I regularly listen to the coldcallingpodcast.com, and todays podcast was about how to align your sales force’s motivations with the needs of an organization to business prospect. Here is a summary of their discussion. The original recording can be found at this link. I would highly recommend this bi weekly podcast to anyone looking to gain more insight into cold calling.
Cold calling is an essential part of the sales process in many organizations. It bridges the gap between where the responsibilities of the Marketing Department end and those of the Sales Team begin.
Marketing is expected to generate qualified leads and Sales people are expected to sell to these leads. But how do you qualify a lead unless you talk to someone? A qualified lead is not a card in a bowl at a trade show, or a response via e-mail to the offer of a white paper. At some point, someone has to pick up the telephone and call a contact who they have never spoken to before to qualify them as a suitable prospect.
Yet sales people are incentivized to sell by receiving commissions on sales they have closed (not the number of prospecting calls they make), and marketing people are paid a salary. In an organization where the sales process takes more than a few weeks, where is the motivation to cold call for new business prospecting purposes?
The answer is to change the rules of the commission structure by finding a suitable metric by which to measure cold calling activity and then incentivize people in a way that will drive this metric.
Typically, companies who try to determine a metric for cold calling take an over simplified approach, for example, setting a goal to call 100 new people a week. But this does not take into account the quality of the conversations their sales people are having. Any useful metric should be built around moving prospects along recognized steps in the sales process.
So for example, Step 1 would be speaking to the prospect to qualify them and get agreement to read some information. Step 2 would be to arrange a face to face meeting. Step 3 would be the meeting itself and further information gathering, and Step 4 and onwards would be specific to the sales cycle of the product or service itself (anything from simply taking the order, to reaching agreement on a scope of work or arranging for an in depth technical assessment). A suitable metric in this case would be to move ten prospects per week one step further along the sales cycle. Each time a prospect completes the cycle, a new one should be introduced into the process.
Linking an organization’s CRM system with its calling data will allow for this type of tracking. Many telephone providers can provide Excel based reporting on calling history showing the frequency and duration of calls to each number.
Once metrics have been established metrics, these should then be incorporated in to the commission structure to drive cold calling activity. In most organizations giving one off cash payments is out of the question since commission programs are always tightly linked to closed sales and/or cash received. One off gifts, in lieu of money, (dinner for two, travel incentives etc) are not well received by sales people, who would rather have the cash to spend in a way they have chosen for themselves (on their mortgages for example!).
One way of getting around this is to use performance against predetermined cold calling metrics as an accelerator to payments in a bonus plan. So, for example, a sales person who hits 100% of their sales target can make, not only the commission entitled to them at this level of performance, but an additional 20% on top of this bonus if they hit their cold calling targets.
In this way the objectives of the business to grow its customer base can be aligned with those of the sales person who wishes to maximize his or her incentive payments. Anyone who prefers to grow their business in other ways can chose not to opt to make cold calls, but their performance against those who chose to can then easily be compared and in this way a sales prospecting culture can be fostered.
This week at Qube I have been doing one of my favourite things - talking to potential clients about their business prospecting goals for 2007.
During these conversations the same question has come up a number of times. That is ‘How do you best decide which prospects to target during a cold calling campaign?’. To quote from Linchitz’s book, The Complete Guide to Telemarketing, “Telemarketing is target marketing. If you are not prepared to define who your telemarketing program is to reach, you are just telephoning”.
There is a five step, systematic way, of approaching this question to determine who is most likely to buy.
1. Start with your current customers and formulate an “ideal” customer profile. Describe this profile in as much detail as possible. For example:
Who are my best customers now and what makes them so? (Repeat business, payment on time, length of time it takes them to make a decision, the types of products or services they purchase etc)
Will my business stay the same over the forseeable future so that the behaviour of my current best customer will still be considered ideal for my business in six months time?
What are my current customers buying? Why?
When are they buying and how often?
Who are the key decision makers?
2. Look at your former customers and compare your ideal customer profile with those of your previous customers. Select those that have a similar buying behaviour to your current best customers. Having had a previous relationship gives you a strong reason to call and you already have some buying information about them.
3. Gather referrals in as many ways as possible. Regularly ask current, satisfied, customers who else they know who would benefit from your product or service, and make sure that each inbound call from a customer has the secondary objective of asking for a referral. Send a small premium to those customers who have given you a referral of someone who has subsequently become a customer.
