Sales call 101: 7 Types of sales calls you must know

According to a study, 59% of customers stated that they expect a business to be available via voice communication or phone calls in sales.  

So, sales calls are a vital mode of conducting and winning sales.  

Fundamentally, sales calls are telephonic conversations between a prospect and sales reps regarding a purchase of a product/service. And the ultimate objective of any sales call is to make the prospect into a paying customer or at least move them further across the sales pipeline. 

And the core purpose of the sales call is to better connect with the prospects and keep them informed about your brand’s products or services. And, most importantly, how they can benefit from using them. 

Effective sales calls also enable you to upsell or cross-sell your existing customers. 

Various types of sales calls are made during the entire sales cycle to accomplish different objectives. So, let’s go through the 7 types of sales calls reps conduct during a sales process. 

7 Types of sales calls  

During the sales process, there are various occasions where conducting a sales call might come in handy, such as during prospecting, discovery, objection handling, and more. Each type of sales call has a different purpose. 

Let’s look at different types of sales calls:

1. Cold calls  

Cold calling is basically contacting potential customers without any prior contact or relationship. It’s usually done in an effort to transform the prospect into a possible lead for the business. 

For instance, the calls made by credit card companies to sell a card to random people.

Also, keep in mind that 92% of prospects consider unidentified calls as spam. And 80% of sales calls go to voicemail. So, there is always the possibility that the person that’s being contacted may or may not be the potential customer for the business.

Purpose of Cold Calls

Cold calling is usually done to identify a prospect’s interests and whether they align with your brand’s offerings or not. Based on this, you can attract and engage with them. So, qualifying the prospect becomes much easier. 

Tips to make successful sales calls  

Cold calling is dead! That’s what is usually said. But that can’t be more untrue. At least in the B2B industry, because nearly 57% or more C-level leaders prefer to get a call from a sales rep. 

So, here are some result-driven tips for conducting effective cold calls: 

Conduct a detailed pre-call research 

Before making a cold call, do comprehensive pre-call research to know your ideal customer profile and buyer persona. 

If you know your customer persona, it will help you grab their attention and engage them. It also helps you to pitch customized offers making them feel important during the cold call. 

Prepare and practice your cold-calling script 

A cold calling script is the best support, as it includes key points that a rep must discuss in a flow when conducting a cold call.  

The sales call script is more of a helpful checklist. It contains descriptive answers to all the FAQs and insights on how to face sales objections. You must learn to cope with rejection and objections during a cold call.  

Here’s how to win at cold calls! Check out; the best cold calling scripts for all situations. 

Watch out for the right time for a cold call  

If you’ve made some calls and got a poor response or no response at all, then the timing could be a reason for that. 

To overcome this, analyze your call recordings and discover the hours in a day when your potential customers picked up and engaged more with you. Accordingly, schedule the calls for such specified times to enhance sales opportunities.   

Support of a sales CRM might help boost your sales productivity with features like call recording & forwarding, automatic voicemail drops, call tracking, etc.  

Continue reading; 12 Best cold calling tips for sales calls [with examples].

2. Warm calls  

When a sales professional connects with a prospect, who has already shown some interest in the brand’s products or services via multiple mediums such as the website or cold calling, or something else, it can be identified as a warm call.

And, when considering warm calls, referrals work quite well. 92% of buyers trust referrals from their known people. So, with an existing personal connection, you have a 4.2 times more chance to get an appointment.

Here the prospects have an existing relationship with the business. For instance, it could be a follow-up to a cold call, a past buyer or opportunity, someone in your network, etc.   

For example, if a person signed up for the contact us web form on your landing page, you will make a warm call to enquire more about evaluating selling opportunities. 

Another example is if a person met you in a seminar, showed interest in your brand, and asked you to give a call in the upcoming weekend. Now, you would make a warm call to confirm of their interest in your brand. 

Purpose of Warm Calls

The purpose of warm calls is to entice the prospective customer with your product/services, influencing them to make a purchase. And if not the conversion, convincing them for a demo or in-person sales meeting can be one of the agenda of warm calls. 

Tips to make the best warm calls 

To help you win, here are the most effective tips when conducting warm calls. 

Prepare a checklist with key topics to discuss 

As warm calls are made to people who might have interacted with your business before, prepare to win. If you have any information about your prospect’s recent activity, leverage it to make the conversation personalized and relevant.  

Talk about things that are useful for your potential customers, highlighting the benefits for them.  

