AI Sales Cold Calling – Benefits, Use Cases, Tools and Best Practices

Table of contents

1. What is AI Sales Cold Calling?
2. Benefits of AI Sales Cold Calling
3. Use Cases of AI Cold Calling
4. When To Use and Not To Use AI Sales Cold Calling
5. Best AI Cold Calling Software

Are you still doing cold calls manually? You’re missing out!

Cold calling has always been a part of selling, but the old way doesn’t work so great. Why? Well, it’s time-consuming, and the results aren’t that reliable.

Did you know that only 2 out of every 100 cold calls actually lead to something good?

But some B2B companies are getting 10 good calls out of 100. How? They’re using a better approach and tools – AI cold calling!

Here’s an interesting fact: Salespeople who use AI get 50% more leads and appointments.

So, if you’re interested in trying AI for cold calling, we can help. In this article, we’ll talk about AI cold calling, its benefits, use cases, essential best practices, and tools.

Related: Cold Calling: Ultimate Short Guide With Working Frameworks

What is AI Sales Cold Calling?

Before we learn what AI cold calling is, let’s understand what cold calling actually means. Here’s a definition from Investopedia.

“Cold calling is the solicitation of a potential customer who had no prior interaction with a salesperson.”

Cold calling means calling people who haven’t shown interest in your product before. Its main aim is to make people aware of what you’re offering, get them interested, and hopefully make sales.

Now, let’s see what AI cold calling is:

AI cold calling simply means using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to automate and improve the process of making sales calls. It involves using AI algorithms to,

• Analyze data
• Generate personalized scripts
• Plan calls
• Score leads
• Interact with potential customers through voice or chat interfaces

This means salespeople spend less time on boring tasks and can make more sales, which is great for everyone.

Related: What is a Sales Discovery Call? – Questions, Process and Template

Benefits of AI Sales Cold Calling

Did you know? 75% of B2B companies will use AI for their cold calls by 2025. Here are the reasons why,

• AI helps to make 3x more calls
• Increases successful leads and appointments by 50%
• And achieves 98% accuracy in checking phone numbers for sales calls

Here are some ways cold calling AI tools can benefit sales teams:

1. Automated Cold Calling

Around 48% of sales reps are afraid of sales calls. But now, you can automate the process with the help of artificial intelligence. It helps you reach hundreds or even thousands of potential customers daily, without your sales team needing to start the conversations.

This saves time, especially since nearly half of sales reps feel nervous about cold calling. You can set up an AI cold calling bot to make the call, share your offer, and connect to a real person if the prospect is interested.

2. Personalized Conversations

In cold calling, success often depends on making lots of calls. But it’s hard to personalize them unless you use AI. AI bots gather data from various sources about a customer’s preferences, buying habits, and feelings, going beyond just making work easier.

They help to personalize each conversation deeply with potential and current customers. These tools quickly analyze tons of data, showing details about a customer’s likes, who they are, and more. This helps you to adjust your sales or service plan to match each customer’s needs.

Related: Cold Email Outreach: An SDR’s Ultimate Guide

3. Improved Lead Spotting and Nurturing

Many salespeople don’t like cold calling, with 63% saying it’s the worst part of their job. Why? Mainly because they lack the right information before calls, get leads that are hard to reach, or get poor-quality leads from marketing.

Luckily, AI can help solve these problems. It goes through lots of leads and picks the ones most likely to buy, saving salespeople from calling leads who aren’t interested or ready to buy. Also, AI uses sentiment analysis to know if they’re happy, sad, or neutral. This helps in choosing the best way to follow up.

4. Increased Efficiency and Productivity

When teams use AI cold calling tools, they can reach out to more people. Cold calling AI software automates many routine tasks, so sales reps can use their time better and contact more prospects.

Imagine this: If an AI tool saves each team member just 1 hour a day, that’s 5 hours a week, 20 hours a month, or 240 hours a year – that’s like having six extra weeks to work! Also, the more data AI tools collect, the more they learn and improve to help your company better.

5. Higher Success Rates

With AI’s assistance in identifying promising leads, qualifying them effectively, and maintaining consistent follow-up, sales teams can increase their chances of closing deals and generating revenue. This leads to more efficient sales processes and improved overall performance.

Related: 20 Sales Productivity Tools To Boost Your Sales in 2024

Use Cases of AI Cold Calling

The use of AI has become more common among businesses, especially in sales and marketing. Experts predict that by 2026, one out of every ten tasks that humans do will be done by technology instead.

Here are some practical use cases of AI in cold calling:

1. Lead Generation

Cold calling AI can be used to identify and reach out to potential leads by harnessing data analysis and predictive modeling.

Through various algorithms, AI can sift through large datasets to identify patterns and characteristics indicative of potential customers. It then autonomously initiates contact with these prospects to gather further information or qualify them as leads.

