Live Cold Call Teardown [what to fix]

what's going on everybody I'm Morgan J Ingram Welcome to our brand new series here at cognism rate my coal call so every week we're going to be reviewing coal calls that have come from live reps real reps in the field not made up this is real talk and we're gonna bringing someone that I like the gy it up with has great expertise to go through this coold call with and so today we have Marcus Chan look he can do his intro way better than I can so Marcus tell us a little bit about yourself and

we're gonna get into it what's up Morgan I'm pumped to be here I'm a guy who's made thousands of coal call made thousands mistakes have lost a lot of deals and won a lot of deals so I'm pumped to be here we're going to have some fun with this coal call we we absolutely will and it's great to have you man so let's dive in so what we're going to do here y'all is I have a coold call here we're g to play it live and we're going to break it down from the introduction to

the value prop the pitch we're going to go through some objections and we're going to go through how he closed this call and then on top of that Marcus is going to rate this coal call all right so this is purely on to get better not here to roast bur just here to get people uh to get better and so we're just going to dive in this call and we're going to go into it right here all right so here we go from I'm all right okay good good I was just following up an email

I sent to you recently around penetration testing and ISO implementation did you see that at all no I get thousands the emails a day so I definitely didn't get that okay so let's talk let's talk about the intro right there what what's your take on it so far yeah I would say it's um I'm I'm going to provide unfiltered feedback because this will hopefully help whoever's out there listening and pay attention to this it was okay and I say it's probably pretty average especially with how the start goes so for example in my opinion when

you start off with like I couldn't quite hear him I think he probably say something how are you doing or how's your day going which yep that's what it was how's your day invariably they're always like it's fine like why are you calling me basically right we kind of saw that a little bit just he's like why are you calling and in my opinion when you start with a question like that you are setting yourself up for generally speaking usually not a great response which then kind of leads into the next point where he's like

hey I sent you over these emails did you see that if it's any normal exact they get hundreds of emails every single day they don't see most of it right so when you start to that point as an exact you're just getting more frustrated so you're kind of like no I didn't see it get to the point so that's where from the GetGo if you're leading with the these questions and Frameworks you're setting yourself up for generally a more negative response to begin with yeah I could not agree with that more I do want to

double down on the email piece because when I do trainings and you probably do this too when you're coaching the people that are going through your program is like what outcome are you expecting when you ask that question correct and like oh well they're just going to say hey I saw the email I was like okay so how many times out of the thousand of cold calls you've done and you've asked us has someone been like oh you know what that email you sent was a begar it's never happened to me it's never happened to

me it's never happened to me and we've probably collected made hundreds of thousands of coold calls I've never had anyone say that so I just tell people okay if what you're asking question wise is not the outcome of what you're looking for why do we ask this question and it just puts them on their heels and defense let's get rid of it so I just wanted to like amplify that point even more because I I think it's one of the most pointless questions you can ask on a CO call 100% And and think about what

could you replace it with right is it be a problem statement right Hing with certain title of these type of roles that run these two problems which one's most relevant for you okay like that's going to be more relevant versus did you get my email right right I think another point to mention as well and this is used happen to me a lot when we ask questions that don't serve us on the call don't serve them as well it hurts our confidence and we start to sound not confident that's a really scary thing to do

so even if you had the perfect opener perfect whatever do your best to maintain composure and confidence and carry the ball through because as they hear you falure a little bit in your tonality your attitude let blood in the water for a shark you just want to be really careful with that yeah you do I think that's a great call out so Le let's listen into like how this pitch goes as he's going into itate that and and to be honest that was the reason I was reaching out for a call I could imagine someone

like you would always be getting hundreds if not thousands emails um a day the reason um I specifically reached out to you is we've been working with a number of similar companies you know these Tech Focus companies have got a lot of legislative and compliance demands particularly supporting in those two areas I mentioned their penetration testing needs and their ISO implementation and we've seen a dramatic actually increase particularly in the penetration testing requirements of of those businesses over the course of this year that's really being led um by that increased um Supply risk management yes

you know that vendor due diligence that all of us are really starting to experience now and you know that's the reason I reached out here there a couple of companies we could go through our worked with in a very similar way I just wanted to understand really how you guys look after your your pentesting needs there yeah I mean sounds like a lot of different pieces there as of right now we have an internal team that's looking that we' looked at some other Solutions we that's heading right into the objection so we're GNA cover that

in a minute but I just want to see that response up to this point so that was the value prop what's your take on that what could be improved was that spot on what are you hearing so I'll would say it wasn't bad but it wasn't amazing either I always think about whenever you going into your value prop because he goes into a value prop and he wants to ask like an openend question like what do you think about this or what are you doing for this you know the longer you go on about the

