Don't Get Cold Feet with Cold Calling

Cold calling is not everyone's cup of tea. But if you work in sales, you'd know that one of the best ways to get hot leads is through cold calling. Not to repeat what has been told already by seasoned sales professionals, but certain precautionary steps can change your approach when it comes to cold calling.One of the more common rookie mistakes that a salesperson can make is mispronouncing the client’s/lead's name. Increased globalization and international migration has led to more foreign or unique names being added to the list of potential leads. As this list grows, the chances of mispronouncing a client's name and possibly losing an opportunity to successfully close a deal also becomes higher.

Reaching the right contact in a company is difficult enough but gatekeepers make it harder. Not having the right name or mispronouncing the contact’s name creates doubt in the gatekeepers’ minds and reduces the chances of reaching the lead. What is even worse is when the gatekeepers get annoyed because of your mistake, and tell you that they are not interested and therefore hang up.International cold calling is worse. In many instances, receptionists and sometimes PAs will communicate in broken English. In situations like those, being able to pronounce the names of the leads correctly becomes essential to the success of this call. For native speakers of a language, because they are so familiar with the morphemes and etymological spellings, they often become "blind" to possible incorrect pronunciations as a result of fluency in other languages. Take the Scandinavian name "Bjork" as an example (it may be Björk in Icelandic, Bjørk in Norwegian and Danish), how would someone who is unfamiliar with Scandinavia know the correct pronunciation of this name? The correct pronunciation sounds like "bee-york" in English, but I wouldn't blame you if you thought it sounded like "bee-jork" or even confused whether or not the 'b' or 'j' should be silent!Therefore, in cases like this, being able to pronounce the name might open the door to your success not only of this call, but also opportunities and connections for the future.This is where, NameShouts can help you out. NameShouts is a name pronunciation tool with an growing database of foreign/unique names. The tool provides you an easy way of finding the correct pronunciation of a client's name, so you never have to lose a lead while cold calling because of mispronouncing a person's name.