Cold Calling always divides the room these days. Some people claim that cold calling is dead. For me, having the confidence to pick up the phone and create something out of nothing is an invaluable skill. And every SDR should master it. Having made thousands of cold calls as an SDR, I’m outlining how to improve your cold call to book more meetings. Spoiler alert, it all comes down to creating a standardised structure that considers reality.
Firstly, success within cold calling is a 10% conversion. That means if we call 100 people and 10 of them book a meeting, we are successful. There will never ever be a scenario where 100% of the people we cold call will say yes. And that is okay.
I often hear SDRs and BDRs say that every cold call is different so how can we possibly create a standardised structure? Well, we can. And today we will. This means that we can create a structure which will allow us to control the conversation with our prospects, every single time. Instead of allowing the prospect to control the conversation. All cold calls are a bit different but they are also essentially all the same. I’ll show you what I mean:
All Cold Calls:
- Goal: To convey value and set a future meeting = sell time and nothing else
- Challenge: Objectives from our prospect, limited time & prospect awareness
- Outcome: Always either a yes, no or a maybe (e.g. “Call me back next week”)
With this in mind we can create a standardised structure for every cold cold.
The Structure of Every Cold Call
- Confident Opener
- Value Adding pitch with proof
- Easy to Respond to Call to Action
But remember..
It really is as easy as 1,2,3 so why then do people struggle and fear cold calling so much? Firstly, it is easy to say but hard to do. We can only overcome that part with practice. However there is another reason. And that is the one variable that changes for every cold call. Which is of course, the person we are calling. Prospects are wildly unpredictable, which is terrifying and difficult to handle.
So often we do a great job of creating a structure or a plan for our call and it all goes out the window as soon as we get on the phone. In order to combat that, we need to create a structure which is realistics and not idealistic. Let’s create a structure that considers and appeals to the person we are calling. That way, we are much less likely to be knocked off course as soon as they pick up the phone.
1. The Confident Opener
Let’s start by considering our prospects as we build this confident opener. Do they know us? Most likely, no. Are they expecting our call? Definitely not. Generally do we trust people we don’t know? No. Do we want to spend time talking to random people who call us out of the blue? No.
Needless to say, we cannot blame our prospect for being a bit cagey and agitated when we first call. So let’s expect that and consider how we can reduce those negative emotions. Firstly, they’ll be wondering who we are when they don’t recognise our voice, so let’s leave room for that. Secondly, we want to increase credibility by being confident and having a reason to call. This way, we can reduce any fears around it being a scam or a time waster. Below we consider some examples of how that might look;
What to Say & Why
Examples of What to Say | Why We say this |
“Hi John, It’s Sarah calling from Company X. I hope I haven’t caught you at a bad time? | We need to get John to give us permission to speak. By pausing for his engagement, he will almost certainly ask us who we are or what we want – permission to speak granted. Although they won’t want to give us any time they usually do want to know why we are calling – allowing them space to ask, encourages them to give us permission to speak. And we can move to stage 2. |
“Hi John, It’s Sarah calling from Company X. Do you have 30 seconds? | |
“Hi John, It’s Sarah calling from Company X. Am I correct in saying you are the manager for Y?” |
2. Value Adding Pitch with Proof
Congratulations we have bought ourselves 2 more minutes and we have progressed to stage 2 of our cold call. Now we have to convey some value. It is important to note here that, no matter what the prospect asks us above, when they get their turn to speak, we need to stick to the script and follow up with the reason why we are calling and the value we think we can deliver.
The prospect might say for example “Sorry, what is this about?” or “Where are you calling from?” Or “Who are you?”. No matter what they say we need to lead with value and let them know the reason we are calling. If we must, repeat our name or company name and keep going. Let’s take a look at some more examples.