2. Lead Qualification

Once initial contact is made with potential leads, AI can continue the conversation to gather more specific details about their needs, budget, timeline, and decision-making process.

By analyzing the responses and comparing them against predefined criteria, AI can determine the quality and readiness of leads, helping sales teams prioritize their efforts more effectively.

3. Personalized Outreach

AI algorithms can analyze available data about prospects, including their past interactions, preferences, and demographics, to tailor outreach messages and conversations.

This personalization can significantly improve engagement rates and increase the likelihood of conversion by addressing the specific needs and interests of each prospect.

Related: 12 Best Conversational Intelligence Software 2024

4. Automated Follow-Up

After the initial contact, AI can manage follow-up communications efficiently by sending automated emails, making scheduled calls, or initiating other forms of outreach based on predefined triggers or timelines.

This ensures that leads are nurtured consistently and prevents them from slipping through the cracks due to human oversight or inconsistency.

5. Sales Performance Analytics

AI can examine various metrics related to cold calling activities, such as call volume, duration, conversion rates, and response times, to provide insights into the effectiveness of sales efforts.

By identifying patterns and trends in these data points, AI can help sales managers optimize their strategies, allocate resources more efficiently, and forecast future performance.

Related: 12 Best Sales Analytics Software To Measure Sales Performance

6. Sales Script Optimization

Through natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning, AI can study the content and structure of sales scripts to identify phrases, questions, or approaches that resonate most with prospects.

By continuously refining and optimizing scripts based on feedback and performance data, AI helps sales reps deliver more compelling and persuasive messages during cold calls.

7. Coaching and Training

AI can evaluate recorded cold calls to provide feedback and coaching to sales reps, highlighting areas for improvement in communication, objection handling, and closing techniques.

By identifying strengths and weaknesses in real-time interactions, AI enables targeted training programs that help sales teams continuously enhance their skills and performance.

Related: How to Use AI For Sales Training – Tools and Best Practices

8. Sentiment Analysis

Using NLP techniques, AI can analyze the tone, language, and sentiment expressed during cold calls to gauge the emotional response of prospects.

By identifying positive or negative sentiments, as well as areas of concern or interest, AI helps sales reps adjust their approach in real time to build rapport, address objections, and guide the conversation towards a successful outcome.

When To Use and Not To Use AI Sales Cold Calling

AI cold calling is a valuable tool in many scenarios, offering time-saving benefits and reducing manual efforts. However, it also has its limitations and may not be suitable for every situation.

Let’s explore when to use AI cold calling and when it’s better to stick with traditional approaches.

When to Use AI Sales Cold Calling

• Large outreach efforts: AI is useful when you need to contact a large number of prospects regularly.
• Data-driven personalization: It’s beneficial when you want to personalize your sales approach based on extensive data analysis.
• Lead qualification: AI cold calling helps efficiently identify leads most likely to convert, allowing sales teams to focus on high-potential prospects.
• Consistent follow-up: AI ensures consistent follow-up with leads, preventing missed opportunities.
• Scaling sales operations: It helps scale sales operations by handling routine tasks, and freeing up human resources.

Related: A Complete Guide to Sales Call Reporting: Tips, Templates & Tools

When Not to Use AI Sales Cold Calling

• Highly personalized sales: For sales requiring a deeply personalized approach, human interaction may be more effective.
• Complex sales scenarios: In situations where nuanced understanding and negotiation skills are crucial, human sales reps may outperform AI.
• Limited data availability: If there is insufficient data for AI to analyze effectively, traditional sales approaches may be more appropriate.

Best AI Cold Calling Software

To use AI for sales calls and cold calling, you can try out different tools. Let’s explore some AI cold calling software, compare what they offer, and see how they can help.

1. Goodmeetings

Source: Goodmeetings

Goodmeetings is one of the most powerful sales conversational intelligence platforms for AI cold calling. This tool helps you to record, transcribe as well as summarize all your online sales conversations, from calls and meetings to discussions and follow-ups.

Moreover, it offers advanced analytics using conversation intelligence to give you hidden insights from the sales conversations. You can use it to refine sales pitches, score leads, coach sales reps, offer real-time support on cold calls and more.

What’s best is that you can easily integrate it with popular CRMs and everyday apps to streamline your entire sales process. Overall, Goodmeetings is one of the best AI tools to improve your sales productivity by helping sales reps close more deals.

