Cold Calling | Tips, Essentials and Pitfalls

How should you approach a cold call? There’s a ton of advice on what you should or shouldn’t do during a cold call. The problem is that we are still trying to engineer the process.

I’ve been reflecting on everything I know about cold calling this past week. The residual effect of being deep into building outbound messaging for a project outside of my usual day-to-day sales development leadership role.

Almost every opportunity I have ever generated started with calling an absolute stranger. Here has been my experience over the past 10 years.

The First 30 Seconds

The first 30 seconds matter – a lot. With all the talk around 80/20 rules, here’s the 80/20 breakdown for the first 30 seconds of a cold call: 80% is how you say it; 20% is what you say.

Folks on LinkedIn will preach – How’s it going? will drive down your conversion rates. Here’s the thing about pleasantries: only use pleasantries if you can deliver them authentically.

If you say How’s it going? like you don’t give a shit, it’s going to drive down your conversions. On the other hand, if you are a genuinely friendly person and can authentically deliver, “I’m super glad I caught you. How is your [whatever day] going?” it works all the same.

However you open a call, is that you open it with confidence. How you say things matters more than the exact words you use.

Cold Call Essentials

Context is everything. People naturally want to know why you’re interrupting their day, and providing context helps answer the why. There are a few different ways to create this:

• Context-based on industry trend
• Market context based on persona
• Context-based on the Company
• Personal context

Pro Tips:

1. Save personal context for your high-value prospects, or you will spend too much time “personalizing.”
2. Don’t worry about context being a slam dunk – it’s ok to miss the mark. The context is about showing your prospect your interruption has intention.

Pitch the problem, not the solution. Some call it a problem trigger. Whatever you call it, here’s the why.  No one cares what you do; they care about themselves and their problems. (I think this might be an exact quote from GAP Selling)

Pitching the problem does a couple of things:

• If it’s not a problem for them, you can move on.
• If they experience the problem, you’ve already captured that and can guide the conversation in a direction that allows you to investigate further.

One-sentence solution explanation. Clear and concise. Prospects need to understand how you solve the problem—nothing more and nothing less.

Cold Calling Pitfalls

Actually going to take the “s” off of pitfalls, there is really one. The pitfall is over-pitching. It’s wild when you listen to this happening on calls.

Having listened to a metric ton of calls throughout my career, here are the situations that lead to verbal pitch assaults:

1. The prospect isn’t engaging
2. The prospect has stated an objection
3. The prospect has started asking questions

Let’s break these down:

The prospect isn’t engaging. This objection is more of an indifference, but it needs to be handled like any other objection: acknowledge, empathize, and ask an open-ended question to engage.

The tricky thing about this is an unstated objection. Lack of engagement means what you are saying is not interesting. Most salespeople know this, but their egos get in the way of openly admitting it.

Your ego tells you you’re the shit, keep pushing, they do not understand you. Talk more, and they’ll understand.

STOP. Call it out for what it is. Ask a question to see if you can get them to engage. It’s the only shot you can take to progress the conversation forward in a meaningful way.

The prospect has stated an objection. The knee-jerk response is to word-vomit all over the prospect to get them to understand. When you do this, the prospect shuts down with a “who do you think you are” chip on their shoulder.

Again – acknowledge, empathize, and ask an open-ended question to engage further.

Second 80/20 rule of cold calling. 80% of questions you ask; will lead to the 20% of everything else you say. Focus on the questions and taking your prospect on a journey with them.

The prospect has started asking questions. This one is super easy. Stop pitching and start recommending. I have listened to many cold calls where reps have literally talked themselves out of meetings – hell, I have done it.

Stop trying to show how smart you are by your ability to answer questions.

If you have gotten past the opening, the prospect has admitted that they have a high-level problem, and they start asking about details that is your queue to close.

“That’s a great question! Can I make a recommendation …”

Conclusion

Magic happens on the phone; the art is in your ability to communicate verbally with others. If you want to get better at cold calling, listen to your calls at the speed you delivered them:

• evaluate your delivery
• when you hear yourself pitch, think about the questions you could have asked instead

Evaluating your calls in these two areas will help you improve your cold calls. Or you can keep reading articles like this, trying to find the magic bullet to scheduling meetings. Promise, self-evaluation in these two areas will get you further.