7 Top Discovery Questions to Ask on Cold Calls

At least once a month, if not once a week, I’ll go onto LinkedIn and see someone post that “cold calling is dead”, without any real data to back it up besides that it doesn’t work for them.

Read that last line again. Cold calling doesn’t work for them.

That doesn’t mean it’s dead. It just means that they don’t know how to ask the right questions on cold calls, or they don’t have the sales engagement technology to make cold calls work effectively.

Read on to learn why cold calls are alive and well and the right sales discovery questions to ask when you’re making a cold call.

Do Cold Calls Work?

First, let’s address that elephant in the room. Yes, cold calls work. Period.

What is sales engagement? Read this blog.

Don’t believe me? Let’s look at the global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. They won a $1.6 million contract after a cold call to Premier Doug Ford’s office.

Without that one cold call, they wouldn’t have that contract.

So, yes, cold calls work. Now let’s look at the questions you should be asking once you place that cold call and get a connect.

7 Questions to Ask During Your Next Cold Call

These are actual discovery questions that our B2B sales team asks, so if you are a sales or marketing leader and you receive a cold call from someone at ConnectLeader, you just might hear one of these.

Take a read through and see what you might be able to use on your own next sales call or, if you're a sales manager, use these questions to coach your B2B sales team on what they should be asking.

1. How many dials does it take you to reach a decision maker? The Brevet Group found that it takes at least 8 cold calls, if not more, to get to someone who answers. This is why our customers thrive with our human agent-assisted dialer, Team Dialer, which makes the dials for your sales team and navigates gatekeepers, phone trees, etc. so your reps can spend their time having conversations that convert.
2. What are you using for data sources in your prospecting? ZoomInfo? Bombora? SalesIntel? The answer given here shows if the potential customer invests in their sales team with the right data sources (or any data sources, for that matter) and gives a hint of if they’re likely to invest in more B2B sales engagement technology, like our multi-channel sales engagement software.
3. How are you currently coaching your reps for outbound sales prospecting? Sales coaching and training has never been more important, especially when people are working remotely, and you can’t just listen to what your sales team is saying as you walk past their cube. Our Remote Coach feature lets you listen in live or after the call to what your sales reps are saying, and either provide live coaching in “whisper” mode (so only the sales reps will hear you) or provide feedback after during a meeting.
4. What does sales prospecting look like for your company? Ask this question, or one like it, and sit back, stop talking, and listen to what your potential customer says. The answer will provide you with insight into the pain points and challenges the company is facing, along with what they’re currently using. This is all information you can use in your follow-up statements and to focus on in your demo when you schedule one. So, take notes.
5. How do you deal with inbound follow-up? You might be surprised, but many companies think our B2B sales engagement technology is only used for outbound leads. Not the case at all. This question highlights that we do. Our technology, TruInbound, helps you to score your incoming leads and make sure they’re acted on first by your sales reps.
6. How many conversations are your reps having on a daily basis? If your sales team is making a large number of calls, but having at most a single sales conversation each day, there are a few factors that could be causing that. One could be that the data in your CRM needs to be updated so they aren’t calling wrong numbers. The second is that it takes a number of dials to get to that single conversation, so why not have our human agents through Team Dialer make the dials and your sales reps can have 7 to 10 conversations in just an hour?
7. How many daily calls and emails are expected per rep? What’s the actual? Your sales reps should be sending out cold emails AND making cold calls at pretty much the same rate. If they’re not, those cold emails are meaningless without a cold call follow-up and vice versa. Not sure how to make that happen at scale? Invest in the right B2B sales engagement technology, like our TruCadence that helps you to set up a tested schedule for calls, emails, and social touches to ensure your reps are hitting their goals for calls and emails.

Do you have some new sales discovery questions to ask? Or are you thinking that you need to rethink your sales engagement software? Contact us at ConnectLeader today to learn more about our entire suite of B2B sales engagement software, including TruCadence and Team Dialer. Simply click here or give us a call at 800-955-5040.