value prop the more they're already like why is what's this all about so how can we take that condensed as short as possible get right to the point as fast as possible this POS care about how many emails the guys probably received hey so cool anyway the reason I was calling and get right into the point at this point because now this guy's probably annoyed so get to the point hey the reason I'm calling is because we're already working with you know XYZ companies in your industry to deal problems one two and three how do

you guys C deal these problems so that's just all we're do is condense it down as much as possible there's a couple benefits to why you want to condense it down number one it's easier for you to say and go through number two people want to know why you're calling so you get to a point faster and number three because you're saying less words you're going to be more confident hopefully going through it but the longer it is the more stuff you add in right the more like you are to bot mess up where he

messed up a couple times and you can hear him he maintained a relatively well he still falter a little bit so shorter more condensed and then go for that open-end question at the end so when when you say shorter condense what's your recommendation 20 30 seconds once you get over 30 it's like you should get out of there like what's the there yeah you're exactly right that 20 30 seconds I think is a good sweet spot it gets you right there especially if you kind of open it up with a couple questions like that all

right get to the point as fast as you can like why are you calling this guy they're already thinking that and they're nice enough not just to hang up so don't abuse that get right to point as fast as possible make it as succinct as possible one I recommend especially when you're in coold call some people agree and disagree it doesn't really matter but you should have a framework already written on what you're going to say so that way you can say very succinctly very quickly and right to the point and it cuts through all

the BS jargon that you might say instead so for example he was saying a lot of things in there my brain not being from the industry is glossing over it so this Prospect you're interrupting for whatever they're doing like fires in their house around now they're trying to deal with when you call and you start using much of jargon very quickly they can actually hurt you so how can you simplify down as much as possible and so you write it out beforehand what you're going to say and you just hit those points hey in talking

with you know other title in this industry they have these two issues these three issues how do you deal with them very direct bra much easier to say as well I like I like that a lot and I think the condense easier state or compose because there was moments where he almost was repeating himself on what he was saying correct right because he was like okay I think I need to add more I think I add need more it's like yo you you get out that's right that's right just get out like just like simplify

down you're talking through the sale but you're talking to the value prop here so how can we say more with less words so let's go into the next part which is sounds like there was objection let's see how he handles it really feel like it was a fit for us and what we're doing right now we're pretty solid with so if you want to send me an email more information like that might be more so yeah I appreciate you know I've called you out the blue here Mor um but just really I'd like to sort

of arrange a call that we could have a more deeper discussion around this yeah I know yeah I mean sounds like a couple things you know could be a line I would say like the best thing right now where heads down on a couple projects if you could maybe reach out to me in a month I think I'd be able to schedule that call okay I've got no problem doing that you know I've got you on the call now we pencil something in for that time when you're probably not going to be as busy as

you are that I'll make sure I follow up in the run up to that if there's any problems obviously we can move it but if not it means we've both got that time aside and we can really get a a deep conversation and I can see if we are the sort of consultancy that would be able to adequately support you yeah no that that works for me all right cool so a couple things here right so the first part is how we handle the email objection that happens a lot right so you probably hear that

a lot I've heard it a lot so how did he handle that could he have done something different and then I'll tell you about the next one which is like how he closed how was that but let's go over the email objection and how he went over that part yeah so the email objection was interesting listen to him to overcome it his was basically kind of ignore it and go for the booking which hey you know what that can actually work sometimes all right because you and I both know like most the time send me

the email means I'll never look at it because I never looked at your last emails you sent me anyways right so I why I look at this one right so that's a simple strategy that works really well I say anytime you're going to go for overcoming objection even with something like that which is basically the the ignore objection maneuver the sooner you get for a close I think it's going to be better so let's say if he is going to ignore it he say hey cool that's exactly why I called so actually let's set time

to discuss more detail how's Thursday at 8 o'clock going for like controlling not to a close I think it's G be more effective versus kind of like throwing it out there like we should schedule a call and the guy just jumps in right so that's that's totally fine another potential approach is of course I can obviously send you as much as I want but I make sure it's really specific to you so what specifically would you like to see inside the email so I'll send you a thousand pages of stuff that's waste your time and

they'll like oh well you know and they have whatever excuse and you say okay actually that's why we we should discuss in more detail how Thursday at eight so you can go for another close from there but his approach wasn't necessarily bad I think if he kind of if he just kind of tied a bow around it he might have been able to hopefully secure meeting because of that yeah the the Bulldog approach of just ignoring it only works with like certain people you got to have a certain like style confidence Moxy in order to