Features

• Record and transcribe all your sales conversations accurately in multiple languages
• Get AI-powered human-level summaries along with automated action items and key moments
• Use the search function to look for transcripts and extract topics
• Use call analytics to get hidden insights from sales conversations
• Get performance insights to see how well your cold call strategies are working
• Customized reporting dashboards help you track all the key cold call metrics
• Deep CRM integration to automate mundane tasks like data entry
• Get a complete picture of your customer – name, designation, and previous interactions
• Auto-capture responses to custom discovery Q&As
• Generate scores and qualify leads based on responses
• Capture important moments from cold call conversations for future reference
• Coach sales reps by using recordings of successful sales calls
• Provide AI-based nudges and battlecards to help sales reps during cold calls
• Live and incognito human coaching to help sales reps on calls
• Instant natural language querying and proactive AI alerts to help sales reps with cold calls
• Advanced screen share and sentiment analytics to refine call cold strategies
• Integrates with popular CRMs, video conferencing apps, meeting scheduling tools and more
• Create a playlist of important cold calls
• Share call recordings and collaborate with teammates by adding comments
• Enjoy advanced security with encryption and GDPR and SOC compliance

Pricing

• Professional: $50 per month (billed annually)
• Business: $75 per month (billed annually)

Goodmeetings also offers a 7-day free trial (no credit card is required). And if you want to see how the tool works, you can also request a demo!

Source: Clari

Clari serves as a valuable tool for sales managers and representatives seeking to improve their sales strategies through call evaluations and coaching. By providing AI-driven insights, it enables users to gain a deeper understanding of what works best in their cold calls, empowering them to surpass sales targets.

Features

• Call recording and transcription
• Real-time, personalized cue cards
• Analysis of sales performance
• In-call prompts
• Compatibility with leading CRMs

Pricing

Pricing details are available on request.

Related: 15 Best Sales Automation Tools to Boost Your Revenue in 2024

AI Cold Calling Best Practices

AI cold calling works wonders, but to make the most of it, follow these simple yet effective best practices:

1. Maintain Authenticity

While AI helps automate parts of the sales process, it’s important to keep your interactions genuine and human-like. This means showing empathy, being transparent, and building trust with prospects naturally.

2. Integrate With CRM

Integrate AI with your CRM to identify and prioritize sales-qualified leads. This allows you to focus your efforts on prospects who are most likely to convert, while AI handles initial outreach and prospect building.

3. Personalize Scripts

Instead of using a one-size-fits-all approach, use AI to tailor your cold calling scripts to the specific needs and characteristics of different prospect segments. For instance, adjust your tone of voice or messaging based on factors like industry or company size.

Related: 40+ ChatGPT Prompts To Supercharge Your Sales

4. Keep Conversations Relevant

Tailor your conversations to fit each prospect’s unique needs and interests. By showing that you understand their challenges and offering personalized solutions, you can engage them more effectively and increase the chances of a successful outcome.

5. Generate and Analyze Reports

Use AI-powered CRM tools to generate reports on cold calling campaign performance. Analyze these reports to identify trends, assess success rates, and pinpoint areas for improvement in your AI cold calling strategy. Adjust your approach based on these insights to continually refine and optimize your sales process.

6. Choose the Right AI Cold Calling Software

Select the most suitable conversational AI cold calling software for your company’s requirements. Look for innovative options in AI technology, such as generative AI and natural language processing, that can enhance your cold calling efforts.

Related: 10 Best Meeting Recording Software to Consider in 2024

7. Automate Various Processes

Use AI tools to automate various processes such as product pitching, upselling, and customer journey analytics. Utilize AI systems to assess customer needs and route calls accordingly, improving efficiency and effectiveness.

8. Continuous Training and Improvement

Regularly update and train your AI models with new data to improve accuracy and relevance in prospect interactions. This ensures that your AI remains effective and up-to-date with evolving customer preferences and market trends.

9. Human Oversight

Maintain human oversight to intervene when necessary, ensuring that AI responses align with brand values and customer expectations. This helps prevent any potential errors or misunderstandings that may arise from automated interactions.

10. Respect Privacy and Compliance

Always follow regulations like GDPR and TCPA to protect prospects’ privacy and rights. This includes obtaining consent before contacting them, providing easy opt-out options, and respecting their preferences throughout the sales journey. By focusing on compliance, you build trust and credibility with your audience.

Related: Complete Guide to Sales Battlecards – What Are They and How to Use Them?

Use AI-Powered Sales Call Recording Software

Want to improve your cold calling success rate? Use sales call recording software!

These tools let you record sales interactions, offering insights to refine your pitch and strategies, leading to more closed deals. They automate recording, saving time and boosting success.

Goodmeetings is a prime example of such a sales call recording tool, offering comprehensive support throughout the entire sales process.

• Pre-Call Clarity: Access past interactions and client histories.
• In-Call Excellence: Enhance conversations with real-time AI support.
• Post-Call Insights: Improve sales pitch and pipeline management with AI-generated summaries and task automation.

Source: Goodmeetings

Don’t hesitate any longer! Whether you run a small startup or a large corporation, if cold calling is integral to your operations, Goodmeetings is the ultimate solution. Try it out now and see the difference!