How to close B2B meetings from cold calls
Your chances of closing do not depend directly on the practice of cold calling, but mostly depend on the strategy behind it
10/26/20264 min read
In over five years in business development, I've booked thousands of meetings.
I've worked with scale-ups, large enterprises, and industrial companies, targeting everyone from CTOs and CIOs to Procurement Directors, Marketing and Media Directors, HR Directors, and many others.
However, there's a big difference between booking meetings and booking meetings that actually convert into sales.
I've booked plenty of meetings for clients that failed to close, until we made the necessary adjustments to the campaign.
Here are the five main reasons why you can sometimes book plenty of meetings but still struggle to close deals.
1. Your Target Companies Are Too Small
It's difficult to filter companies based on annual revenue because this information isn't publicly available for every business.
As a result, we tend to use company size as a proxy for estimating which businesses are likely to have sufficient budgets.
If you focus on companies that are too small, you might generate plenty of meetings, but with businesses that simply don't have the budget to buy your product or service.
The result? You'll spend all your time defending your pricing to prospects who simply cannot afford what you're selling.
As a general rule, if your product or service costs more than €500 per month, targeting very small businesses (VSBs) is often not a good idea.
An exception could be companies with at least six actual employees.
LinkedIn sometimes overestimates a company's real headcount, so it's generally safer to aim slightly higher than your initial employee-size threshold.
2. Your Target Companies Are Too Large
On the other hand, if you target companies that are too large (such as major corporations), you'll often encounter highly mature organizations with established solutions and processes across multiple areas.
For example, if you're selling SaaS, you'll almost always have to compete against an existing solution, or even an internally developed tool.
If you're an agency or an IT services company, these businesses will likely already have several agencies or service providers in place.
Breaking into these accounts isn't exactly easy.
On top of that, decision-makers in large enterprises are often bombarded with sales calls, making it much harder to book meetings with them.
That said, some personas within large corporations are still relatively under-targeted, making them much easier to reach.
It really depends on the market and the product you're selling.
The more niche and specialized a job title is, the more likely that person is to be relatively sheltered from cold calling — and therefore easier to prospect.
Sometimes, these people can also become internal champions for your solution, advocating for it to the actual decision-maker.
3. Find the Sweet Spot
In many cases, the best approach is to target companies that are neither too small nor too large.
These businesses are more likely to have the budget you need without necessarily already being locked into existing solutions or service providers.
The ideal company size will vary depending on the product or service you're selling.
For example, if you're selling a €25k/year solution, your sweet spot will probably start with upper-mid-market companies.
If you're selling a €15k/year solution, SMEs could also be a good fit, including smaller businesses.
The key is to find the company size where purchasing power, existing needs, and your competitive positioning align.
4. Industry Matters Too
To make things even more complicated, even when you're targeting companies of the right size, some industries will be significantly harder to close than others.
Not every industry has the same level of awareness of your product or service.
In some sectors, you'll spend most of your sales conversations trying to convince prospects that your solution is even worth considering.
Naturally, this makes closing deals considerably harder than in industries where the need is already well understood.
For example, with one of my clients, I wasn't able to generate meetings that actually converted into sales until we identified the right industry to target.
Finding the right vertical made all the difference.
5. Other Factors That Affect Your Closing Rate
Cold calling isn't guaranteed to generate new business opportunities in every market. You also need an attractive offer and genuine product-market fit.
For example, imagine targeting a market where 100% of companies are already working with a provider, regardless of company size, and your solution offers no meaningful differentiation.
Closing deals will be extremely difficult.
You also need to know how to close.
Everyone has their own sales methodology, strengths, and weaknesses. With a poor closing technique, even high-quality meetings can fail to turn into sales.
Generating qualified meetings is only one part of the equation. Your sales process needs to be able to convert them.
Conclusion
Once you've identified the right company size, excluded industries that aren't a good fit, and developed an effective closing strategy, you'll be in a much better position to generate actual sales from your booked meetings.
The average B2B closing rate is around 15%.
In theory, it's possible to reach 30–40%.
In some cases, you can even go beyond 30–40%. However, such a high conversion rate could also be an indication that your pricing is too low.
Want to learn how to generate 1–4 qualified meetings per day in your market, while identifying the best companies to target?
Get in touch with me using the email address in the footer.