Cold Calling Tips to Protect Your Business Reputation

BATCHDIALER
Written by BATCHDIALER 
Highlights

For businesses that rely on cold calling, phone number reputation monitoring can make or break your ability to connect with potential customers. Unfortunately, a lot of legitimate businesses are having their outbound calls erroneously flagged as spam calls. Or even worse, the calls are being blocked without ever ringing at all. 

Thankfully, there are some cold calling tips that can help businesses maintain and even restore their phone number reputation. Ricky Fernandez of Caller ID Reputation recently joined us for a webinar to discuss how cold callers can navigate this landscape. He has some insights from his years of experience with cold calling and reputation management that will help you avoid the trap of getting flagged. He also shared what to do when it happens. 

The repercussions of having a negative phone number reputation go beyond the unlikelihood of someone answering your call. When this issue persists, it eventually becomes a staffing issue. When sales agents are repeatedly stymied by having their calls erroneously labeled as scams, burnout and employee turnover inevitably follow. 

You could be flagged and not know it

If you’ve been flagged for spam, you’re not alone. This issue is so pervasive that 40% of legitimate businesses that rely on cold calling are having their phone numbers flagged. This frequently happens without the businesses knowing that it’s occurring. A company could be wasting hundreds, or even thousands, of hours  cold calling with flagged numbers.

flagged cold calling numbers

Once a number has been flagged, it’s nearly impossible to market effectively. The number of people who pick up a call from an unfamiliar number grows smaller every year. According to Fernandez, only 27% percent of people will answer a call that is marked as “unknown,” while only 9% of people will answer a call marked “scam likely.” 

This is especially discouraging because cold calling is such an effective tool. The conversion rates for cold calling surpass that of SMS messaging, email and direct mail. In a survey of BatchService customers, cold calling was ranked as the number one tool that respondents said they plan on using to grow their business in the coming months. 

Phone carriers’ response to scams

Actual telemarketing scams remain a serious problem, but phone carriers are struggling to keep up. With over 60 billion robocalls every year in the US alone, it’s difficult for carriers to distinguish between legitimate calls and scam phone calls.This is because scams are ever changing, yet phone carriers have a fixed solution of simply flagging any numbers based on patterns they see. 

Federal regulators have also stepped in to address this issue. Carriers and businesses that place high volume outbound calls must comply with STIR/SHAKEN, a protocol that the FCC required starting in June of 2021. The FCC and FTC enforce this with originating service providers in order to authenticate that calls are legitimate. STIR/SHAKEN has a ranking system of A, B, and C level attestation. 

An A level attestation is the highest level and means the signing carrier has determined that the caller is authorized to use the calling number. All phone numbers provided by BatchDialer are A level attestation.

B level attestation indicates the signing carrier can authenticate the origin of the call but cannot confirm that the caller is authorized to use the calling number.

C level attestation means The signing carrier can authenticate the network the call was received from but not the origin or the calling number. 

Tips For Cold Calling

Fortunately, businesses can protect their phone number reputation through some technology solutions and cold calling best practices. 

Finding the right auto dialer for your business

If you’re working with auto dialer technology that’s effective for churning out numbers but is lacking when it comes to reputation protection, you’re going to be operating at a disadvantage. Here are some dialer-related tips for cold callers: 

  • Use a dialer with reputation flagging

The only thing worse than having your calls marked as spam is not knowing that that’s how they’re appearing on caller ID. Only use dialers that alert you to caller ID flags.

  • Maintain clean phone numbers

Is your dialer ensuring that the numbers you call are active? Are you certain that you’re not calling anyone on the do not call registry? This criteria is the most important issue for maintaining your phone reputation. On top of the damage to your reputation, calling someone on the do not call list can result in businesses being fined up to $43,792 per call

  • Sleep numbers that have spam flags

Knowing that you have a spam flag on one of your numbers is half the battle. Once you’re aware that a number has been flagged, stop using it immediately and find out why this happened.  

  • Keep a pool of clean numbers

Being able to swap out a flagged number for a clean one will allow you to keep making calls without missing a beat. 

  • Use a dialer that accepts callbacks

If your dialer doesn’t accept callbacks, you’re impeding your outreach strategy by not giving potential clients an opportunity to call you back. This is also a problem from a phone number reputation standpoint. Not accepting callbacks could get your number flagged because this is a common practice for scammers.

  • Actively manage your phone numbers

Every day you should schedule time to identify numbers with poor performance. Take bad numbers out of service for 30 days and identify why there was a performance issue. Once you’ve resolved the problem, then test them again to see if the issue persists. 

  • Use local numbers as much as possible

People are much more likely to respond to a call that’s coming from a nearby area code than one that’s across the country. BatchDialers will place the call from the closest area code to the recipient of the phone call.  

Other Cold Calling Tips

In addition to having the right dialer functionality, here are some cold calling tips you can implement to protect your business reputation.

  • Register your numbers with the phone carriers

To avoid getting your number flagged for spam or “scam likely,” it’s important to register your Calling Name Presentation (CNAM) data with each carrier. This is one of the best ways to get more favorable treatment from carriers.

  • Ensure proper phone etiquette Are you making sure that your callers are speaking properly to customers? Maintaining proper phone etiquette includes practices as basic as hiring callers who use proper grammar. It also includes making sure that callers aren’t using pressure tactics–or even worse, abusive language–when they connect with people.
  • Don’t bombard people Persistence is an asset for cold callers, but only up to a certain point. Fernandez says that the maximum number of times you should call someone is twice per day, once in the morning and once at night.
  • Know your customer Different types of customers will have different behaviors for responding to incoming calls. For example, if your target demographic is millennials, they’re more likely to let a call in the evening go to voicemail. On the other hand, if your target demographic is retirees, they’re more likely to answer a call in the evening.

While many businesses continue to be unfairly flagged, they also have access to solutions that maintain and repair their reputations. Scams are constantly changing, so it’s important that any reputation protection efforts are ongoing. “Nothing is absolutely foolproof,” Fernandez says, “so having a proactive monitoring service is absolutely necessary.”

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