Warm Calling

Whether or not cold-calling works is a raging debate. But one thing is for certain. “Warm-calling” is all the rage. At the very least, sales managers and prospects expect reps to be somewhat informed before picking up the phone. But pre-call research doesn’t warm a cold-call.

 

A true warm-call is when the prospect expects your call or email - they are warmed up by way of a referral.

 

The cold hard truth of warm calling is that reps must master the art of the introduction. Trouble is, you can’t get introduced if you don’t know how you’re connected - or “linked” - to your prospect. The amount of time it would take to figure that out has made true warm calling unobtainable.

 

According to Nigel Edelshain, renowned expert on Sales2.0 and Social Selling, contacting prospects by referral is 8-10 times more effective than cold calling. Explaining a rep’s options, Nigel says, “You can either make 100 cold calls to people who don’t know you, don’t like you and don’t trust you or fire up your PeopleMaps and make 5-10 warm calls. It’s likely you’ll get a meeting after only 5-10 warm calls and it will be better qualified than the one meeting you’d get after making 100 cold calls.”

 

What is PeopleMaps?

PeopleMaps by 7-Degrees is a powerful search tool that allows reps to quickly learn how they’re linked to any sales prospect and identify the best route to a referral.

 

After the PeopleMaps search engine cuts through massive amounts of personal, public and premium data sources, it immediately displays a map of all available connection paths to any person or any company. Of course, you’ll want to know the quickest path to your prospect. The quickest path is highlighted for your convenience along with other key data such as how each person along the connection path knows the other. See screen shot

 

 

 

Tool Talk Newsletter:  April 1, 2010 Issue

Heat up Your “Cold-Calls”

PeopleMaps Product Profile

 

Do Warm Introductions work?

The nature of a sales rep’s job is changing. Much more of the sales process is now conducted by phone which is by nature, a cold and detached mechanism. According to Josiane Feigon, in her book “Smart Selling on the Phone and Online”, a rep has between 7 to 15 seconds to make a good impression.  This changes dramatically when calls are made with a warm introduction.  Joanne Black is America’s leading authority on referral selling.  In her book “No More Cold-Calling”, she says “When a customer comes to you through a referral, you are credible the minute you answer the phone.” In fact, according to the book, there is no such thing as a warm call.  They’re either cold or hot.  And referral calls are hot.

 

PeopleMaps' does its part by collecting and analyzing personal and public information to create an intuitive, visual representation of relevant relationships. But reps have to be savvy, motivated, and sophisticated enough to work the connections and establish the referral. If your reps can pull it off, they’ll boost their close rate 80-90% and send your sales soaring.

 

 

 

The PeopleMaps application is provided by 7 Degrees Inc., which was founded in 2007 in Salt Lake City, Utah. 7 Degrees is venture-backed by vSpring Capital and Parkview Ventures. For more information, please visit: http://www.MyPeopleMaps.com.

 

Warm Introductions

PeopleMaps uses a proprietary technology called Safe Contact Sharing to identify when someone in – or affiliated with – your organization can make a warm introduction to a sales prospect.

 

For each of a company’s sales prospects, PeopleMaps identifies which employees, Board members, customer references, and corporate partners have a strong personal or professional relationship with the sales prospect, without exposing any personal details.

 

Though each person's contacts are leveraged to determine "who knows who," contact details like phone numbers, email addresses and notes are never shared. All uploaded contacts remain private and are only visible to the user who uploaded them.

 

Entire organizations can now leverage their relationships to enable warm introductions to sales targets.

 

Rank and Prioritize Prospects

A key feature of the PeopleMap Professional Edition is Automated Prospect Ranking™, which instantly analyzes and ranks sales leads. Salesforce.com users can now sort their leads based on the strength of professional and personal connections within their organization. They can laser-focus on the leads with the best chance of a warm introduction.