#014: Mastering The 3 Essential Steps to Ace Cold Calls For Transactional Sales

#014: The 3 Steps of a Successful Cold Call

Read time - 5 min

Today I’m going to discuss a topic that usually garners some strong opinions. The lost art of Cold calling.

As someone whose foundation was built on the grind of “slamming the phones.” I can honestly attribute the bulk of success I’ve had to the practice of picking up the phone and making shit happen. It taught me everything I know about selling, persuasion, why people buy and how to get deals across the finish line, quickly.

Is cold calling dead? Does is work? Is it effective? The answer is unequivocally Yes, it works.

Does is work better in certain markets then others? Absolutely!

If you are selling into the SMB / B2C space, or selling transactional software to local businesses with an ACV below $6k, cold calling is a must.

Why?

Because you will collect tons of valuable data, close deals on one call (if you get good), and gain direct feedback on whether you’re product is something the market wants. All are invaluable for an early stage founder.

The problem is 90% of people are doing it wrong. They fail miserably within the first 5 seconds of making a call. Today I’m going to show you how to prevent this.

There are 3 steps to a successful cold call that need to be executed.

Let’s take a look!

3 Steps

1. Building Credibility

2. Building Value

3. Booking The Meeting

Step 1. Building Credibility

You have 6 seconds to build credibility on a call. That’s how fast the prospect decides whether or not you’re worth their time. This is by far where most salespeople fail. If you’re not prepared to handle the stalls and objections the prospect is going to throw at you in the first couple of seconds, it’s a wrap.

There are 3 key points to building credibility.

1. From the minute you say hello, you must command respect and have conviction in your voice.
   

2. Get straight to the point and tell them why you’re calling immediately.

   • If you try to be deceitful and sneaky, the prospect will get suspicious and hang up.

   • The prospect is thinking:

     • Who is this person?

     • Do I know you?

     • Do I want to talk to you?
       
       

3. You have to sound confident and polished.

• When you say hello and introduce yourself, you are metaphorically shaking their hand through the telephone. If you do not look the prospect in the eye and have a firm handshake, you lose them. On a call this comes through in your tone and conviction.

• Being polished is the ability to speak clearly and be concise with your delivery.

This means:

• No Um’s

• No - Ya know like

• No Likes

• No Stuttering

• No Awkward pauses

Below is a universal rebuttal that can be used to rebut any stall that is thrown at you in the first couple of seconds of the call. 

Examples of stalls are:

• Not interested

• I'm in a meeting

• Call me back

• I have someone handling this

• Send me some info

Step 2: Building Value

Building value is about conveying 3 things.

1. You understand their business. (challenges, pain points etc)

2. You’re an expert in the industry.

3. Your product must be significantly better than their current solution.
   
   

• Remember this saying. People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care. This is communicated by asking questions to uncover pain, and listening to the answers. This will give you the ammunition needed to build value throughout the conversation.
  

• You must know you’re product and industry inside out. Prospects are well educated and want to do business with people they can learn and grow from. Being an expert conveys social proof to prospects. It communicates, I know and understand all about your pain because I deal with clients all day long who went through the exact same experiences. Here’s how we’ve solved it. They have to trust you, the company and the product.
  

• Most importantly, your product has to be significantly better than their current solution. It doesn’t have to be cheaper, but the overall value should be significantly more than what currently exists.

Step 3: Booking The Meeting

Now that you’ve built credibility and conveyed value, it’s time to get the commitment. This step is about nailing down a day and time, followed by a calendar invite for the meeting.

There are 4 things you need to do here.

1. Define next steps. What the prospect can expect.

2. A day and time, ideally the same day or within 24 hrs for the meeting. 

3. A calendar invite with any instructions included for the meeting.

4. Have them accept the invite while you’re on the phone.

Key Takeaways

• Be prepared to address the pushback you’ll get in the first 6 seconds.

• A successful cold call is between 4 - 6 minutes long. DO NOT oversell.

• The goal of the call is to see if they’re qualified and briefly discuss how you can help.

That’s it for today folks.

See you all next week!

Darren

P.S. If you’re ready to level up you can book a call with me here.