get over it it's not something I would even coach people do because like if you mess that up yeah you you're probably not gonna be in sales too long get beat up real quick so I'm like ah you know you should knowledge I agree with you to confirm the control hey I'll send you an email on this but we should book time as well I think that's always the best way to do it rule of reciprocity all those different things right I think those all play into those factors so I whole heartly agree with that

and it comes down to just having the the confidence and the pace with it and I always encourage reps as well if someone pushes back on you and they still don't want to meet you can also use the humble disclaimer and call them out say hey look I don't really want to say this I know this might be odd but typically when people say to send me an email it just gets lost in the B your email and like I don't want to clutter your inbox so like we can put time on the calendar to

me or if this isn't interesting like completely fine as well I think that's another thing you can put out there again that is a different way of going about it but I encourage reps to do that to call out the prospect respectfully and tell them hey like I don't want to clar your inbox because you might not even look at this they handled the objection they went into like the close of the call what would you have done differently on that close of the call there so you know it's interesting because it almost like he

accepted de feat if you will yeah like all right then I will look forward to calling you one month in which you probably won't answer you know and I think um right so at this point if you notice the energy of the guy he actually shifts a little bit so he kind of start off with kind of like hey like you know like I get hundreds of emails whatever so now he's kind of like actually pretty relatively open Friendly he's like hey actually we have a couple different projects so you know probably in a month

or so so I think at this point him going for that close of like oh I see you later it's okay right I think you're better off just having a little deeper conversation hey cool that's that makes a lot of sense Mr Mrs Prospect hey can you help me understand what are the two products you're talking about because potentially we don't know what they're going to say but it make you be ins what's going on in their world and potentially might give you another angle to align your value prop to those products too potentially we

don't really know the second piece is you also might find out it's made up oh we got some projects like just so I have a good understanding you know from a perspective like what are those projects specifically oh well um you know uh it's going to be uh I got to hire some people I don't know yeah right so at that point it's like you can determine if you want to try to go for another close for an earlier time or not right kind of depending on how the response goes or maybe again it's not

it's not it's not real and you can politely professionally call them out again to see if it's even a priority to have a conversation right so that allows you a little more room to work with that call now let's just say for example let's say it's it's a real project like Hey we're actually in a a system migration we're actually like two weeks away from being done and we have two weeks of testing that's exactly why like we can't do anything new until then and it seemed like a very legitim based on how they explain

they have a good detail whatever so at that point instead and I we I don't we hear the rest of it right let's just say if you are G to you know have a call for a month out like how can you make it more firm how can you make it more secure right so you get specific on date and time that that makes a lot of sense after those two prod let's just make sure we actually have something penciled on the calendar I know it's a month out but let's take a look right now

and I'll just definitely reach out beforehand couple days to make sure we're still good so does this date I don't know November 12th at this time work for you on your counter okay cool let me send you invite can you accept the invite did you get that okay cool can you accept it great and you can lock the meeting up to be a little more firm and then of course you just make sure you fall beforehand a few days in advance make sure they're actually G to show up too right no that flow is great

I think also just even getting a placeholder with the the email right that could have been an addition as well right it was just kind of say hey a month later and it's like okay said just like okay that person's gone in the win at this point oh yeah oh yeah they're not going to remember you know so you have to you have to like control what you can't control you know on on the call love it okay so that was the entire call that was the breakdown so as we're wrapping up here okay out

of 10 Marcus what are you rating this call and why all right so I'm let me explain my rating system so everyone knows all right one is is the absolute worst 10 is the absolute Rockstar that's like A+ status five is like very average very very average uh you know I'll give this I'll give this like a six and a half to seven right okay and let me explain why I still think it's probably better than some average ones because he didn't just fold at the first objection some people just fold the first objection that's

true like oh send me an email okay I'll send you an email like full right you know like you know he's I mean maintained Cadence pretty well it wasn't perfect but you know he kept he kind of kept the flow going relatively well right we all heard calls were really kind of choppy and awkward he did relatively decent kind of flowing through it he sound like he knew what he was talking about he wasn't Perfect by any means but he tried and I think if he just did that you'll book some meetings but I think

if you get make a couple tweaks you can easily make it an eight a nine a 10 which just couple few small tweaks love that no I think that's the piece I think it's just like knowing how to navigate the three things right knowing how to navigate the objections in his favor two is narrow down value prop three better intro you're on your way that's it tiny tweaks will make a huge difference love that well Marcus thanks so much for hopping on our Our coold Calling show here breaking down a coold call we figured it

out we got it sorted so I appreciate you thanks for having me on man it was my pleasure cheers