4. Identify prospects who have already qualified themselves in some way. Perhaps these people have requested some literature, responded to a survey or called to enquire about your services in the past. It is important to develop systems that capture this type of information as, although their link to your organization is weak, the call will still be a warmer one than a complete ‘cold call’ to a prosect with no former relationship.
5. Cold Calling. By profiling your ideal current customer base, you have already taken the first step to warming up these calls. You can use your customer profile criteria as the basis for your initial list selection. This will increase the likelihood that you are directing your telemarketing campaign to groups that are qualified.
By targeting your ideal customer first you are giving your telemarketing program the best start and a sound basis upon which to build.
You’ve given a near perfect telephone based pitch, you’ve probed for the information that you think you need to qualify your prospect, and then you start to head towards closing….”How does that sound Mr X?”.
Instead of a positive response, your prospect starts hemming and haaing about price, or asks you to send some information, or just plain says “no”. Ever had that sinking feeling? Of course you have, anyone in sales or marketing, who is brave enough to make cold calls, has had that experience.
That, ladies and gentleman is an objection. But do not fear, objections are good things. They confirm a level of interest in your offering and provide opportunities to engage in a more involved way with your prospect.
Usually you get objections at one of two points in a call. The first will be right at the beginning before you have even presented your value statement. These types of objections aren’t really valid, the person just wants to get you off the telephone. How can they object if they don’t know what you’re calling about? In most cases it’s best to leave these calls and come back another day.
The second time objections most commonly happen, as in the example above, is just before you close. At this point it indicates to you that you have not provided your propsect with all the information he or she deems necessary to make a decision. At this point you need to do the following four things:
1. Recognize the objection: Sometimes objections can come in very vague forms, or as confused signals. For example a ‘yes’ in a certain tone could be an objection. Also what someone says is their problem with your proposal may not be the actual one. You will need to identify firstly that you are being presented with an objection, and then probe to establish exactly what it is.
Sometimes you will need to verbalize the objection yourself. For example if you are calling on behalf of company X and your prosect simply says “we use another supplier”, you can come back with “So what you’re saying is, ‘why should I engage company X’” and then go on to state why you should be the preferred supplier over their current one.
2. Empathize with your prospect: Never argue, show agression or hostility. Your prospect has every right to require more information or express uncertainty. Wording such as “I can understand why you might think that…” or “Yes, I have been asked about that before…” can help to start to defuse these situations.
3. Answer the objection appropriately: Cite proof or offer alternative perspectives to address your prospects concerns. It is useful to provide testimonials in these situations or outline a different feature and benefit of your offering that responds more appropriately to your propects issues.
4. Get agreement and move towards the close: Getting agreement is important, because it verifies that you have satisfactorily answered the objection. Moving towards the close may result in a further objection and so begin again at ‘1′.
Finally a really useful tool to develop is an ‘Objection File’. This file documents all the common objections that you and your colleagues encounter, along with the best responses that you have developed for handling them. Printed and bound, this can prove to be an invaluable tool.
So next time you get a surprise ‘no’, or a vague rebuttal, just recognize it for what it is - the challenge to gain a better perspective on your prospects wants and needs.
Each year the Direct Marketing Association puts together a report on the response rates that different marketing media receive, based on the findings of anonymous surveys conducted in 19 industry categories, for 30 products and services. I read a summary of the findings and thought that it would be interesting to mention some of those here.
Seven types of marketing media are covered in the report (direct mail, catalog, e-mail, inserts, telephone, newspaper and magazine) and it’s findings are further broken down by the objective of the marketing campaign (direct order, where the outcome is designed to solicit and close a sale, lead generation, traffic building and fund-raising).
As you can imagine results vary widely between those four variables, depending on the type of media used, the campaign objective, the industry inwhich the campaign is conducted and the products or service that are being offered.
For example, in the business to consumer space, for direct marketers whose primary objective was to solicit an order, or (in the case of fund raising) make a donation, the highest response rates came from catalog and direct mail (2.3% and 2.18% respectively).
However, in the business to business space, where lead generation was the primary objective, the telephone produced the highest response rate for the fourth year running, with an average of 2.6% across all industries.
Anna Chernis, Senior Research Manager at the DMA, commented that one of the reasons for this was that “Customers - especially B-to-B, are more responsive to a human voice”.
I am obviously a huge advocate of using the telephone as a lead generation tool (if you haven’t seen what Qube’s business is, I suggest you take a quick look!) and I often get asked by prospective clients about the response rate they can expect. In answer to this, it is important to understand the circumstances in which the telephone will produce the best response rates.