Make an impact with your opening lines 

Grab your prospects’ attention in a warm call with a catchy and meaningful opening line.   

A personalized opening line with an informative context about how you can help them to overcome their roadblocks can work for you.   

To help with that, check out: How to start a sales conversation that captures the interest. 

Try to discover problems with open-ended sales questions 

Warm calls are opportunities to identify your prospect’s intent regarding buying your products/services. To win, ask open questions, for example, how can I make this call worthwhile for you?  

Open-ended sales questions will help you to engage with them better and open more chances to discover their stress points and requirements. 

Continue your reading; the top 7 tips on how to make successful sales appointment calls. 

3. Prospecting sales calls 

These are the initial sales calls to find possibilities to pitch in your product or service.  

There is a thin line that differentiates cold and prospecting calls, which you can understand better with a quote by Michael Phelan. 

“Prospecting means seeking out the right customer to pitch to; it requires research and intelligence. Cold calls are a blunt sales tactic to call potential buyers randomly, hoping that many of them might be in a buy mode.” 

Although, the motive of cold calls and prospecting is to discover the customer’s intent toward buying. 

Purpose of prospecting calls  

To build interest among the listening prospect about your product/services, convince them that you can solve their problems. 

Tips to make the best out of prospecting calls 

While conducting prospecting calls, try to focus on understanding the prospects’ needs and pain points to connect with them on a more personal level. But here are a few detailed tips to make the best out of prospecting calls:

Connect to prospects on LinkedIn 

With over 810 million LinkedIn users, your B2B prospects will defiantly be present there. 

You’ll able to find and connect with the decision makers before your prospecting call on LinkedIn. 

Here is the smart way to find your prospect’s profile on LinkedIn: Find information like: 

• Based on location 
• Based on previous education/college name 
• Based on the companies they served 
• Based on their skill endorsement 
• Look at your competitor’s network 

Ask targeted questions and listen to the response 

Don’t just assume; discover the prospect’s needs and stress points. The best to draw in a sales call is by asking target questions. 

As per a resource, asking 11-14 questions brings an average win rate of 74%.

Here are a few targeted questions you should find answers to better understand customer’s intent: 

What are their top priorities at the moment?  

What are the challenges they are facing currently?  

What is the biggest roadblock in their growth?  

What solutions are they now relying on to overcome the roadblocks?  

Are they satisfied with those solutions?  

What would make them consider switching providers?  

What features are they expecting in the new solutions?  

What results would they wish to see if they start using product X in the coming quarter? 

4. Sales appointment calls  

A sales appointment call is made to finally have an open discussion on the prospect’s stress points and how the brand can help solve them.  

26% of clients said that poorly organized meetings impact customer relationships adversely. So, keep this in mind the next time you schedule a meeting and utilize efficient software that can help you schedule meetings and manage those leads.

Before this appointment setting, calls were made aiming to schedule a call/video meeting to discuss the product’s features and benefits in detail. 

During sales appointment calls, both the decision maker and sales rep agree to have a purposeful discussion.  

For example, a prospect is looking for a CRM for their financial advisor business. He was in conversation with a software company for a month.  And then, he has taken a 15-day free trial of the CRM software. After the free trial, the prospect received a sales appointment call for further discussions on buying or any queries. 

Purpose of sales appointment calls  

A sales appointment call is made once your reps have established a relationship with their prospects. The purpose is to indicate the features and benefits of your product/services to them. This way, you will move one step ahead in closing the deal. 

Tips to make the best out of sales appointment calls  

Understand your prospect’s needs and mold the conversation accordingly when conducting sales appointment calls. Check out these quick tips. 

Watch out for your tone and context 

Although the prospects have shown interest and are open for a sales appointment call, you cannot pressure them.  

Always be courteous, and better to ask, “Is it the right time to talk?” even if for a scheduled call. 

Be consultative during this call instead of being pitchy for sales. Try to include elements, such as customer stories, facts, and more, to convince them. This way, you can get a chance to convince them to purchase from you. 

Use social proof 

About 88% of buyers trust online reviews equally to personal recommendations. So, it is best to leverage all the social proofs you have to build trust and persuade your prospects to buy. 

Share case studies revealing the challenges faced by your customers and how you helped to overcome them. This is a great way to take your prospects into confidence. Plus, convince them that your offer is the right fit for them.  

You can talk about your happy customers during the call and send them the link via text or email just after the meeting. 

