Is cold calling still killing your mojo?
Part 1 was a runaway success. But at Cognism, we leave no stone unturned.
So we had to come back with part 2.
Director of Sales Development Dave Bentham joined Morgan Ingram to answer your cold calling questions.
What type of hook is best?
The perfect hook doesn’t exist.
But some cold calling frameworks can help you to be successful. These are:
- Typically statement
- Clue-based hook
- Question-based hook
Typically statement
Typically statements describe a pain point to generate interest. They look something like this:
“Typically salespeople are telling me that they’ve got great messaging but they're not having enough conversations with their prospects. Does that resonate with you?”
Clue-based hook
As a salesperson, your job is to find clues on your prospect's LinkedIn profile or the company website.
That’s a gold mine of information!
Morgan gave an example:
“The reason that I called is because I looked at your website, it looks like you're hiring about 10 SDRs right now. You're probably looking for some type of coaching or enablement so that you can ramp these reps.”
“Then I would go into like my value prop on how I help with that.”
Question-based hook
The idea here is to ask a question that will really open up a conversation.
Your prospect might already have the answer. But it shows you know their role and understand their pain points.
Here’s an example:
“How are you currently onboarding your reps effectively to make sure that they're ramping?”
The key to sales personalisation is that it should be relevant. You shouldn’t force it to capture their attention.
Ultimately, relevance and pain are what’s most important.
“This is my personal number, don’t call me” – how should you respond?
There are a couple of different ways you can respond to this.
Morgan gave some examples:
“Hey, I didn’t mean to catch you out of the blue – what would be your preferred method of communication moving forward?”
This allows you to shift into another channel.
“I know this is your personal number, didn’t mean to disturb you – however, do you have 30 seconds to hear me out? If it isn’t relevant I won't cold call you ever again but if it is we can schedule some time.”
This allows you to at least present your value prop and see if they’re interested.
It’s critical to consider the tone of the prospect. If they’re upset you need to respect that.
“I’m just about to jump into a meeting” – how should you respond?
Often, this is simply a brush-off. If you can’t get past this, you’ll never actually get through to a real objection, such as “we already have a solution in place.”
Dave explained:
“If someone has picked up the phone, they have at least 10 seconds. Most of the time it’s an emotional reaction to them starting to work out that you’re a salesperson.”
If they’re upset, it’s important to validate their feelings and apologise. Explain that you’ll be really quick. You’ve got them on the phone, so you should take advantage of that.
My prospect has postponed a demo multiple times. What should I do?
Morgan uses a benchmark in this scenario.
If the meeting is postponed over three times, move on. Line up the next prospect!
You should remember that your time is valuable.
Here are some ways you can stop the drop. 👇
Go back to the discovery phase
Discovery calls aren’t just for fact-finding and uncovering pain.
You should use discovery as another tool in your belt throughout the journey. When they’re focused on what you can do for them, they’re far more likely to attend your meeting!
Morgan told us:
“You need to uncover what’s urgent, then drive on that urgency. Think of uncovering and driving rather than creating. Find the things that would be driving urgency and use those to get the person back on the line.”
Don’t schedule your meetings too far out
This one is obvious.
Try and get the meeting booked as quickly as possible so that you’re top-of-mind.
Confirm, confirm and confirm again
Schedule appointment confirmations on a 1-2 week cadence. If you still don’t hear back, have a second layer to confirm 24 hours before the meeting.
For example, have your AE reach out. Or ask your manager to express their excitement. Whether this is via email, telephone or other messaging platforms, it doesn’t matter. Don’t shy away from ensuring they’ll turn up!
“Just send me an email” – how should you respond?
The best response here is to seek clarity.
Morgan’s immediate response is:
“Yeah. I'll send you an email. What exactly would you like to see?”
The purpose is to narrow in on what’s important. Otherwise, it’s way too broad. It’s important to not overcomplicate your product.
It’s easy to send PDFs and documents that they don’t care about.
If they don’t give you the information, you can push back. Explain that when they send a broad email, it’s often not relevant to them.
Morgan said:
“Often you get this reaction because you’ve over complicated things. You’ve been talking too much! They can’t really process what you’re saying.”
How many rejections until you give up calling the same prospect?
There isn’t a hard and fast answer for everyone. It depends on the TAM for your product.
The first step is to calculate the size of your TAM.
If you have a large TAM, then you could be wasting your time. There are still loads of prospects to go after!
Dave shared his thoughts:
“If your TAM is enormous - like HR software, for example - think of the opportunity cost of people who are rejecting you versus going to speak to the next prospect.”
If your TAM is smaller, then it’s a different story. You’re probably going to call them a fair amount of times. Maybe over a very extended period!
My company offers multiple services. How many of the services should I pitch to my prospects?
Take a dart approach!
What does this involve?
Bucket each of the services that you offer. For each bucket, label the problems that each service solves.
Reach out to someone and offer them a service. If that doesn’t work, no problem. You offer them another service and another service and another service.
Morgan explained:
“You don't know what they're looking to accomplish, because you haven’t done discovery. Take a dart approach with different messaging and see what lands. You don’t want to say here are five services that we offer. It's too overwhelming for the reader.”
“You keep going and throwing these darts until one of them is a bullseye.”
When are the best times to call prospects?
In B2B sales, any time is a good time.
You should have the attitude that it’s a good time to call right now.
Once you get into the mindset that there is a “right time” to call, you expect a negative response.
Dave told us:
“Outreach does give some data on when people are having success with calling. We don’t act on it.”
Is cold calling more effective than written outreach to get a meeting?
This all depends on the channel your ICP prefers to communicate and engage on.
Be your own sample size! Keep track of your own success rates and cold call conversion rate. Look at your conversion rate through LinkedIn and email. This will help you focus on where to spend your time.
Channel validation is an important step. Why?
Because channel validated outbound allows reps to start conversations with prospects with far fewer activities.
How does this work?
They’re reaching out to people through a channel that they know the prospect is active in.
Ryan Reisert, Subject Matter Expert at Cognism, explores the topic in detail.👇
Use Cognism to get your mojo back
Sadly, there isn’t a definitive outbound tactic to secure more meetings.
But there is a tool that’ll multiply your conversations - Cognism!
We’ll connect you with your ideal buyers
Click 👇 to find out more.