There are four main considerations:
Perhaps most importantly, the calling objectives need to be clearly understood and documented. If you are looking for lead generation then are you wanting to qualify leads, book sales appointments or simply get market intelligence? If you are clear about your goals up front, you will be clear about your success rates at the end.
Secondly, the best use of the telephone for business prospecting is when the target market you are campaigning in has been well defined in advance. The ‘best customer’ for your product or service should be identified and then a list of prospects who have the same characteristics should be sought.
Just as important as the right target market, a compelling value statement, needs to be designed. This statement should be applicable to the industry you are calling to and provide enough of a hook to keep the prospect on the telephone.
Finally, the quality of the follow up to the calling campaign, will be a deciding factor. For example, how good is the sales person at following up on the qualified leads generated, or at explaining the product and closing the sale? What type of follow up media has been prepared? This can be as simple as an e-mail sent after the call to cement the relationship.
When conducting a telemarketing campaign it is important to be systematic in planning the approach. The better planned a calling campaign, the better response rates can be expected.
The full report, with more detail on the response rates for various media, is available for purchase from the DMA web site.
Most of the posts on the Qube Blog are concerned with outbound calling, as this, for the most part, is what we do. However, I found a really compelling piece on inbound call management in a book that I am currently reading that I wanted to share.
The book is called “The Complete Guide to Telemarketing Management“ by Joel Linchitz (Amacom, NY, 1990, ISBN: 0814458858). and is recommended reading for anyone who wants to understand how telephone based marketing can be used to maximize profits in their organization. You don’t have to be the owner or manager of a call centre to change your view of the telephone so that it becomes a profit making resource.
As an example, Linchitz suggests that any telemarketing program (inbound or outbound) should try to build on existing relationships. Therefore any inbound call from a current customer can be used to create incremental sales for your organization if the correct process is put in place.
The following are examples of how this might be done:
Program Type
Opportunity
Reservation
Sales Order Upgrades
Catalogue Sales
Up-sell or cross-sell tie in items
Service Sales
Build higher volume usage via multi-level pricing
Order Inquiry
Suggest sales of related items
Information request
Incentives to call local agent immediately
Technical assistance
Suggest sales of related products
Complaints
Incentives to restart sales relationship
Accounting/billing
Notify callers about special sales or promotions
The point of this is not that every inbound call is going to result in an additional sale or extra revenue, but it will happen enough of the time to justify the effort to implement the necessary changes.
In some cases the program will require a shift in mindset resulting from the additional training of an employee, or perhaps even a change in the way calls are routed within an organization. However, in a number of organizations this type of ‘up sell’ is already taking place in an informal way.
There will be more insights from Joel Linchitz’s book in subsequent posts.
If you are getting nowhere with your call cold calling, yet you are speaking to the decision maker and you know your product or service is being sold successfully by your competitors, it might be that your value statement needs some improvement.
A value statement is a brief, but compelling, description of your business that demonstrates why a potential customer should take your offering seriously and why you are better at what you do than your competitors.
Below I have identified 6 different approaches to creating a value statement. If you can identify which of these broad categories applies to your product or service, then these pointers will give you some idea of how you should be constructing your value statement.
I would be very interested to hear from anyone whose offering was not covered by one of these descriptions, so please feel free to contact me with any comments or questions concerning this post. (juliette (at) qubecommunications.com)
1. The Next Big Thing -
Is your product or service associated with something that is a really hot topic in the business world right now? For example, many organizations, are currently implementing the quality standard, Six Sigma. Correspondingly, Six Sigma training and development courses have become a lucrative focus for many commercial training services.
If you are riding the wave of the latest hot business trend, then your value statement should emphasize the amount of expertise you have gained in the short space of time it has been considered a high profile issue, and the speed at which you can mobilize.
There is often a lot of uncertainty surrounding ‘hot trends’ depending on how much of a regulatory issue is involved (for example the Sarbanes Oxley legislation in the US). If your value statement can allay some of the uncertainty and anxiety caused by ‘the next big thing’, then you are on to a winner.
2. Solution to a shared problem -
If you are targeting a specific industry sector or commercial niche, then it is likely that your offering addresses a problem that is common to all members within that niche.
