AI Cold Calling: Tools, Benefits, and Best Practices

Cold calling is tough, time-consuming, and – let’s be honest – it has had a bad reputation for years. Traditional cold calling has low conversion rates and often leads to burnout among sales teams as sales reps have to deal with an overwhelming number of rejections. No wonder 63% of salespeople consider cold calling to be the worst part of their job.

But the truth is, cold calling remains an important component of many businesses’ sales strategies in both B2B and B2C sectors. Fortunately, AI is changing the game, making cold calling a lot more effective and less stressful for sales reps. In this blog, we’ll take a closer look at how exactly AI is transforming cold calling and how you can use it to enhance your cold calling efforts and streamline your lead generation process.

What is AI Cold Calling?

So what exactly is AI cold calling? And is AI cold calling legal? To put it simply, AI cold calling refers to the use of Artificial Intelligence to automate and optimize the different aspects of the cold calling process – from lead scoring and prioritization to dialing numbers, leaving voicemails, and even engaging in basic conversations without human involvement. 

And yes, it is absolutely legal if you comply with the relevant laws and regulations (like TCPA in the U.S. and GDPR in the European Union). The outcome? Businesses can connect with more leads more strategically, making sales outreach much more efficient.

And the best part is that by automating repetitive tasks that were once done manually, AI cold calling tools can dramatically improve the experience for sales reps, freeing them up to focus on interacting with high-potential leads and building relationships with prospects. 

Why is AI Cold Calling on the Rise?

The rise of AI cold calling is happening for two major reasons. First and foremost, Artificial Intelligence has significantly improved over the recent years. Voice recognition, Natural Language Processing (NLP), and Machine Learning (ML) technologies have all become much more advanced, accessible, and affordable for businesses of all sizes. In fact, according to Salesforce, 81% of sales teams say they already use AI tools today.

Secondly, the global downturn in the economy forces companies to look for ways to optimize operations and cut costs. And AI cold calling allows you to do just that – reach more prospects in less time in a cost-effective way and streamline the entire sales cycle without hiring more sales reps.

AI Tools That Can Improve Your Cold Calling Strategy

There are basically two types of AI-powered sales tools that sales professionals can use to improve the cold calling process:

AI Predictive Dialers (Automated Dialing Systems)

AI predictive dialers are auto dialing solutions that can automate the process of dialing phone numbers, helping sales reps run outbound cold calling campaigns more effectively. VoiceSpin’s AI dialer solution is an excellent example of what these tools are capable of. While using AI-powered predictive dialers can only partially automate the calling process – and you’ll still need human reps to handle the conversations – these solutions can be incredibly helpful in improving the efficiency of your cold calling campaigns. Here’s how:

• Automated dialing: Gone are the days when sales agents had to dial numbers manually, waiting for the calls to connect and wasting time listening to busy signals. AI predictive dialers automate the entire process of initiating outbound phone calls to your prospects. AI dialers can skip invalid numbers, busy signals, and voicemails and connect agents to calls only when a live person answers the call.
• Predictive algorithms: AI predictive dialers can minimize agent idle time between calls, helping you increase agent productivity. Predictive dialers initiate multiple calls per agent simultaneously, analyzing real-time and historical call data, predicting agent availability, and automatically adjusting the dialing rate. That ensures each agent is instantly connected to the next call once they complete their current interaction.
• Intelligent lead scoring and prioritization: AI predictive dialers can also use machine learning to intelligently score your leads and prioritize them based on multiple factors, such as behavioral data and probability of conversion. It ensures that high-value leads are contacted first, helping you improve conversions and maximize the efficiency of your cold calling campaigns.
• Optimized call timing: Better yet, AI predictive dialers can determine the best times to cold call your prospects. A quick example: AI algorithms can analyze past call data to identify patterns in connection rates (specific times of day when leads are most likely to answer) and conversion rates (when calls tend to lead to positive outcomes).
• DNC compliance: Finally, AI predictive dialers can help you ensure DNC compliance when running your cold calling campaigns. These systems can integrate with national and regional DNC (Do Not Call) registries and automatically filter out the numbers identified on DNC lists from your calling campaigns in real time, helping you avoid hefty penalties.

