Warm calls may not have been part of your past strategy, but experts encourage salespeople to use these outreaches to keep your pipeline full. HubSpot’s Dan Tyre believes that warm calls are incredibly helpful because, face it, most salespeople won’t always be inundated with leads. 

Not sure what makes a call warm? He defines a warm call as “connecting with a company that you’ve proactively identified as a good fit although they haven't demonstrated an interest in your product or service yet.” But, your knowledge, experiences and research clue you in that they do fit the profile of a successful customer.

Steps to the perfect warm call

To further help, Tyre shares the necessary steps to make your warm calls effective. Here are just a few:

• Know your best customers. Before you can seek out other best-​fit customers for your warm calls, you need to know what your best fit actually is! “Study your buyer personas and learn to recognize your ideal buyer quickly,” Tyre explains. “Review your customer base and identify key similarities between your most successful clients so you have a finely honed sense of what to look for.” So, if you’re an auto service business, think of the vehicles that are most profitable for your shop: What is the sweet-​spot age? What brand? What is the owner demographic? All of this information paints a picture of your buyer persona that will drive your warm calls.
• Make sure your opening is optimized. You’re only going to get a few seconds to make a good enough impression that the prospect will want to keep listening. Specifically, you have about 15 seconds to capture that attention, especially during a this kind of call. While those seconds will likely be filled with your own introduction, you can use your voice to say so much more. “It’s crucial to sound assertive,” Tyre writes, “[as] prospects are more likely to respond to someone who’s confident and authoritative than a rep who’s clearly nervous.”

In all, Tyre shares 15 tips for pulling off the perfect warm call. Even if you haven’t made one before, keep your pipeline full by adopting this strategy.