For example, gyms and fitness studios continue to be a growth area but the standard accounting and customer database packages available do not fulfill the unique requirements that such facilities demand. Your offering might be one that consolidates the accounting and membership management functionality into one, easily installed, package which solves this problem.
In this case your value statement should include references to how you have delivered value to a major competitor, or well known organization, that shares the same space and was facing the same, or similar, issues. Testimonials and case studies can be used to great effect in this approach.
3. Consumable or Raw Material Supply -
If you are in the market space where you are selling something that is essentially a commodity, with little or no basic difference to that which your competitors offer, then your customers are going to be most interested in hearing about the price and reliability of your service.
Your value statement should be based upon cost and quality. An example of this would be a Direct Mailing house. One piece of addressed letter mail is much the same as the next. However, if your client can get the letter produced more cheaply, with fewer mistakes and in half the time, then you can clearly demonstrate the value inherent in your service. Again the use of case studies from previous clients would be appropriate.
4. Cyclical Industries -
If the service you offer is usually adopted as a result of a tendering process, I probably don’t need need to point out that the timing of your value statement is as important as what you say.
In this case you need to demonstrate that, by inviting your tender, the outcome will be a more positive one for your client. For example, your inclusion will improve the efficiency and standards of service offered by all the participants in the bidding process.
The focus of your value statement should be on the benefit to the tendering process as much as the benefits provided by your product or service to your potential client, if and when, they chose you as the successful bidder.
5. Networking Approach -
This is where your product or service is likely to be needed by any number of businesses although there may not be a current need. However, there is a mutual benefit for you and your prospect to know each other as there is a strong potential at some point in the future that you will want to do business.
Many service industries fall into this category and this is the approach I take with the calls I make on behalf of Qube Communications. Organizations who are focused on creating business development opportunities want to know what options are available to them. Their marketing budget may not allow for a comprehensive telemarketing campaign right now, but they do want to know who to contact when they are ready in the future.
6. ‘Icing on the Cake’ Approach -
This approach is useful for goods and services that create perceived differentiation for your client compared to their competitors. An example of this type of company might be a corporate fine art leasing company. Here, your approach should focus on perceived value. Referring to other similar organizations and competitors who use your service to full effect will be of benefit.
Some businesses may incorporate a mix of the different approaches. Just remember, whatever approach you choose, keep it as simple as possible.
I look forward to getting your comments and ideas on value statements and cold calling in general.
I don’t need to make an argument for the fact that voicemail is a frustrating but common challenge for anyone using the telephone as a business development tool.
The best way to avoid voice mail is to try to work out when your target is available to take calls (for example, early in the morning before their working day starts). However, in some cases voicemail is unavoidable and so you face a choice - leave a message or let your prospect carry on oblivious to the fact that you and your company exist?
Be prepared by always presuming that you will get voicemail and then consider the following four basic guidelines to make voicemail work for you.
1.Be professional in your approach and, as I have stressed in previous posts, don’t sound over friendly or enthusiastic. Remember the reason for your call is to impart a serious piece of information that could be of real value to the person you are calling.
2.Keep your message brief. You have 30 seconds or less to get your message across before your target will hit the dreaded ‘delete’. Rambling makes you sound unprofessional and unprepared.
3.Design an abridged ‘Elevator Pitch’ specifically for voicemail. An elevator pitch is a concise expression of your value statement that should be simple enough for your grandmother to understand and take the time it would take to ride an elevator to say. Check out this link for a number of excellent articles on writing an elevator pitch. Try to focus on the single most important thing you want your prospect to remember from your message.
4.Leave a Call To Action. e.g. Ask for a call back (although this is unlikely to happen), or for the person to read your mailed brochure or e-mail. Alternatively, say that you will call again (in two hours/a day/next Monday), and then do so, exactly, when you said you would. This will reinforce your credibility and, if the person picks up when you call next time, you know your voice mail had an impact.
Selective use of voicemail in your sales process, when all else fails to connect with a contact, can help you to reach those impossible prospects and is better, in any case, than not connecting at all.
This sounds like obvious advice, I know, but a recent experience in an exercise class really brought it home to me how easily mistakes can be made, but equally how easily they could be avoided.
I attend a regular spin class at my local bike store. All the participants are experienced cyclists and there are a few semi-professional athletes in the group. Yet the instructor, (who takes this class once a week as well as a weekly beginners class at a local gym), teaches the class as if she was teaching beginners, focusing on the basic concepts of cycling training and offering very rudimentary advice about the frequency and intensity of work outs. Her technique is entirely appropriate for a group of beginners, to whom I am sure she is a very valued instructor, given the thoroughness of her knowledge and advice. However it is entirely inappropriate for a group of experienced cyclists whose main motivations to attend are more geared towards having some company whilst they work out, rather than receiving basic fitness instruction.