What to Say & Why
Examples of What To Say | Why We Say This |
The reason I am calling is I noticed X,Y, Z and I think we can help. We are doing a lot of work in this space. In fact we recently worked with YOUR COMPETITOR and achieved great results | All of these examples have something in common – they are leading with value for the prospect, they are highlighting a specific reason why we called this person and how we think we can help. We then back that up with proof that we have been able to help others in a similar position to them It is not uncommon to receive objections and/or questions at this stage. If this happens, it is a good thing. The prospect is engaged. Do your best to answer or to promise to have the answer on the next call. |
I wanted to get in touch as I read that you guys are doing x, y, z and I think we can help. We are doing a lot of work in this space. In fact we recently worked with YOUR COMPETITOR and achieved great results | |
I noticed you are Head of X so I thought you might be interested in Y. We work with a lot of similar professionals to you, including your COMPETITOR who was able to achieve X Y Z with us. |
3. Easy to Respond to Call To Action
Since we are on a cold call with limited time, we do not want to get sucked into asking discovery questions. Instead we must remember to focus on the task at hand which is to book a future meeting. Or perhaps to get permission to start conducting an initial discovery there and then. Either way, in order to do that, we first need to have an easy to respond to call to action.
First let’s deal with the call to action. This is something that the prospect needs to agree to. A commitment on their side, which shows they are somewhat interested. This could be as simple as saying “if you have 15 minutes right now, I’d be happy to learn more about your organisation to see if we can help you too?” Or “I think we can help you too but in order to be sure, I’d need to learn a bit more about your business. We can do that right now if you have time or we can schedule 20 minutes – I have good availability tomorrow morning around 11am, if that works?”
The reason the call to action must be easy to respond to is we want to make it as easy as possible for the prospect to do what we want. If we tell them we will send a list of options via email, that is difficult, he will need to review that list and his calendar. If we give him a lot of options, he will need to think about a lot of things. We want it to be easy so we create a very simple and easy call to action. Let’s take a look;
What to Say & Why
Examples of What to Say | Why We Say It |
In order to know if we can help I would like to learn more about your business. I know you weren’t expecting my call today so does 4pm tomorrow suit you for a 15 minute call? | The key here is to secure the next step whilst we are still on the call ideally. It is much easier for them to back out over email. Secondly we can phrase the call to action however we want but ideally we want them to be able to say yes or no or to suggest an alternative time. Anything more difficult than that and we risk losing them due to a perceived high effort. |
Do you have a 15 min slot between 9-11am tomorrow morning for a more in depth discussion so we can see if we can help? |
Common Mistakes
There are a few common mistakes that we see time and time again. Let’s be aware of them and try to avoid them.
- Distracted or disrupted by the objection of the prospect – caught up answering their silly question instead of moving onto the reason why we called.
- Accepting the prospects objections without challenging them and trying to convey the value.
- Leading with value does not mean telling the prospect why we are the best – it means telling him why our solution could help him and his company specifically – focus on him not us
- Allowing the prospect to get off the phone and get back to us with their availability over email. This requires effort and it is easy to skip this as a prospect. It is vital to ensure we get the commitment whilst we are on the call with the prospect.
The Importance of Emotional Intelligence
As we can see, we have been able to create a standardised structure that considers and allows for natural human reaction at every stage of the process. Having the structure that we feel comfortable with is vital so please take some time to tweak as you see fit so that it suits your preferred style. The real differentiator here is that no matter how you want to approach this you need to consider the natural human reaction of your prospect. Lean into your emotional intelligence and lead with empathy. If this is the first you’ve heard of this be sure to check out this post: What is Emotional Intelligence and Why Does It Matter For SDRs
Unfortunately the structure alone is not enough, we now need to invest time and effort into practising this process. Once we are so comfortable that we can do it without thinking about it, then we can expect to start seeing some real results.
Cold calling is not easy but it is a skill that will differentiate you from your sales peers and it will help you to stand out to your prospects and clients, if you can master it. Please share your cold calling success and horror stories in the comments to make us all feel better about ourselves.
Until Next Time!