Cold Calling Secrets Unlocked 🔐

When I first started selling B2B services, I did NOT like to use the telephone to cold call businesses. It was scary, uncomfortable, and felt mildly intrusive to the people I would be calling upon.

So like any mature twenty-something, I would take selfies.

Couple of “time capsule” items to note from the photo above:

• I’m wearing what was called a “tie.” Men use to wear them in business, and especially in SALES settings each and every day. From the ages of 23 - 37(ish) I wore some semblance of a suit each and every day. I owned more full suits than I did pairs of jeans.

• Do you see my modestly high cheekbones? That’s because I shaved, and with most of my SALES jobs, was required to be clean-shaven. That’s so, like, 2014 (this picture is from 2009).

• The thing I’m holding in my hand is an in-office desk phone. You might not have an office (cubical farm) OR a desk phone any longer. I haven’t had an office for the last 1.5 years, and even when I did, I didn’t have a desk phone. Text me or call my cell!

In all seriousness, although many facets of how we go to market or do business nowadays have shifted, what hasn’t changed is the need for elements of cold outreach.

See what I did there? I simply called ‘cold calling,’ ‘cold outreach.’ Same thing, really. We might not be sitting in a cubical farm in a suburban office building wearing a tie and dialing for dollars with our peers, but we are still needing to build our pipelines and networks for the purposes of business development.

Here are a few secrets that I like to remember when doing any sort of cold calling/outreach.

_{Do you follow Twitter? If not, I’ll post my “Sales Tweets of The Week” below, for more thought-provoking ideas, trends, or stories. Check them out below!}

Tips and tricks for maximizing cold outreach.

What’s up, homies!

I was inspired for this week’s blast from the tweet I sent, above.

Cold calling, more commonly referred to today as cold outreach, is many times a necessity for growth and scale in business.

Below are three (3) quick actionable tips you can incorporate into your weekly routines to help ease the burden, AND increase the conversion rates of your cold outreach.

^{“I’m wondering if you can help me out.”}

There’s a simple trick I picked up from a SALES training session I had back in 2005. It still works today simply because of the root meaning behind the phrase.

The majority of the time, the person that you’re calling cold on the phone or asking as you walk into their business, will want to help you.

• Here’s an interesting take, framed up as being a “Morality Preference Hypothesis,” where most actions displayed by a person who helps someone else tie into social preferences and moral obligations the reason(s) why.

Long story longer, people are wired to want to help out other people.

Now, what I can’t guarantee is that your softened request will allow you to capture the prospect and ultimately make the sale. But what I can guarantee is that your prospect will at least stop, process your request, and hear you out.

And in cold-calling scenarios, that’s half the battle.

^{“My name is Nate; we haven’t met before.”}

Another cold outreach phrase I like to use is simply stating the obvious.

There’s a section of the business communities in which SALES professionals call upon whom tie their value to their networks. (Don’t forget we talked about this in a previous Sales Homie blast).

Because of this, when you ‘surprise them’ with an in-person or over-the-phone cold outreach, their defense mechanism is to try to place you in their ecosystem.

It’s a simple defense mechanism.

• “If I know you, you’re safe. I just need to remember who you are.”

• “If I don’t know you, you’re potentially unsafe. I need to understand what you’re doing here.”

In SALES, building rapport and trust with a prospect are arguably the most important ingredients for selling success. Do your prospect(s) a favor and immediately diffuse the situation. Tell them who you are, but also tell them that you’re not someone in their network.

A lot of times, I’ll combine this tactic and the first.

Using this approach will help you calm your prospect, and put you in a place to take 15-30 uninterrupted seconds to explain why you’re calling/stopping by.

^{Call upon “warm” leads you’ve met at least once before.}

If you find yourself in a competitive or “boiler room” type sales environment where you’re consistently dialing for cold outreach, try to leverage the contacts you have grown within your networking circles. Any hint of a prospect that’s slightly warmer than 100% cold will increase your chances of converting your outreach into a future meeting.

• Leverage the prospects that say “Call me back in two months.” If they requested a two-month follow-up, record in as a task and make sure you’re CRM/Outlook reminders/process notifies you. Call them back and hold them to book a meeting.

• Leverage the prospects that might have canceled a previously booked meeting. They’re already feeling guilty for canceling on you; rebooking should be a piece of cake.

• Leverage the prospects that are tied to customer referrals. “Tim from ABC Company said I should connect with you. Do you have 15 minutes that I could stop in and introduce myself next week?”

• Leverage the prospects that you know within industry trade associations. It’s the easiest to book new meetings from trade associations because the topic doesn’t need to be about your product/service. Call to book a “get to know you” meeting, and inherently what you do will arise in your discussions.

And don’t forget about former customers. You already have a warm intro to former customers; they know your company and your product or service. If you sell a commodity-type business, call them back and book a “check-in” meeting, to see how things are going with their new solution(s).

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The moral of the story? Cold outreach is tough. It’s intimidating. It’s not the most enjoyable part of working in revenue-generating SALES roles.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t tweak small communications and make strategic calls to actively increase your meeting conversion rates!

The best SALES reps will trial and error all types of pitches (I hate that word…) to see what works best. It’s up to you to find your style within your selected industry, and what best represents the product/service that you sell.

And if you need to, take selfies and have a little fun doing it.

Sales Tweets of The Week!

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