Are you a financial advisor looking to get more leads into your pipeline? Add cold calling to your sales outreach strategy. Reports show that cold calling is still among the top five outreach methods in terms of effectiveness. You can get up to 82% of buyers to accept a meeting by starting a series of communication with sales cold calls.
Sounds good, right? But calling might not be the issue–it’s what you say to the prospect next. We’ve seen that a carefully mapped-out cold calling script can:
- Integrate a structured direction into the conversation
- Help overcome objections
- Eliminate awkward pauses and misinformation
- Boost your sales team’s confidence
So, in today’s article, we describe the steps to create such a cold calling script and talk about how a CRM for professionals like financial advisors can streamline the process.
What is Cold Calling?
Cold calling is an outbound sales tactic companies use to contact a potential customer who hasn’t shown explicit interest in the company’s services. (This potential customer also has no prior communication with the company.)
In the old(er) days, companies used cold calling as a part of business-to-customer telemarketing to sell their products to a broader audience. They were overly pushy and intrusive and painted a negative brand image.
Today, however, cold calling has become much more targeted and organized. Businesses, including financial firms, invest in a CRM for lead generation to analyze customer insights, create cold calling prospect lists, and segment them according to targeted demographics. Once all the data is gathered, they create cold calling scripts customized to each prospect segment on the list.
Why Should Financial Advisors Use Cold Calling Scripts?
As a financial advisor, you may wonder, “I am good at my job, why would I need a script? I can just present my expertise and convince people.”
It’s not that easy–especially since the prospect didn’t request the call.
A cold calling script properly prepares you to handle questions, removes ambiguity from the conversation, and improves your chances of capturing the customer’s interest.
What other benefits do financial advisors get from using a cold script?
1. Keeps Sales Calls Consistent
To pique a customer’s interest in your product, you must:
- Portray a sharp presence of mind
- Control the narrative
- Convey exactly how your product can solve the prospect’s specific challenges
If your sales reps don’t have a script to follow, handling all these elements while maintaining a smooth conversation flow in every call becomes difficult. It may lead to inconsistent messaging and false promises, reducing your credibility as a service provider.
A structured cold-calling script ensures all your sales reps follow a structured format. It lists key points they must communicate and maps out the potential path of the conversation. This keeps all cold calls consistent, reinforces your expertise as a financial advisor, and boosts brand recognition.
2. Boosts Sales Rep Confidence
Confidence is the key to making an impactful cold call. Without any reference, your sales reps may stumble over words and have awkward pauses. Your prospects may even think your agents don’t know what they are talking about.
Keeping a script lets your sales team know what to say and how to handle queries with confidence and the utmost professionalism. Instead of worrying about them saying something wrong, your representatives can build connections with the lead.
3. Improves Employee Training
A cold calling script is valuable for training new sales employees. It acts as a proper resource for them to learn about your company and the financial services you provide.
In short, a cold calling script is a tangible framework for your new employees to learn from and get inspired.
4. Helps Teams With Overcoming Objections
Objections are inevitable in cold calls. These can include concerns about fees, doubts about your expertise, or simply a lack of interest in the product at hand. However, your sales team must be prepared to address such objections confidently and turn them into opportunities. With a cold calling script, you can guide the sales reps with ideal responses to common objections. It will equip them to overcome resistance and nurture the lead.
5. Easier to Track Conversation Success
Cold-calling scripts are easy to test and develop. You can run A/B tests, analyze which talking points are the most effective in generating leads or closing sales, and adjust accordingly. You can also use a CRM for financial advisors that offer dialer integrations and AI-powered analytics to keep track of your sales reps’ performance.
For example, “Are you familiar with [Name of an organization you’ve worked with]? We tracked [XYZ] market trends and investment strategies for them and pivoted financial operations to their best potential. Last year, we saved them more than $15,000 in business expenses as well.”
6. Transition
In this step, your goal is to take the conversation from a sales pitch to a discussion. Communicate the estimated time the discussion may take and hint at the next potential step to take the conversation forward.
Add something like, “I understand you’re busy, so I’ll be brief. Could you spare a few minutes to discuss the financial challenges your business is facing? If you prefer, we can also schedule a video call at your convenience.”
7. Questions
In this stage, you need to ask open-ended questions to turn the call into a mutual discussion to understand whether the lead is worth pursuing.
You can ask questions like “Could you tell me a little bit about the methods you are using to save money?” or “What do your financial goals for the next quarter look like?”
Make sure the framework here is customizable to suit the client’s specific challenges. Ask the prospect if they have any doubts or questions, too.
8. Closing
In your closing, try to set up a follow-up meeting or call with the prospect. Suggest potential dates and times to schedule the next discussion.
For example, “We won’t take any more of your time today. Would you be open to scheduling a video or audio call to discuss more ideas on how you can design your budget for the next financial year?” If yes, communicate the potential date and time and ask about their availability.
If they refuse, offer them a channel to contact you if they require any financial services in the future. Here, using a CRM for financial advisors will help your sales rep check the available dates and set up the follow-up accordingly. Pipeline offers a sales pipeline management feature where you can keep track of the scheduled follow-ups.
Tips to Write a Cold Calling Script for Lead Generation
Now that you know how to write a structured cold calling script, let’s see what aspects you must keep in mind to make it a valuable part of your lead generation strategies.
Maintain a Positive Attitude
The prospect can’t see your face or body language. So, maintain an upbeat tone on the call to keep them engaged. The prospect should feel like you are delighted to assist them. Reflecting a kind and positive yet professional attitude may hook even the most difficult lead on the call for longer.
Research Before Calling
Personalize the conversation to show them the solution you are offering is specifically tailored for them. This will show you took the time to understand the prospect, warming them up to your call.
This requires you to dig deep into your client’s business and find out as much as you can about their operations and challenges. It helps you speak the prospect’s language and create a strong relationship.
Look up your leads on LinkedIn to gain in-depth insights into what they do. See if they talked about any recent roadblocks their business faced. You should also check their website to understand their business better. Find out recent achievements you can mention during the cold call.
Add Referrals to Your Script
Maybe your client hasn’t heard of your firm before. So, skepticism is valid.
So, how do you make your business look credible? By adding referrals to your script. This can be your prospect’s peer in the industry or a competitor you have worked for. It will show you are an authentic and trustworthy business.
Prepare Responses for Common Objections
Track previous sales calls with your CRM for financial advisors. Take note of the common objections prospects make during cold calls. Then, craft appropriate responses to each and add them to your script.
Measure Calling Effectiveness
Monitor your cold calls and track the sales team performance on your CRM for lead generation. Measure the total follow-ups and demos scheduled against the total calls made to understand your cold-calling script’s effectiveness.
See which script elements fail to keep the prospect engaged. Keep refining them till the results improve. You should also examine your sales team’s performance regularly on your CRM.
Pipeline offers a sales team management feature where you can set and monitor sales goals and generate detailed reports on your sales team’s activities.
You also get DialPad AI integration to track and analyze call data and offer accurate insights. Otherwise, JustCall lets you track call recordings and voicemails from the dashboard.
Takeaway
Cold calling holds a bad rep. But with the right script, reliable dialer, feature-rich sales automation tools, and data-driven lead generation strategies, it can be a profitable outreach tactic for financial advisors.
With Pipeline CRM, our sales solution integrates with all popular business dialers so that you can make calls and stay on top of your customer data from the same customizable dashboard. Try it out — sign up for our free trial, and start building relationships with your prospects today!
