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Summary
- Cold calling mistakes like talking too much, sounding insincere, or failing to communicate value can hinder your success, even when calling prospects who’ve opted in.
- Asking the right questions builds rapport and credibility while helping you address the prospect’s needs more effectively.
- Avoid generic or scripted approaches by conducting pre-call research using tools like social media and CRMs to tailor your pitch to each prospect.
- Clearly define your objective for the call—whether it’s closing a sale, scheduling a demo, or securing a follow-up—to maintain focus and avoid overwhelming prospects.
- PhoneBurner’s tools, like built-in CRM features, workflow automation, and call deliverability support, help streamline outbound calls, enhance communication, and improve live answer rates.
Cold calling isn't easy. Are you making it even harder on yourself?
At PhoneBurner, we believe that reaching out to prospects who have shown interest in your business creates the strongest foundation for meaningful conversations. Even with this initial interest, making that first call can feel daunting—and there’s always the possibility they might not be ready to move forward. But with the right approach, you can turn that first call into a productive connection.
If you’re experiencing a “cold streak” it may be the result of hidden errors in style, judgment, and execution. When brought to your attention, you can fix these mistakes, turn the tables, and ramp up those sales numbers again.
Here are 5 common cold calling mistakes you may not realize you're making—and how some of the features in our power dialing platform for sales teams can help you overcome them.
How PhoneBurner Helps Your Outbound Calls Connect
We designed PhoneBurner to streamline and enhance your outbound calls without sacrificing the personal touch that resonates with prospects and drives results. Here are some of the features that make calling a prospect for the first time (or second, or third) easier.
- Built-in CRM and 200+ integrations to help you understand who you are talking to and keep your notes in an accessible, organized place.
- Call deliverability features to help you avoid spam calls, boost live answer rates, and enhance the quality of your calls via our Tier 1 carrier.
- Workflow automation features to make post-call follow-ups quick and easy, so that you never miss a chance to keep the conversation going after each call has ended.
- Delay-free connections to ensure calls feel natural and start off on the right foot.
There’s more as well—and we’ll get into how specific features can help you fix the most common cold calling mistakes below. Keep reading to learn more, and start a free trial of PhoneBurner here to see how it works for yourself.
5 Common Mistakes Outbound Callers Make & Their Solutions
Even the most experienced outbound sales agents can still make these mistakes—so whether you’ve just started your career or are years into it already, give this list a look and make sure you’re not falling into any bad habits! Don’t worry; we’ll also show you how to turn them around.
Talking Too Much (Asking too Little)
Many sales reps talk too much, thinking they should tell the prospect as much as possible. The result? They bombard the prospect with tons of unnecessary information, before understanding the prospect's position or situation. This is a critical mistake.
How to Solve It
Focus more on asking the right questions. That's not only how you build credibility and rapport, but it's also how you learn to address the prospect’s needs. A question produces an answer. And an answer provides you with a direction in which to move the conversation... that is, toward a sale.
Learn More: 6 Sales Prospecting Questions You Need to Ask
Sounding Insincere
When you sound insincere or disingenuous, it’s painfully obvious to the buyer. And when does a sales person sound most insincere? When it sounds like they're selling something.
How to Solve It
Sales happen when a prospect believes that you can solve a problem they have. Or that your goals are aligned. When you come off sounding like you understand their position, and have a way to help them, you come off as sincere.
Avoid unrealistic promises and scripted responses. Instead, try to make a connection, and offer fact-based reasons as to how you can help.
Learn More: Forget Scripts: How to Increase Sales Through Active Listening
Not Having an Objective
If you’re selling a simple product or service that doesn’t require a capital expense, then your objective is often to close the sale during the initial call.
But if the product or service is more complex or expensive, chances are, a sale is not your objective. It might be a follow-up meeting, a demo, a trial, or something else entirely.
How to Solve It
Make sure your objective is crystal clear, to you and to them, and move toward that. Go beyond that, and you risk overwhelming your prospects and losing them before you ever have a chance to close.
Learn More: 3 Ways to Successfully Engage Prospects
Not Communicating Value
It’s easy to forget that while your job may be to talk on the phone all day, most prospects don’t want to do that—and they don’t have time. So if you don’t give them a clear incentive to keep the conversation going soon after they pick up then they’ll likely hang up or turn you down.
How to Solve It
The biggest thing you can do to catch someone’s interest is answer the “What’s in it for me?” question. In order to do that, you need to communicate how your product or company will best provide value to the prospect.
Providing value comes from understanding needs, and correctly targeting the right prospects to cold call. It also comes from being able to convey your ability to help them achieve a particular result. You could also highlight the cost of alternatives, or the cost of not taking action—see the article below for more tips on how to speak to these points and others.
Learn More: 8 Ways to Overcome Price Objections on Sales Calls
Not Knowing Your Prospect’s Pain Points
One of the most critical missteps sales agents make is failing to understand their prospects’ pain points. Without this insight, even the best pitch can fall flat. Success depends on messaging that speaks directly to your audience's shared challenges.
How to Solve It
Sales agents used to do pre-call research to understand their prospects, but those days are over—it’s too easy to get stuck in analysis-paralysis, and there are faster ways. Here’s what we recommend instead:
- Build Targeted Prospect Lists: Group your prospects by industry, job title, or company size to create tailored messaging that aligns with well-known challenges in those groups.
- Focus on Common Pain Points: Identify group-specific challenges and use persona-based scripts to address them. This approach ensures relevance without feeling intrusive.
- Craft Value-Driven Messaging: Present your product as the solution to their shared pain points. For example, instead of offering generic features, highlight benefits like cutting lead response times or boosting efficiency. Creating the right sales script for each audience segment can help.
- Leverage PhoneBurner’s Tools: Use features like LeadStream to make sure your leads reach agents who can efficiently act on them, and CRM Integrations for seamless data access before and during calls.
By addressing shared pain points, your calls become more relevant and impactful, building trust and increasing the likelihood of engagement.
Make Your Outbound Calls Connect with PhoneBurner
Cold calling is about connecting with your prospects. Unfortunately, a lot of things can prevent this connection from ever being made. If you can avoid these top five cold calling mistakes, you’ll improve your cold call success rate, get more sales, and grow your business. Use this list as a refresher whenever you think you’re falling into a “cold streak.”
The tools you use to connect during outbound calls also have a major impact on your success. Try PhoneBurner for free here to see how our platform can help you reach more contacts for live conversations and achieve positive results for your team.
