Reaching out to potential clients is like walking on a tightrope.
Balance is crucial.
↪ Balance between grabbing their attention and providing value.
↪ Balancing the intention to sell with the intention to serve
↪ Balancing the talking with active listening and empathy
So, what's the best way to get their attention? Should you pick up the phone or hit send on that well-crafted email?
The truth is, when it comes to outreach methods, there’s no fixed way that works wonders. Usually, it’s a combination of cadences supported by a personalized messaging strategy that does the trick.
The questions you need to be asking, however, are:
- Which works better for high-ticket B2B sales?
- Which works better to reach out to a large volume of prospects quickly?
- Which works better to explain complex product/service features?
The answers differ, don’t they?
Cold emails work great in some cases, while cold calls do the trick in other circumstances.
Also Read - What's the best time to reach a cold prospect?
Cold calling works best when you’re:
- Dealing with high-ticket B2B sales where the human touch is crucial.
- Introducing complex products or services that require detailed explanations or demonstrations.
- When you need immediate feedback or when timing is critical
According to a study by RAIN Group, 69% of buyers accepted cold calls from new providers. On average, it takes 8 cold call attempts to reach a prospect. Once connected, skilled salespeople can achieve appointment-setting rates of 15-20%.
Cold emailing, on the other hand, is particularly effective for:
- When reaching out to a large volume of prospects quickly is a priority
- Ideal for initial outreach to gauge interest before making a more direct call
- When you have solid content to share (case studies, whitepapers, etc.) to nurture a lead before jumping on a call
Research states that the average cold email open rate is around 24%. It is also well-known that only 8 out of 100 emails get a reply. But we have observed that with a consistent email strategy, you could boost your response rates up to 10%.
So, Which Works Better?
Today, if you’re choosing one over the other and sticking to a single strategy, then you’re invariably setting yourself up for failure.
You need a combination of strategies to optimize your outreach efforts. It all boils down to this:
Your product/service is a solution. But your customers have different pain points.
Consider this:
You’re selling a B2B SaaS platform for project management.
Target Audience: C-level executives, operations managers, and IT directors at mid-size companies.
✓ Send a personalized cold email to the C-level executives— their time’s limited, so keep the email short, to the point, and focus on business benefits like boosting productivity and cutting costs.
✓ Send another cold email to the operations manager. This email dives into the operational efficiencies your platform offers—automated workflows, team collaboration features, etc.
✓ Parallelly, also send an email to the IT director, focusing on the technical aspects—security features, integrations, and ease of implementation.
✓ A few days later, you call the operations manager to discuss how your platform can eliminate bottlenecks in their current processes.
✓ Since they’ve already seen your email, they’re familiar with your solution and are more receptive to hearing the details
✓ To the IT director, instead of a follow-up call, send a follow-up email with a link to a case study/product walkthrough showing how your platform seamlessly integrates with the existing tech stack.
✓ The IT director feels more confident after seeing tangible results and brings it up in their next team meeting.
✓ Meanwhile, try to get in touch with the executive with a follow-up call, referencing the email and briefly touch on how your platform aligns with their company’s strategic goals. This piques their interest, and they forward you to the operations manager to set up a meeting.
Notice how each prospect had different pain points and levels of engagement?
By combining your outreach efforts, you ensured that each stakeholder received the right message at the right time, through their preferred medium.
By tailoring the message to their expectation and understanding, you personalized your value prop.
Spoiler: This might not always work, you might still not get the desired response due to various reasons such as, competitor bias, low funding approval, expectation mismatch, etc., but this method lets you stay on top of mind, so when your clients are finally ready, they’ll choose you because they know you can add value.
Also Read - Sales Outreach 101: Single-channel Vs Multi-channel
Key aspects to ensure:
- Use A/B testing for emails and try different variations of cold call scripts to understand the messaging/positioning that works for a specific target audience.
- Let them know that you’ve done your research and have a tailored solution/enhancement specific to their business. But don’t stop there, quantify it. Go the extra mile and show them tangible proof with a case study/testimonial.
- Hyper-relevant personalization is key. What you send to the IT director might not immediately resonate with the CEO — understand their pain points and craft your message with an intent to provide immediate value.
So, before you start your outreach, analyze your prospects and determine the combination of outreach that would work.
Strategize backwards. Start with fixing a meeting and go backward to analyze how to make it happen. When you do that, you identify potential bottlenecks and challenges upfront and take preventive steps to avoid that.
If your outreach efforts need some fine-tuning, we can help supercharge your allbound campaigns and keep your pipeline up to speed.
FAQs:
- Are cold emails better than cold calls?
Cold emails allow scalable outreach, offer detailed messaging, and give prospects time to respond, but cold calls can create instant connections. Both have unique advantages depending on your strategy and goals.
- Who prefers cold emails?
Professionals in decision-making roles, like C-level executives, and functional heads, often prefer cold emails as they can review them at their convenience and assess the relevance of the offer.
- Cold calls or cold emails - which is better for outbound?
Cold emails are better for scalability and nurturing, while cold calls are more effective for building personal rapport quickly. A combined approach often yields the best outbound results.