Cold calling is one of the most direct ways of interacting with potential customers, but there’s a catch: you must plan carefully to ensure you get it right. Given the low success rates (roughly 2%), there’s a lot you’ll have to take care of if you want all your campaigns to be successful.
One of these elements is timing your calls. In truth, this may as well be the single most important factor in some cases, as it can make or break your connections. This is why time zone data is crucial for any cold calling campaign. So, let’s uncover the world of cold calling and why you must time your efforts.
First Things First: Why Timing Your Calls Matters
There’s no doubt that cold calling is tricky, yet super effective if you get the hang of it and learn the tricks for maximum effectiveness as you go. Timing your calls is one of these tricks.
When you call at the right time, you will not only boost engagement with your prospects, but you will also avoid misaligning your efforts and feeling frustrated. But that’s not all. You’ll also build a stronger rapport with potential customers, which will more than likely translate to higher conversion rates.
If you want a quick summary of why you should time your calls properly, here are three strong points:
- It shows respect
- Better timing makes it more likely you’ll reach your target contacts
- You’ll see a higher engagement rate when you call during the right hours
Collecting Time Zone Data for Better Cold Calling
Time zone data is typically only useful if you gather and manage it correctly. Here’s how to collect time zone data for greater success with your cold calling efforts:
1. Phone Number Enrichment
You may have heard about tools that you can use to analyse phone numbers and add some missing information, such as the region or time zone, based on a number’s area code. This is especially useful if you’re planning to call prospects in a different region.
Trestle’s contact data enrichment tool, which is also one of the best people finder APIs in the market, does this and more. Whether you want to segment your audience based on demographic data or you just want to view your contacts’ addresses to determine which ones are better leads, this is the right tool to go for.
2. User-Provided Location-Based Data
You can also gather time zone information by requesting the user’s location during the initial contact or signup processes. You can even set up surveys or offer registration processes that will require users to provide their location.
3. IP Address Data
A majority of businesses have ecommerce stores or an official website. When customers sign up, they will need an internet connection and an IP address. You can use this IP address data to get a rough estimate of a user’s location, which will then give you a time zone to work with.
Using the Time Zone Data for Your Cold Calling Strategies
Leveraging your time zone data will help you make good decisions when it comes to improving your outreach. Here’s how that works:
1. Optimising Calls Based on Time Zones
Segmenting is a powerful technique when it comes to marketing campaigns, and as far as cold calling is involved, segmenting your prospects based on their time zone data will go a long way. So, use the data you’ve gathered to group your potential customers to ensure you call them when they are likely to be active.
2. Prioritising Leads Through Time Zone Data
Did you know that some prospects are more promising than others simply because they are based in specific regions? Well, think about it this way: Some regions will have better economies, easier access to education and healthcare, favourable business environments, and better infrastructure. All these factors lead to a higher standard of living.
So, you can use your time zone data to target key prospects much better and help your teams maximise their productivity. Besides, contacting prospects in certain regions may increase your likelihood of successful outreach.
3. More Effective Automation
Want to set up a system for automating your follow-up emails, notifications and reminders? Consider using time zone data to ensure they reach your customers at the most ideal time, for a higher likelihood of engagement.
If, for instance, you have leads from London, you can use their time zone data to schedule automatic reminder emails for London’s business hours.
Enhance Your Cold Calling Efforts With Trestle
Cold calling is all about connecting with your prospects when they are available and willing to be contacted. Wrong timing isn’t something you can risk when using such a delicate method of connecting with customers, especially for the first time.
You can reduce the risk of calling your customers when it’s not convenient for them by using contact data enrichment tools like the ones at Trestle. Ready to dive in? Visit trestleiq.com today to see their offers.
Hayden Richards is Contributor of IntelligentHQ. He specialises in finance, trading, investment, and technology, with expertise in both buy-side, sell-side. Contributing and advising various global corporations, Hayden is a thought leader, researching on global regulatory subjects, digital, social media strategies and new trends for Businesses, Capital Markets and Financial Services.
Aside from the articles, interviews and content he writes for IntelligentHQ, Hayden is also a content curator for capital markets, analytic platforms and business industry emerging trends. An avid new media explorer Hayden is driven by a passion for business development, innovation, social business, Tech Trading, payments and eCommerce. A native Trinidadian, Hayden is also a veteran, having served with the Royal Air Force Reserves for the past 10 years.
Follow Hayden on Twitter @HaydenARichards, linkedin.com/haydenhrichards and http://www.scoop.it/u/hayden-richards
