How To Start A Cold Call

you have such a short amount of time on a cold call and you have to like people's maybe first instinct is just to just hang up or not say I'm not interested and I've seen you use the best funniest openers to just get people to at least give you 30 seconds and I wanted to speak about how important that is and what are the some of the key things we should keep in mind if we're going to go out and do cold calls mhm for look my technique is very simple I want to maximize as

much as possible the chances of them listening to my pitch which is why I I use a permission based opener meaning that I don't want to talk imagine your phone rings you pick up the phone and then you go someone spewing information at you your brain isn't ready for it and no matter what the old style co uh trainers say who hav made a call call in this decade this is just not as effective psychologically you might get hung up on less but you will get all listen less and that's the tradeoff I go for

so my start is I always go for a no based question so this would be like if I told you it's a sales call would you throw your phone out the window if I want to make it funny if I told you it's a cold call but a well research one would you hung up anyway right so like something like this so the first thing is a no bra question because psychologically feels safer and then that's the thing people think oh if they say no if they say no I go okay is that because you

hate Kos or is it just my voice or because I'm ugly or because I'm blonde or because I'm Italian whatever right so I and and I try to crack that and that's the thing the thing that most people get wrong is it's very easy to reject a Sal person it's very hard to reject a human being and that's the part so the moment they realize this guy is a human then they're more likely to connect so you'll be surprised often people say no I I I will throw your phone out the window whatever and then

I'm like is that because you hate cold calls or just my voice and they're like no no you you got a fine voice I just don't like cold calls okay what if I promise to make this a good one and then they're like okay fine what are you selling right like I even the guy I don't believe I goty told me I don't believe you well give me 30 seconds we'll find out go and that's you know that that and again I'm trying to make it a little bit fun for the prospect you probably haven't

seen this but once a week I do a cold calling comedy show where basically we we cold call live for one hour and on on Fridays and the audience is giving us like stuff to do in the calls this is which is funny so like I I booked a meeting with like we don't know each other if I was an apple and you were a pair would you hung up right away or let me have 30 second to spare and it gu starts laughing you know I had another one like I started rapping I was

like uh uh happy Friday to you happy Friday to you this is a c I was like it's a cold call for you no it's a happy Friday for you it's a cold for you would you hang up right now oh hear me out for part two oh God but like all of this sounds like no cold call that anyone has received yeah exactly exactly and what you spoke about that was that little Nuance of translating someone from a label of it's just a stupid salesperson which is what people it's just a manipulative evil slimy

salesperson that whole word is charged with a ton of negatives for the majority of the people and the moment you translate that that hey this is a human being I think that that's the most underrated part that most people forget in any way that they try to reach out to people and try to make a sale happen like and and to me like right there is just a like even if you're reaching out on any medium it seems like that's the first thing we have to do because we're so bombarded with messages like over stimulated

and it's just like it's so easy to just tune everything out but to get attention being like wait wait wait there's a human here what do we do I think that's the thing you do most brilliantly and you speak about this permission based like telling them the facts right up front that hey this is a cold call where most people are trying to what call and hope that they don't realize that it's a cold call like makes no sense right it makes no it's crazy it's crazy I agree so these are already some key nuggets

in the way to do it so like to get the attention seems to be the first step but then you're you're faced with at least you know um you get only 30 seconds after you they give you the human label right and then you have to go into at least like then i' say the number one mistake and correct me if I'm wrong is somebody would be like okay well I'm a software salesperson and I'm going to do this and I can do it like you go and vomit all of your thing because now you

have 30 seconds so if I speak fast enough and say enough of the features and benefits then they will be so blown away they'll be like stop my agenda cancel all my meetings we need to hear about this obviously not I love that I love that yeah and that's that's sadly what well look I I always do this in my trainings but I'm sure you know you left the answer but I ask you for the audience what do you think is every person's favorite topic exactly for those who are only listening did not see the

fact that I pointed to myself yeah yeah that's a good point actually I forget there some people are listening only but yeah so it's it's ourselves and that's the problem is that sales people forget that and they also want to talk about themselves they also want to talk about amazing they are and what's I think if you watch all of my videos you probably find one where I talk about what is it that I do specifically as in like I that's Discovery cor material that's meeting material like right now like I don't want to on

the phone you might be driving you might be walking your dog you might be with your mistress and I'm going to tell you what I do that's a terrible idea the point is figuring out do you have problems and this is the crucial part problems because people do not take action for a like little increase here and there at least they don't have time so I think there was a statistics from Garner which is Fairly reliable said 99% of B2B purchases are made to fix problems now b2c may be a bit different cuz people get

greedy they'll spend money for things they don't need blah blah blah but still if you're fixing a problem you're far more likely to get their attention and that's probably the second most important thing people think about which is themselves and then their problems y y and that brings me to an element that I'd want to ask you is if you're doing the channel of Cole calling like how much research should you be doing on coold calls versus how much should you just be hammering down a list of prospects with a kind of formula of you

know added conversion versus volume at this point look it's it's a it's a very good question it's a bit hard to answer in the sense that I believe that the future of cold calling will be very targeted calls I think prospects are tired of just like being a number on a list I think the more targeted better however that shouldn't turn into I'm just going to spend all day researching which is then than the Ballance I mean when I ad consult with companies and they building that person from scratch my tactic is the new recruits

get what I call the SE list so they're not even the a account they're not the B accounts the C Level accounts and all they do they cut in their teeth they're trying to like okay they might not be the best Prospect they might not be the most relevant they just want to understand so they do go for the quantity and they practice they learn rejection they learn objections Etc and then the more this increases the more you move to the next step the problem with this spray and prey it's called in sales approach uh

I love that I think it's such a good like example is that that will be replaced by AI mhm because if if you can make a thousand calls to random people with generic pitch AI can do that and honestly it's easier to train AI to not sound like an idiot than it is to train a human um so like the the future of the i i TI getting outbound is by you having very targeted very intelligent conversations but you first need to go for the quantity in order to do that yeah yeah for me it's

like I I remember when I first started doing uh calls was like there was a list of older prospects that hadn't been you know talked I needed to go through my own graduation you know like cuz I was like shaking and I would turn like super red on the first calls and like I needed to kind of earn the right to to get comfortable enough to have a more human approach thank you so much for listening to the selling with love podcast we have some previous episodes you can tune into right here and if you

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