This put me in mind of other similar experiences I have had. I attended a sales course a few months ago that was billed as being for sales people, with any level of experience, and promised to give new insights into business development techniques. After about half an hour it had become painfully apparent that the course was for absolute beginners. The instructor still collected his fee, but he lost considerable credibility in the eyes of most of the attendees and I doubt that anyone rushed off to sign of up for any of his other courses.
It seems, in each situation, the instructor in question could have avoided these issues by taking the time in advance to really find out what the needs of his or her audience were, discussing their expectations and being honest about what was deliverable in the given time and with his or her own level of knowledge. But trying to be all things to all people resulted in a minimal amount of perceived value to the participants and damaged the credibility of the instructor.
All this points to the very basic need for someone selling a product or service to really know what it is they are selling and who they are selling it to. Trying to force your offering onto people for whom it has no value not only causes bad feeling but it wastes marketing time and effort that could be better spent on a more appropriate audience.
I recently read an essay by Scott Berkun on ‘Why Smart People Defend Bad Ideas’ and I thought it would be interesting to summarize the points he makes to understand, firstly, why seemingly intelligent people end up making stupid decisions, and secondly, how to avoid doing it yourself.
Reasons why people defend bad ideas:
1. Obsessive Righteousness –
Some people, if they have been used to being right during their formative years (because they were smarter than their parents, friends and family members) may have built their entire ego around always being right.
If righteousness is at the core of a person’s psyche then they are likely to defend their own, albeit bad, ideas to the death rather than blemish an otherwise perfect ‘right’ track record.
The same people will also insist on defending a bad idea when they perceive the person who is questioning the idea to be intellectually inferior to them selves. Often this personality trait will come hand in hand with certain a proficiency in debating as well as an ability to make detractors feel stupid. People who use these tactics are often guilty of dishing out subtle abuse which implies that a failure to agree with their own idea indicates a serious lack of understanding of the subject at hand (“If you really knew about ‘xyz’ then you would see that what I am saying is obviously correct”)
2. Group Think –
As social animals we are heavily influenced by how people around us behave. Our decision-making can be easily swayed by our environment and by peer pressure. So, collectively, a group of really smart people will not necessarily come up with a really smart idea. This is because if all the people in that group have the same backgrounds, outlook and opinions, they will all make decisions that fall within these constraints.
3. Intelligence v Wisdom -
It is said that the Wise know what to think about, whilst the Intelligent only know how to think. In other words, no amount of smarts are going to help a person whose idea attacks a problem at the wrong level. A recent real life example in my own experience was a technology start up with a talented team of programmers and graphic artists who spent their entire time refining their product, but no time finding customers who would buy it. Guess what happened once the funding ran out?
4. Short Term Thinking –
Once again referring to human nature, we are much better at solving short-term issues than long term ones. We are bad at seeing the cumulative effect of our behaviour and will underestimate the long-term impact of, say, compound interest, regular exercise, or recycling. If you want to read more about this, read this post on Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development blog about constructive habit forming.
5. Assuming that the Past Predicts the Future -
Deciding to do something because it worked once or twice before can result in bad decision-making. This is because a limited amount of experience of the past is often not enough to predict the future. A bit more data or experience may be enough for the law of averages to catch up with your assumptions and prove that behaviour ‘a’ does not, as you had first anticipated, produce result ‘b’. In fact some data from the past might actually have no relevance in the future at all.
How to Avoid Making Bad Decisions:
1. Remember, ‘Speed Kills’ -
As in a car, speed, where thinking is concerned, often results in a loss of control. Particularly if you are a traditional ‘quick thinker’. You will use rules of thumb, long held assumptions and bits of logic to jump to a decision about something before giving the question at hand the consideration it potentially requires. So firstly, slow down. Any decision worth making is worth taking some time over.
2. Break a Decision into Pieces and ask More Questions -
When faced with a gnarly problem, or an arrogant defender who is suggesting their solution is ‘obviously’ the correct one, break the argument down. Nothing is ever obvious. Identify the assumptions that the solution is based on and ask basic questions to ensure each assumption is valid:
What is the problem we are trying to solve?
