With average connect rates below 5%, cold call competitions often hinge on luck. To fix this, use a power dialer like TitanX to achieve 20-30% connect rates, ensuring reps get enough live conversations to meaningfully test their conversational skills.
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Effective cold calling is not about one-off attempts. To truly penetrate an account, SDRs should aim to call a single high-value prospect 12 to 15 times within a 90-day window. This benchmark enforces consistent, focused effort over time, moving away from a low-yield "spray and pray" approach on massive lists.
Contrary to the belief that "cold calling is dead," Goldcast saw significant success by hiring an outsourced SDR team that focuses purely on phone calls. This success proved the channel's viability, shifting the internal focus to solving data hygiene problems to get accurate phone numbers.
When a cold call fails, don't just move on. Ask the prospect directly for feedback: was it a lack of brand recognition, or was the pitch itself not compelling? This turns a rejection into an immediate coaching opportunity to refine your messaging.
If your sales efforts feel volatile or based on luck, it's likely because you aren't doing enough outreach. What seems like random success at low volume becomes a predictable process at high volume. A 1% cold call conversion rate isn't luck; it's a metric you can scale.
Instead of a binary success metric, treat cold calls as opportunities to gain the right to follow up. Track multiple positive outcomes like "call back in 3 months" or "referral to a colleague." This "gray area" approach builds a future pipeline by valuing every conversation, not just immediate wins.
Go beyond connect rate by measuring 'Conversation Rate'—the percentage of connected calls lasting over a set threshold (e.g., two minutes). This metric filters out immediate hang-ups and provides a truer signal of an SDR's ability to effectively engage a prospect.
Instead of just using AI for coaching low-performers, input transcripts from successful, meeting-booking cold calls into ChatGPT. Ask it to identify patterns and common themes, then use these AI-generated insights to create scalable enablement sessions for the entire team.
Clogging a sales calendar with unqualified prospects is a major bottleneck. Deploy an AI voice agent to call new leads and ask a single, ruthless qualifying question. This immediately filters out bad fits, freeing up sales reps to focus only on high-probability deals.
Feed recordings of sales calls from lost deals into an AI for a post-mortem. The AI can act as an impartial sales coach, identifying what went wrong and what could be done better, providing instant, actionable feedback without needing a manager's time.
In the first minute of a cold call, resist the urge to pitch your product. Instead, lead with a 'reverse pitch' that focuses entirely on the prospect's potential problems. This approach is three times more effective than using solution-focused language, as it speaks to what the buyer actually cares about.
