Creating a Cold Calling Process That Works

Creating a Cold Calling Process That Works 1345 883 CRE OneSource Intelligent Solutions for Commercial Real Estate

If you were to ask what the core of the OneSource business operations is, I could give you a simple answer. 

Cold calling. 

When we have someone new start on our team, we get them started on one task their very first week. 

Cold calling. 

Cold calling is the best thing you can do to grow as a salesperson, a broker, or just a business person. It’s also often people’s least favorite thing to do. 

So many people struggle with cold calling, opting for cold emailing instead or simply refusing to do any cold outreach at all. 

This is a huge mistake. 

Your business network will reach a ceiling quickly if you don’t actively work on expanding it. And attending social events and tapping your friends and family will only get you so far. At some point, you will stagnate. Before you do, pick up the phone and start dialing.  

On our team, everyone makes cold calls. We share the responsibility and the wins of making connections, starting relationships, and yes, attracting new business. 

To that end, there are a few things we’ve implemented to build cold calling into our team’s regular routine. 

Create a Process 

Cold calling can quickly become discouraging if you aren’t tracking your progress. Some days, even months, are more fruitful than others, and if you give up after a few disappointing calls you’ll never move ahead. 

Some of our most loyal clients started off as a simple phone call. And now our relationship is so strong I forget that they were once a stranger on the other end of the line. 

On our team, our process now flows like clockwork. 

At the beginning of each month, we print everyone’s calls into a large spreadsheet. Each team member takes these spreadsheets with them throughout the month as they make their calls. 

We highlight the top priority calls on the list so they know who is an absolute MUST to call — these might be prospects with upcoming lease expiration dates, a top client we are chasing, a recall date for move-in, etc.

After every call, we write notes about the call and add either “No Recall” or an updated recall date into the spreadsheet if they’ve told us to reach back out later. 

At the end of the month, everyone returns their spreadsheets, regardless of whether they have finished their list. This helps keep our database clean and up to date as we remove stacked-up calls. 

Every person they called is put into our database under a personalized record, and anyone who wasn’t called gets pushed to the next month and a new list. 

Get Two

It might seem daunting to be handed a huge spreadsheet of cold calls to make each month. Which is why another strategy we embrace is called “Get Two.” 

Before I start my day, as soon as I enter the office and sit down at my desk, I make two calls on the list. Two calls is easy. Two calls is the time it takes to drink your coffee. 

By Friday, those two daily calls have added up to 10 and I’ve checked off a significant portion of my list. 

Cold Call Contests

Finally, what’s life without a little competition? 

Our team holds two cold call contests a month, each 60 minutes in length. And one month a year, we do a contest every week. 

During these contests, every member of the team signs onto a group zoom meeting so we can hold each other accountable. We put our computers on mute and start making calls. 

These calls can come from our call sheets or any other calls that we need to make.

At the end of the 60 minutes, we tally up four items 

  • How many dials — how many people we called, this includes anyone we left a voicemail for as well. 
  • How many meaningfuls  — this is someone we talked to AND got valuable information from, such as lease information on their space, decision-maker information, etc. 
  • How many meetings — if we got a meeting set up from the call. 
  • How many deals — if someone agreed to use us as their broker. 

We then have a trophy that rotates each time we do a contest to the person who got the most dials and meaningfuls as well as a trophy for whoever got the least amount of meaningfuls. We track all of the stats to give us a gauge of how many calls it will take to get a meaningful or a meeting. 

What We Learn

We are always playing around with different strategies to make cold calling a regular part of our team’s process. Some of our team members have individual strategies they use to track, monitor, and keep themselves accountable. 

No matter how many meaningfuls or meetings we get, this little bit of effort adds up, and now we have 100+ calls going out each month. Compared to the teams who don’t cold call, those numbers look pretty good to me.  

In addition to meetings and meaningfuls, we get tons of market data from our calls. We learn who is growing and who is not. We find out who is moving around. And yes, we get prospects. 

But without the commitment, we would have nothing. 

How could cold calling, just two calls a day, change your business or career? 

Charlie Coppola 

[email protected]