What alternatives to solving it are there?
What are the trade-offs of each alternative?
3. Find a Human Sounding Board -
Don’t be afraid to ask for help. If you can find an unbiased, but otherwise well-informed, third party who is willing to listen then you can use this person as your mediator. If you are facing opposition about a decision or you are opposing a decision that someone else is forcefully defending, then try to continue your discussions in the presence of this third party. Having to defend ideas in front of another, respected, individual, will often reveal any wonky thinking that has taken place thus far.
If you are managing, or are part of, a team who is expected to come up with a collective solution, then seek diversity in that group and encourage divergent thinking. There should be consensus around the the results that are expected, but not around the approaches used to obtain those results.
On an individual level, remember that we are all capable of much more interesting and creative lives than our modern and, generally, predictable culture provides for us. If you go out of your way to experience things that are not a normal part of your life or spend time with people you don’t normally spend time with, it will expand the diversity of your thinking and make it less likely that you will miss out on good ideas because your homogeneous thinking filtered them out.
You know who your prospects are, what your value statement is and now you are ready, telephone in hand, to make those prospecting calls. Call effectiveness can make the difference between an immediate hang up, or a fruitful conversation with a potential customer. Like any activity the number one key to success is DOING IT! But mindset, planning and good working practises will make a huge difference to the effectiveness of your prospecting calls.
Approach each call with the right mindset
First and foremost, remember that you are calling another person. Once you have identified your value statement, make sure you take the time to understand what it means to your prospect. When you are calling, always maintain your callers point of view. This will help you to avoid focussing only on your goal for the call and will allow you to react with more integrity to your prospect’s responses during the call.
Be Yourself
It is extremely valuable to listen to other, more experienced, cold-callers when you first start out. When you hear something that naturally makes sense to you, add that to your own approach. Never include anything on a call that you feel half-hearted about. If you believe in what you are saying, it will be much more convincing. Also remember that it is OK to have your own style. Make your prospecting calls as ‘yourself’. Again this will build trust and show integrity. Avoid the high energy, over friendly approach that is typical of most telemarketers, it is an immediate red flag and most prospects will find it irritating.
Furthermore, avoid reliance on a script. If you are reading, it is obvious. Reading from a script not only puts you in the category of a cheap telemarketer, it shows you do not really understand what you are selling and drains any passion out of your voice as you talk about your offering. Practise your value statement until you can say it backwards!
When you are ready to make a call, call yourself and leave a message on your cell or home answering machine. Listen to your value statement – does it really express the benefits that your prospect will get from purchasing your offering? Would you buy from you?
Set Realistic Objectives – and stick to them!
Be realistic about what you can achieve. This means what volume of calls you can manage, what the outcomes of those calls will be and whom you will be able to reach.
Don’t attempt to make too many calls in one go. If possible, set daily goals. Just five calls a day makes 25 calls a week. In most industries this is enough to generate at least one new appointment per week, if not considerably more and should take no more than an hour per day if planned correctly.
Most cold-calling aficionados call in ‘bursts’ of activity. Try to do all your calls for a specific day during one or two sessions when you make one call directly after the other. This helps generate momentum and rhythm and allows you to build on each previous call.
Decide in advance on the desired outcome of your call. In most cases this should not be closing to a sale. More appropriately, it would be to have your prospect read some e-mailed information, which you will then discuss in more detail on a second call, or to agree to a meeting in person. Once you have achieved that objective thank the person for their time and get off the telephone as fast as possible.
Always make sure that you ask for the commitment you are looking for, don’t assume that it has been given until it has been verbalised by your prospect. Also, always follow-up on any commitments that you make. For example, if you say you are going to send an e- mail that afternoon – DO IT! If you can’t do it that afternoon, say so. This enhances trust and emphasises your integrity. Building integrity is one of the most important pieces in the sales process.
Finally, be realistic about who you can get through to on the ‘phone. As an example, the CEO of a billion dollar company is not going to be interested in talking to you unless your value statement is very, very compelling. Also, always remember that the more you do something the better you will get at it so don’t beat yourself up if the first couple of calls don’t go smoothly - it will come eventually.
I regularly listen to the coldcallingpodcast.com, and todays podcast was about how to align your sales force’s motivations with the needs of an organization to business prospect. Here is a summary of their discussion. The original recording can be found at this link. I would highly recommend this bi weekly podcast to anyone looking to gain more insight into cold calling. 
I recently read an 