Use technology for a faster process  

For setting up tons of sales appointment calls each day, the sales automation CRM is the right tool to go with.   

You can set up an automatic pre-recorded voicemail drop if the prospect doesn’t respond. Plus, you can set reminders to schedule sales appointments. Saving you from losing opportunities.  

Use a meeting scheduler to book a new sales appointment or to reschedule if the prospect missed the scheduled one.  

Technology like a sales automation CRM helps you to conduct error-free tasks and support you in meeting your sales quotas. 

5. Follow-up calls  

Follow-up calls are made to the potential prospects to know about their decision regarding the purchase. In addition, these are calls made to know if the prospect with whom you are in the conversation has any purchasing plans soon.   

Also, nearly 44% of sales reps give up after the first follow-up call. So, don’t be this sales rep! Because 80% of sales demand a minimum of 5 follow-up calls after the meeting. 

Purpose of follow-up calls 

The purpose of follow up calls is to identify the lead’s position in the sales process. Remember, a follow up call is meant for more than just the decision stage. Sometimes follow-up calls are required in the consideration stage too. 

Tips to make the best out of follow ups calls  

Quick and on-point follow-up calls help to close more deals. Here are some tips to win doing follow-up calls. 

Plan your follow-up calls  

Conducting follow-up calls blindly or randomly would harm your brand value and can irritate your prospect. So, during your sales call, create a reason to follow up.  

For example, after giving a demo, you might indicate that we would love to take your valuable feedback to improve.  

Avoid these follow-up opening blunders 

Follow-ups need to have a good start; otherwise, all your efforts till now will go in vain. Most sales reps stumble and begin their follow up calls like: 

• “I was calling to follow up on our proposal.”   
• “I just wanted to ensure that you’ve received the email.”  

Never do this! As these are poor opening statements. Instead, speak something that holds your prospects to listen.    

Conduct follow up calls on time  

Conduct your follow-up on time, don’t be a minute late. 

Because your competitors are also after your prospects. So, make sure you don’t give them a chance to win. An on-time follow up call can bring the deal to your company.  

Continue reading; book 35% more follow-up sales calls: 7 tips that work! 

And we know that following up with leads is a tiring process. So, why not use a CRM that can ease the communication process for you?

6. Service calls 

A service call is conducted after the deal is closed. You can call it a follow-up call after purchase. 

Purpose of service calls  

It is made to ask whether they face any issues or how they feel about the product/service. 

Tips to make the best out of service calls  

Service calls play an important role as it helps to establish an image of a dedicated brand. Here are some tips for conducting service calls. 

Conduct service call on time 

Take the service call. Your customers always want to feel valuable and important, and a service call is a way to do so. Plus, it helps you to build a brand rapport.  

Ask for referrals 

Getting referrals is always good news for sales reps. It is more like a bonus to one single effort. If you serve the best to one customer, they might recommend you to their near and dear ones. 

7. Product launched sales calls 

These sales calls happen between a company’s sales rep and an existing customer to inform new product/services launched. 

Your customer knows your brand as a user and is probably aware of the purpose of your call. A traditional sales call is easy because you’re dealing with an existing customer. 

In the product launch sales calls, the seller plans to enquire about the customer’s needs or offer a solution to close the deal. 

Purpose of product launch calls  

To introduce the existing customer to new products/services and identify the opportunities where to meet the customer’s demands. 

Tips to make the best out of product launch calls 

Product launch calls give more benefits if you have given an outstanding service such that your customers are happy with you. See the tips below to make the most out of the product launch calls. 

Start the call addressing the customer’s present situation 

As the customer is an old customer, you must know their persona. So, begin your call sales conversations by addressing your customer’s current situation. Also, discuss something that can lead your conversation where your direct sales call objective can be met. 

Ask for feedback 

One element that will always make your existing customer willingly respond is their feedback. Make them feel valuable and ask for feedback regarding the benefits and shortcomings.  

Consider talking about their plans for their business expansions (in the case of B2B). And request some suggestions for your product/services that might help them. 

For example, if your B2B client is using your product, say CRM software, they might also ask about the business app they are looking forward to for seamless integration. 

Conclusion 

Sales calls let you introduce your product/service/brand story to your prospects. You need to understand all the types of sales calls. You must understand what your prospects want to discuss in each type of sales call.  

Whether an inbound or outbound sales call, thorough research, pre-preparation, tactics, tools, etc., are required. And, if all is done correctly, closing more deals and meeting sales quota won’t be challenging anymore.