AI-powered Voice Bots (Automated Calling Systems)

AI-powered voice bots take one step further in automating and optimizing your cold calling process. And that can be a true game-changer in the sales landscape. Instead of relying on human reps to handle sales calls, an AI voice bot (or an AI sales agent) can handle conversations with your prospects independently. These solutions use Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), Natural Language Processing (NLP), and Natural Language Generation (NLG), among other technologies, to simulate human-like voice interactions.

Here’s how AI voice bots can streamline your AI cold calling efforts and automate your sales process:

• Automated sales calls: AI voice bots don’t just dial phone numbers automatically – they can handle the entire interaction independently. AI bots can answer questions and provide contextually relevant information about your products or services – all without involving your human sales reps. On top of that, similarly to AI chatbots, AI voice bots use machine learning algorithms to learn from feedback on past interactions and improve over time.
• Automated lead qualification: AI-powered voice bots aren’t just great at answering questions and providing information about your products to your potential customers. They can help you qualify leads automatically through a series of pre-qualification questions. Based on responses, an AI call bot can instantly filter out unqualified leads and pass the qualified ones to your sales team.
• Lead scoring and prioritization: Once qualified leads are captured, AI voice bots can score them based on your specific criteria and categorize them into different segments (e.g., cold and warm). That helps your sales reps better plan and prioritize follow-up interactions and ensures your sales team doesn’t waste time interacting with leads who aren’t likely to convert.
• Appointment setting and demo scheduling: In addition to interacting with prospects and qualifying leads, AI voice bots can also help you automate the entire process of scheduling appointments or demo calls, saving your sales reps a bunch of time and effort. What’s even better, AI voice bots can handle automated reminders to reduce no-show rates.
• Multilingual capabilities: While not all AI voice bots are multilingual, some of the most advanced solutions out there offer multilingual capabilities. It means that an AI voice bot can speak multiple languages – and since it can handle the initial lead qualification automatically, you don’t have to hire more sales reps if you want to scale your cold calling outreach efforts.

Recommended reading: AI for Lead Generation: How to Use AI Chatbots and Voice Bots to Generate Leads

Benefits of Adding AI Tools to Your Cold Calling Strategy

Less manual work for your sales reps

Did you know that according to Salesforce, sales reps spend around 70% of their time on non-selling tasks like prioritizing leads, manual data entry, and other time-consuming activities? Using AI tools for cold calling allows sales teams to automate many repetitive tasks that were once done manually, including dialing numbers, scoring and prioritizing leads, qualifying prospects, and scheduling appointments. Your sales reps get much more time to focus on higher-value activities such as building relationships with prospects and closing deals.

Improved agent experience and reduced burnout

When done the traditional way, cold calling can be stressful, frustrating, and emotionally draining for sales agents. Based on the Keller Center Research report, it might take a sales rep about 7.5 hours to complete 209 cold calls, leading to a return of one appointment or referral. What does it actually mean for sales reps? Spending hours and hours sifting through the no-answers and non-working numbers and experiencing an overwhelming number of rejections – all leading to increased burnout and low job satisfaction.

With AI cold calling software that can handle the initial lead qualification, you can minimize the time your sales reps spend on prospects who show little or no interest and reduce burnout.

More conversations = more conversions

Cold calling is a numbers game. With an AI predictive dialer that automatically dials numbers, skips busy signals, leaves voicemails, and connects agents to prospects as soon as they’re done with the previous call – your sales reps can handle more calls in less time. That ultimately means more conversations with prospects that can potentially lead to successful conversions. 

And your team can be even more productive when using AI voice bots. As the bot can pre-screen contacts and exclude low-potential leads from the pipeline, your sales reps will focus only on interacting with those who are more likely to convert.

