Cold Calling vs Warm Calling: What’s The Big Difference? (+5 Tactics)

The great sales debate between cold calling vs warm calling. What’s the big difference?

Sales reps have the challenge of reaching out to prospects to schedule a meeting and close a sale. In doing so, they need to use techniques such as cold calling.

Although cold calling has benefits, prospects are typically unfamiliar with your company. Whereas warm calling a prospect is more likely to convert because they’re familiar with what your company offers.

Both warm and cold calling are essential parts of a sales outreach strategy. But how do you turn the temperature up on cold outreach?

Read below to learn the key differences between warm calling vs cold calling and tactics to improve your outreach.

What is cold calling?

Cold calling is a sales technique where sales reps call potential customers who haven’t had previous interactions before in hopes of selling a product or service.

What makes it “cold” is that prospects aren’t expecting a call from a sales rep. Cold calls are used in a sales cadence strategy, including personalized and automated emails and social media touchpoints.

Effective cold calls are short and succinct. Sales reps typically follow a cold call script and opening lines to book a meeting or advance a sale.

Benefits of cold calling

According to Sales Insights Lab, 42.1% of respondents say that the phone is the most effective sales tool at their disposal. Effective cold calls are a critical part of a sales outreach strategy.

Here are the benefits of cold calling:

• • Humanizes selling: the difference between a cold call versus a cold email is that the prospect can hear your voice and tone. It shows that you’re a person and can increase the likelihood of a positive response.
  • Gain valuable insight: Their explanations can give you great insight. Perhaps your messaging was irrelevant, or they’re the wrong person. You can quickly get live info and make changes when necessary.
  • Get instant feedback: Hundreds of sales emails go unanswered every day. When you send an email to a prospect, you’re at the mercy of a response, and there’s not much you can do to influence it. You get instant feedback when you get a prospect live on a cold call. More importantly, you hear the objections live versus waiting through an email.
  • Learn about prospects: When you’re on the phone with a prospect, you can hear their business needs and pain points firsthand. You can’t accomplish the same benefit through email or research. A conversation will provide immense information, and you quickly learn if your value proposition resonates.

What is warm calling?

Warm calling is when sales reps reach out to potential customers with who they’ve had previous interactions before in hopes of selling a product or service. It’s warmer than a cold call because the prospect has communicated with the sales rep or company in the past.

In comparison, warm calls are a better option than cold calling because of how familiar prospects are. They have a higher likelihood of success, which translates to a higher conversation and success rate and are more likely to schedule a meeting.

Here are several ways you can find prospects to warm call:

• Attended a webinar
• Former customer
• Filled out a form
• Engaged with content
• Mutual connection
• Referral
• Requested a demo
• Visited website

For example: if a sales lead attended a webinar, and you call them afterward, they’re warm because they’ve interacted with your content.

Benefits of warm calling

• More receptive: one of the main differences between a cold call and a warm call is that the prospects aren’t expecting a cold outreach. Whereas engaged prospects are more receptive to taking a warm call if they’re familiar with you or your brand. They are more likely to respond positively to your outreach and continue conversations.
• Relationship and trust: Since warm leads are familiar with you or your company, they’ve already established relationships and trust. If the prospect is a mutual connection or a referral, you’ve already established a relationship and rapport with them. All of which makes them more receptive to your sales pitch.
• Context and familiarity: There’s a very relevant reason for your outreach if they are warm. As opposed to a cold call where you have to create interest. Warm calling prospects means they’ve already interacted with your content and may know about your product or services. They understand the context of your outreach and are more inclined to listen and take a meeting.

Cold calling vs. warm calling: the big difference

Cold and warm calling are critical techniques sales reps use to reach prospects.

The big difference is that prospects you cold call don’t have any previous engagement. Prospects haven’t interacted with you or your company. They’re unfamiliar with what products or services you offer.

Whereas prospects that you warm call have more context and familiarity with you and your company. Although they may not expect a call, they have a higher chance of conversion and success.

By understanding the differences between cold calling vs. warm calling, you can choose which call tactic works for your sales outreach.

Tactics to engage leads before a warm call

1. Do personalized research

Before cold calling, research your prospect’s LinkedIn to learn about their company, role, and job description.

Write down any relevant information that you can use during the call.

For example, if they work for one of your customer’s competitors, you can reference them for social proof. Or reference any customers who share similar job titles as your prospect.

Once you’ve found relevant information through research, you can call them, reference your research and personalize the sales pitch.

2. Engage through social selling

Connect with your prospects on LinkedIn beforehand and build a relationship.

According to LinkedIn, 78% of salespeople engaged in social selling are outselling their peers who aren’t.

Use LinkedIn or Twitter as a social network to provide value and start a conversation. Build rapport by also sharing content on your LinkedIn. Additionally, interact with their content and provide your feedback. This will go a long way to building a relationship before warm calling them.

3. Find a mutual connection

Finding a mutual connection is one effective way to warm up a prospect.

Look through LinkedIn to see if you have any mutual connections in your network, such as former co-workers, alumni, or industry peers. Ask your connections to make an introduction or for their permission to reach out.

You can warm call simply by saying your mutual connection’s name and letting your prospect know they recommended a conversation.

4. Engage through marketing

Have marketing support your sales outreach efforts by engaging through account-based marketing.

Your marketing team can nurture your prospect through different webinars, paid advertisements, blog articles, and videos. Target your prospect specifically with hyper-relevant marketing campaigns across multiple channels.

Once they’ve consumed your marketing material, you can follow up through warm calling.

5. Reach out via email first

Write a personalized email first to your prospect before calling them.

It allows them to understand your product or service before a conversation. They’ll also get a sense of what value you can provide.

Once they’ve engaged with your email, warm call them and gather their thoughts about what you sent.

Start engaging prospects through calls

Now that you’ve learned the differences between cold calling vs warm calling, it’s time to pick up the phone.

Both are important parts of a sales outreach strategy and have their advantages. You can immediately warm up your calls by nurturing your prospects and providing value early on.