defined in the email. It should prompt the ideal customer to take some action.

It would great if you ask confirmation ofthemeeting or call. Below are examples for reference:

“Would you be able to talk at 2 p.m. on Wednesday? Let me know what works best.”

Or

“Can we meet at your office on Tuesday inthesecond half to discuss more on how our product can help you to move ahead.

Note-Your pitch shouldn’t be a monologue.It should include open-ended questions so that your potential buyer speaks up about his problems and ask more about how to get that resolved. It is suggested to start your pitch with a quick snippet about what you do to provoke your ideal buyers’ interest. If your customer is interested, he/she indicates accordingly.

7. Finally, concentrate on benefits:

It is one of the fundamental principles of selling your product or service. Talk about how your product benefits the customer or enhance his productivity and optimize resources,time, and effort.

To market your product or service, emailis afast, flexible, and cost-effective method. Email is the channel to reach out to your new customers and helps in retaining your existing customers too. In addition to the above points, emails are now personalized messages targeted to connect with your ideal buyers. Following the above simple steps, will undoubtedly improve email response rates,while working onemailmarketing campaigns.

After having been workingonyouremailstrategy, still, your emails are notgettingresponded to. Then learn how do you ensure your sales emails not only get noticed and opened but also read and acted upon.

There are other reasons for the failure of email marketing campaigns.You need toidentify your email marketing problems and know thetricksto fix them.

Post emailsending, you must do the email campaign analysis. This data is acquired fromvariousemail marketingtools and platforms. Here are a few more reasons listed, which might lead to emailmarketing campaigns which failed to get the expected results:

• Spam: -Unsolicited commercial email or ‘spam’ irritates consumers. If your messages aren’t targeted to the right customer, the recipient may delete your email or mark it as spam. Ensure that you are emailing to the ideal buyer, it is recommended to update and maintain your database
• Low open email ratio: -Low number of ideal buyers opens your emails delivered
• Low click ratio: – Low number of click ratios within the open emails
• Low Delivery Rate: – Low delivery rates as you might not have the correct emails of the customers

If your sales pitch is simple and to the point in email marketing campaigns, then the results generated are vast. Just keep in mind that your emails shouldn’t be very complicated.

How to update and maintain youremaildatabase?

Firstly, you should have the correct emails or contact details for your potential buyers. Before you begin with any marketing campaign, keep your database freshand accurate. The impact of bad data can be multi-fold and choke up your email marketing engine with high unsubscribes, spam complaints, and bounces, leading to a lousy sender domain reputation.

How is it possible to keep the contact database fresh orup-to-date? Well,Cloduraoffers a unified platform where you can obtain the contact detailsofquality leadsin just a single click. Don’t push your luck guessing email addresses and contact details.

A sales executive can launch customized email campaigns. You can manage email campaigns and have a look at thereports. Get the complete view of email opens,email clicks,forwards,replies,etc.

You can not only bypass the spam folderwith intelligent & personalized email sequencesbut also track conferences happening around the world and connect with their attendees seamlessly. Moreover, the sales team can track events and get to knowmoreabout the attendees. And check out what they are tweeting about the event.

Clodurais anAI-based platformwhichallows you to append and enrich yourCRM and marketing automation platformdata in just one click. With more than 200 million contacts, 15 million companies, and over 100,000 active sales triggers, you can update your CRM or contact listseamlessly. If you are looking for sales enablement and sales automation tools to elevate your lead generationgame, then contact us.