Scaling your cold calling efforts in a cost-effective way

Cost-savings and scalability are other significant advantages of enhancing your cold calling strategy with AI. And this one goes to using AI voice bots, in particular. While a single sales rep can only handle one sales call at a time, an AI voice bot can handle hundreds (if not thousands) of cold calls simultaneously. Automating cold calls means you can easily scale your outreach efforts and make large volumes of outbound calls in a cost-effective way, as you literally don’t have to hire more sales reps for that.

Best Practices on Using AI in Cold Calling

In addition to using AI predictive dialers and AI voice bots, you can improve the entire cold calling process with AI – starting from pre-call planning to post-call analytics. Let’s take a closer look at some of the examples:

Leverage AI for pre-call planning

Needless to say that when it comes to B2B cold calling, preparation is key. The more you know about your prospects, their preferences, challenges, and pain points, the better you can personalize your sales pitch and build rapport with them. Luckily, there are plenty of AI-driven tools out there that can gather and analyze vast amounts of data to give you a more comprehensive understanding of your prospects before the call. That may include:

• Detailed company information: Company size, industry, financial data, recent news
• Pain points: Major challenges the prospect might be facing based on industry trends
• Personalization data: Social media presence, job title, professional achievements

Use AI knowledge management during calls

There are also lots of AI-driven tools (mostly known as AI agent assist solutions or AI assistants) that can support sales reps right during cold calls and help them navigate each call with greater confidence and efficiency. These are especially helpful for newly hired reps as they are just starting out. How exactly can these tools help sales agents during calls? In a nutshell, they provide sales reps with the right knowledge at the right time without them having to ask for it. Here are some specific examples:

• Real-time call guidance: Dynamic call scripts and next-best-action suggestions
• Instant knowledge retrieval: Contextually relevant information about your products/services
• Objection handling: Recommendations on how to handle objections effectively
• Sentiment analysis: Insights into customer sentiment to help reps better tailor their approach

Gain insights from post-call speech analytics

Last but not least, you can use AI speech analytics tools to get valuable insights from your cold calls and refine your cold calling strategy. These solutions can transcribe, summarize, and analyze your outbound calls, helping you monitor the efficiency of your cold calling campaigns, better understand how your individual sales reps are performing, where additional training is needed, and so much more. These insights are gold for sales managers. Here’s what AI speech analytics solutions can help you with:

• Call summarization: Automate call summarization for effective follow-ups
• Common objections: Learn the most common objections your prospects raise
• Script effectiveness: Understand whether your cold calling scripts are effective
• Agent training gaps: Uncover agent knowledge gaps and training opportunities

Wrapping up and How VoiceSpin Can Help with AI Cold Calling

AI cold calling is obviously more than just a trend – it’s the future of outbound sales. While AI won’t replace your sales reps, it can help you automate many processes, minimize the time your sales team spends on manual tasks, speed up your lead qualification process, improve conversion rates, and shorten your sales cycle. 

But AI isn’t a silver bullet. Success with AI cold calling needs careful planning, getting buy-in from your team, and implementing the right AI tools. And here’s where VoiceSpin’s call center solutions can help:

• AI predictive dialer: With an AI predictive dialer, you can improve the efficiency of your cold calling campaigns. The dialer’s predictive and machine learning algorithms intelligently score your leads and connect them to the best-suited sales reps based on the probability of a successful call outcome, helping you maximize conversions.
• AI voice bot: Integrating an AI voice bot can help you automate the entire process of making cold calls and qualifying leads based on your specific criteria. Our voice bot can be trained on your internal knowledge sources to interact with your prospects in your brand voice through natural, human-like dialogue just like your human agents would.
• AI speech analytics: VoiceSpin’s AI Speech Analyzer can monitor 100% of your outbound calls to help you evaluate the quality of interactions and agent performance based on your specific criteria. And with AI call summaries, your sales reps can quickly review previous calls without having to listen to call recordings to better prepare for follow-up interactions.

Book a demo call now to learn more about VoiceSpin’s AI contact center software solutions and how they can optimize your cold calling strategy while also making your sales reps more productive and helping you drive better sales conversions.