Cold Call Sales Training Webinar

We've just finished the first in a series of planned webinars on topics of interest to contact center professionals. In this first webinar, Ron LaVine (pronounced 'Lah-Vine', like 'grapevine') talks about the importance of cold call, or introductory call, training. It might not be what you think.

Ron gives a great example of how cold calling - or introductory calling, a more appropriate term in most cases, as he explains in the webinar - is not always about a hard-sell of a product. Here's how Ron explains it:

"For example, let’s say a painting project comes up for bid and a fine paper company wants their paper chosen or let’s say when it comes time to build a skyscraper, an engineering company wants to be chosen for the construction of the building, I specialize in teaching these people how to reach the people who have the final authority to make the decisions as to which supplier will be used and which one will not."

So the introductory call can often come much earlier in a sales process, well before a customer makes a buying decision; to give another example, to make sure that your company is included in an RFP or other vendor selection process from the beginning.

Here's a list of the questions I posed to Ron in the interview, to which he adroitly responded.

• Why cold-call training?
• Who needs cold-call training? Let’s talk about the roles and the size and type of the organization.
• Without naming names, tell us about some of the companies you’ve called into in the past, what were some of the challenges or issues they faced?
• Talk to me about cold calling fear and reluctance.
• How do call tracks and the opening value statement help?
• Who are the “inbound lead time wasters?”
• Tell us about some typical performance improvements you’ve been able to deliver. And what are the metrics used?
• Final thoughts?

Take the time to watch the entire webinar. Unsurprisingly, Ron is a great and engaging speaker. The video is 28 minutes long, but there are annotations to skip through sections to facilitate watching it in different viewings.