Cold calls or even a warm call you need to make sure you put your best foot forward. You need to make sure that you are using the best possible methods to get them to stay on the phone with you to hear why you are actually calling them.
If someone won’t even stay on the phone with you long enough for you to tell them why you are calling them then you haven’t even had the chance to see if they would want to talk to you about what you solve for. That stinks. It is a really stinky feeling to not even get past the first hello, hi, who is this….not even get to the point of being able to tell them who you are and why you are calling.
We all know those types of calls…
The ones where they say things like:
- Okay, pitch me now.
- You have 30 seconds to tell me why I should listen to you.
- No we don’t need that. Click.
- Click.
- Hang up.
- Please stop calling me.
- Don’t call me again.
- You have called 10 times in the past 3 days…
To avoid those types of situations I would suggest that you start off your conversation when that person picks up the phone in the best way possible.
My answer to everything is simple. Be more human in your prospecting and be more human in your sales process.
Start with the cold call or connect call.
When someone picks up the phone you have the chance to either keep them on the phone or not. Here is how you can keep them on the phone just a little bit longer so they can actually hear you out on why you are calling in the first place.
Here is how I typically do it and how I coach people to do it.
Hi this is Ali from HubSpot. I know that I am catching you off guard and you have no idea why I am calling. Do you have one second for me to explain quickly why I am reaching out in the first place?
Things like this in between what you say…
- I want to respect your time, I have obviously interrupted your day right now but I wouldn’t be reaching out if I didn’t think that this was relevant or timely.
Explain why you are calling…
- I did a bunch of research on your company before I reached out and this is what I found out. These things tell me that maybe what my company solves for could help you in your job or help you reach your goals.
Give some type of credibility…
- Explain to them what your company name is again, quickly what your company solves for and then ask them if that is interesting at all to them or timely.
Use words like interesting and timely. Ask the prospect if what you are saying is relevant to their job right now or what is going on with the company. Based on you research you think that it might be.
Tell them again that you know that you caught them off guard and this is probably not the best time to hash this out and talk about everything. Explain that you realize how hard it is to make sense of a call like this quickly.
Your job in a connect call is to see if from your research there is a potential need and potentially something that you can help with. if you have those things and the prospect agrees. Ask to talk again when you are not reaching them off guard and you can talk slowly and more intelligently about all of this to see if there is anything worth while in exploring together.