We recommend that you wait at least ten days from the date that the items were mailed out before running any follow up campaigns.
The reason for this is that shipping takes between 1-5 days, and it is then wise to give the prospects a little bit of time to receive the item, as many will be away from the office, working hybrid etc. As you will be mentioning the item that you sent in your follow up campaigns, it won't do any good to phone someone referencing an item if they have not yet seen it.
Overview
The purpose of this document is to offer some guidelines on how to structure a follow up phone campaign which references these items, but it's important to remember that every use case is different. You will have your own style and tone of voice, but we just want to give some examples of how we structure our follow up campaigns at Leadable for inspiration.
Some general tips to help with your call connect rate:
Use a phone number validation service. We have a partner who we can introduce you too if you need one and they will dial all potential phone numbers for every contact for you and supply you with clean data based on the likelihood of each prospect answering.
If using call software, recycle your phone numbers regularly and test them for 'Spam Likely' or 'Suspected Spam' notices regularly.
If you are looking for entry-level software to make your calling campaigns more efficient, tools like JustCall and FrontSpin are affordable and easy to set up.
If you don't have that many contacts to call and you don't have any software in place, just do it from your normal phone (as long as it's in the same country as prospects are less likely to answer from international phone numbers).
Sample Script
Opening Line
We recommend that you open with a line directly referencing the item which you have sent. Most prospects want to immediately hang up on cold callers, so we want to disarm them as quickly as possible by letting them know that we were the ones who sent the item.
Hi {PROSPECT NAME}, it’s {NAME} from {COMPANY} here, I’m the one who sent you that unusual book from the future last week. Did you receive something like this at your office?
If They Say Yes To The Opener
In most cases, if the prospect has already received the item and they say 'yes' to this question, we recommend that you let them speak as they will generally compliment the approach - it is advised to let the conversation flow as naturally as possible from here instead of using a rigid call script, but as soon as the opening arises, we recommend that you ask the prospect if it is okay for you to explain the reason why you sent this item to them (they will usually agree).
Depending on the seniority of the caller, you might want to push for a meeting at this stage or else have as detailed of a conversation on the phone as you can, i.e. a junior SDR should probably try to get a meeting scheduled, but a more senior SDR or an AE should probably go as deep into the conversation as they can.
We don't provide a template script here as there are so many variables at this stage of the call.
If They Say No To The Opener
There will be prospects who have not received the item yet for a number of reasons. We recommend that you clarify the address that it was sent to, as they will generally explain why they have not yet received it when you do this. Without specifically mentioning the address, most prospects will just say no again and shut down the call.
Oh, I sent it to {ADDRESS}, maybe that was wrong. Do you receive mail there?
All of the final addresses are on the sheet which we share with you for your follow up campaigns.
If They Say No Again
There are always prospects who will say 'no' regardless of what you say, and this cold call is unlikely to change their mind, so we recommend to politely end the call at this point.