Start driving better conversations.
Novocall will be your new favorite business phone system.
Hate Cold Calling? Here's How You Can Generate Leads Without Cold Calls
Cold calling is an effective outbound lead generation method, but many still dread it. Well, you’re not alone! Let’s take a look at 8 strategies to generate leads without cold calling!
Vaibhav Namburi
Reading time: 5 minutes
There’s no doubt that cold calling is one of the best outbound sales strategies to generate leads. After all, statistics show that 49% of buyers prefer cold calls as the first point of contact — which is a telling sign that cold calling is still effective.
However, even though businesses that don’t cold call experience 42% less growth than those that do, many sales professionals still dread it and think that cold calling sucks.
Well, we can’t deny that cold calls can be daunting, and the rejection can be quite hard to swallow sometimes.
If you’re one of those people who hate cold calling, fret not! There are plenty of effective ways to get sales leads without cold calling.
Let’s dive right into some proven strategies to generate leads without cold calling!
Contents
Best strategies to generate leads without cold calling
Utilize cold emails
Like cold calling, cold sales emails help you directly connect to your potential customer. But because it’s less intrusive than cold calling, many sales reps prefer sending an email to establish contact with prospects.
We can’t deny that emails are quicker in getting your message across in an impactful manner while still managing to keep things personalized.
Setting up your cold email campaign is also fairly simple, with many email automation software coming with drag-and-drop builders to make things a breeze.
Using an AI tool like Smartwriter, you can source qualified leads and create your next campaigns with hyper-personalized email messages. Many email marketing tools have built-in templates and can schedule automatic follow-up sequences.
Host webinars
Webinars are a tried and true marketing tactic that is proven to gain new leads. In fact, 73% of B2B marketers and sales leaders say that hosting a webinar is one of the best methods to bring in more leads!
This helps you build trust and credibility among your target audience and possibly, expand your reach.
It provides greater business visibility compared to other events or activities such as conferences. Webinars are a great way to connect with prospects on a personal level as you can speak directly with your potential customers and clarify their doubts.
Use a click-to-call widget
A click-to-call is exactly what it sounds like — a web visitor clicks a button to connect with a company rep in real-time. Click-to-call technology can be embedded into a digital customer touchpoint, and this can come in various forms.
For example, it is most commonly embedded onto a webpage as a click-to-call widget that shows up at the bottom of your web pages. Leads can then click on it to activate a callback.
This is a great way to generate inbound leads through calls because your visitors just need to enter their contact information and the software will automate a call between the visitor and the sales rep at a selected timeslot.
When connected with your CRM software, contacts will be automatically created and conversations will be stored.
Build your brand through social selling
Social selling is the new way to connect with your prospects. It’s the art of finding, connecting, understanding, and nurturing sales prospects.
When it comes to social selling, the possibilities are endless. You can make valuable connections and promote your business from anywhere as long you’re engaging in some form online, like communities and groups.
Popular places for marketers and salespeople to connect with potential sales prospects include Twitter, Facebook groups, LinkedIn, and many more
The point of social selling isn’t just to dive in headfirst without any context. Engage in real, thoughtful conversations that provide value. This way, you’ll build genuine connections and rapport, which will make pitching your product easier.
Use of content marketing
Writing good lead-generating content focuses on creating and distributing engaging and relevant content to attract and generate leads without having to pick up the phone.
Instead of directly reaching out to prospects through cold calls or emails, content marketing brings them to you.
In fact, nearly 91% of B2B marketers utilize content marketing to fill their pipeline!
Because you’re already attracting qualified visitors to your website from your content marketing efforts, including lead magnets will help you easily capture their contact details in exchange for something valuable.
Referral marketing
Word of mouth and referral programs are powerful tools to influence purchase decisions. Referral marketing has been proven to be effective — customers acquired through referrals have a 37% higher retention rate!
That’s because referrals take advantage of social bonds and people are just naturally more convinced by those they trust.
Furthermore, traffic generated through referrals tend to be well-qualified and has an 18% lower churn rate.
The best way to do referral marketing is to encourage your loyal customers to leave reviews, spread the word, and invite their peers to use your product or service. Because they’re already so satisfied with your business, the chances of them doing this without an incentive is high.
Of course, providing incentives like a special discount or freebies can further encourage customers to spread the word.
The most vital thing to remember about referral marketing isn’t just about the numbers (increasing new leads for business) — but about going above and beyond your customers’ expectations. This means providing them with more value than they would get from your competitors or other players in your industry.
Incorporate chatbots onto your website
Many businesses are turning to chatbots to free up more of their time by addressing common customer questions and requests. It removes the frequent tediousness of handling basic customer queries, yet at the same time, provides immediate answers to your web visitors.
The options and answers offered by your chatbot can also route customers towards the ultimate goal of a sales transaction. By imitating a natural conversation, chatbots can appropriately share your latest products, promotions, or make recommendations.
As such, chatbots can help to accelerate sales and improve the sales productivity of your reps.
Start marketing through chat
Chat marketing is a marketing approach that acquires and engages customers using messaging platforms such as WhatsApp and Messenger, as well as through live chat and chatbots. In other words, it refers to the use of chat for business purposes.
Chat marketing proves to be an effective strategy to generate more leads because it has a high engagement and open rate (82% of people open every text message they receive and chat has a 10% conversion rate).
Businesses can have direct 1-on-1 conversations with customers and deliver personalized messages like product updates, recommendations, notifications, and many more.
Conclusion
If you’re one of those people who suck at cold calling or simply hate the idea of it, you’re not alone. Even though it’s an effective outbound lead generation method, there are many other methods and channels to get leads without cold calling.
We hope that the strategies mentioned above will give you some form of direction to take in your journey to generate more qualified leads without having to pick up the phone.
Try any one of these 8 strategies today to boost your sales!
Vaibhav Namburi
Vaibhav is the Founder of SmartWriter. He’s helped build multiple multi-million dollar companies and he loves approaching Start-Ups through product-lead growth.
Related articles
Subscribe to our blog
Get insights & actionable advice read by thousands of professionals every week.