Cold Calling 2.0 is a process-oriented tactic any organization can implement to generate high-quality leads. It is more sophisticated than cold calling, and uses email, which can be deployed at a faster rate than phone calls. It can be accomplished in five basic steps:

Step 1: Determine and Develop the Audience

You will need to define the list of decision makers your organization wants to acquire. This list should include industry, business name, email address, title, phone number, etc. You should include as many data points as possible to increase outreach personalization. You can develop this list through a list purchase, LinkedIn research, and general internet scanning.

Step 2: Set Up a Sales Engagement Platform

There are many cost-effective tools that can help organizations generate, cultivate, and close leads. One easy-to-use tool is called Persist IQ. It gives your business the ability to segment leads by vertical and disposition. Most sales engagement tools have a wide variety of merge fields for increased customization ability, which allows you to edit each individual contact.

Step 3: Deploy a Communication Workflow

Creating a compelling drip campaign to deploy to these audiences is the key to engagement. The drip campaigns will be customized based on the contact and contain 5-6 emails. The engagement platform will dynamically insert personalized content into each email giving the reader the impression the content was specifically written for them. The goal of each email is to schedule a meeting or phone call with your organization.

Step 4: Hand Interested Prospects to Inside Sales

If a prospect displays interest (opens, clicks, or responds to the email), the lead is handed to the inside sales team to follow up and set up a meeting. This allows the sales team to only focus on hot leads and close more deals.

Step 5: Track Results

At the end of each month, it is important to track the results of Cold Calling 2.0 through these metrics:

• Number of contacts reached
• Number of interested leads
• Number of booked meetings
• Number of closed deals