#238 - Playbook Special: Cold Calling

Foreign.

Everybody. And welcome to this playbook of 30 minutes to presidents Club. My name is Armand Farouk and I'm here with my co host, Nick Sigelski. And today we are doing a round two of what was, I believe, our number one most listened to playbook cold calling. And so here's how the session is going to be structured, folks. We're going to spend the first 10 minutes recapping the core cold calling playbook. In other words, how you open, how you talk about a value prop or a problem prop, and then how you book the meeting. But then we're going to spend the remaining 20 minutes talking about some newer stuff, which is specifically, how do you handle objections, how do you handle voicemails and gatekeepers and some tactics for dialing like a machine and overall efficiency. And so, Nick, why should people listen?

Well, something my high school wrestling coach told me is if it were easy, everybody would do it. And I would say the same for cold calling. Most salespeople will do anything to avoid picking up the phone and making a cold call. And then even the ones who do most aren't very good at it. So if you can get yourself to be good at cold calling, you'll book 98% of your meetings via the magic device called the phone. But step one is you gotta have a great opener when you make a cold call. So, Armand, talk to me about what I should and shouldn't be doing the second the other person picks up the phone.

All right, so two openers to not use as a recap. First one, did I catch you at a bad time? The fastest hang up in the world is through that opener. It sounds like this. Nick, It's Armand from 30 MPC. Did I catch you at a bad time? Yes. Click. Okay. It's always a bad time. And the second worst cold call opener to use is how's your day going? And the reason for that is if you make 50 cold calls, you are literally asking 50 people how their day is going. And guess what? Everyone else cold calling that person is asking the same question. And what you will hear in return is, I'm fine. How can I help you? And so you've immediately categorized yourself as a telemarketer because they know it's a cold call. You're just not calling it out. And they're immediately looking for a way or a reason to get off the phone. So instead of asking, did I catch you at a bad time? Or instead of asking, how's your day going, Nick, what should we open with?

So always assume you have the right person. Don't go. Is this Armand? I open with what's called a permission based opener, which sounds something like, Armand, this is Nick Sigelski with 30 minutes to President's Club. I know you didn't expect me to call you this afternoon. Do you mind if I take one minute? I'll tell you why I called you specifically and then you can tell me whether or not it makes sense for us to speak. I've covered my name, the company I work for. I'm a professional, I've got nothing to hide. I've acknowledged this is indeed a cold call. And then I have given Armando the option to either opt in and listen to what I'm about to say or say no. Eight times out of 10 they're going to say, all right, you've got one minute, the other 20%, we can talk about how you handle. Now, sometimes people are going to reject you because they don't really know you. From the person who's calling about refinancing their student loans or selling them a car warranty, for example, in that event, you might have to call those people and weave some context into your permission based opener, it might sound something like Armand picks up the phone and I say, armand, I'm calling cause I just finished reading the press release about your company's expansion into Europe. My name is Nick Sigelski and I know I'm calling you out of the blue here. Do you mind if I take one minute, I'll tell you why I called you specifically and then you can tell me whether or not it makes sense for us to speak. All I am doing is I am including the trigger, the reason for my outreach in that opener, it takes some dexterity and nuance to be able to get that off the tongue. But if you can do it right, you've immediately oriented their mind around, okay, this person isn't a total rando. Now you've got another approach to insert context up front, Armand.

Right, exactly. So similar to Nick's previous opener is one of the issues with the permission based opener is they have no idea what you could possibly be calling about. And so they're diving into a pool and they have no idea what the temperature is going to be. And so the heard the name tossed around opener is designed to put context. And what I know about you at the front end of the opener, and so it sounds like this, hey, Nick, we work with a couple other Sequoia portfolio companies. It's Armand at 30 mpc. Have you heard her name tossed around. And so a couple things are happening there. The first is I'm taking something that I know about them, oftentimes an investor or something that tells me that we're in the same sandbox and I'm putting that up front. And what that does is it makes Nick sit up for a second and say, oh, this person's not a total rando. And then after that you introduce yourself because that is less important than the context. And you ask, have you heard her name tossed around? And the tone behind it is, hey, we're in the same network. You've heard of us before, right? If they say, no, I haven't heard your name tossed around. Really simple, you just go into the permission based opener. Well, shoot, I guess this is a cold call. Could I get 27 seconds to tell you why I called and then you can hang up on me. Then if they say yes, then you don't have to pitch and all you say is awesome. Well, look, we'd normally be working with someone like you by now. I guess we must have screwed something up. What did you hear? Those are your two openers. You have your permission based opener plus Nick's iteration, which is the permission based opener with context. And you have the herd the name tossed around opener. Alrighty, Nick. So at the end of this, ideally someone has said, sure, you can tell me what you do, and now we need to tell them what we do. And so how do we tell people what we do?

Right, so you shouldn't tell people what you do. What you need to do is take your well polished value proposition and look at that value proposition and give it a kiss on the head and then put it to rest, Put it to bed. We're not going to lead with a value proposition because the customer is not looking for a product or a service or a category when they're getting cold called. Your customer is doing a job and they are dealing with a whole host of problems that your product or service is equipped to help with. And so when you are cold calling, you should instead be attacking, attacking, attacking the problem that, you know, this person is dealing with. Now, Armand, one of the things that I've been doing recently, and my dentist will be mad at me, is I've been eating a lot of candy. I've been enjoying the occasional tootsie roll or dum dum. And if I were a professional lollipop eater, how might you pitch me?

So an example of a problem prop would be like, so, Nick, look, typically when I talk to other delightful dental patients, they love to eat their dum dum lollipops. But one problem with that is when you're eating a dum dum lollipop, sometimes you drop it on the floor. And if you've ever dropped it on a shag rug and held it up to the light afterwards, you usually see a couple hairs hanging off of it. So what we do at Lollipop Saver Inc. Is we have little parachutes that attach to your lollipops so that if you drop it, you can catch it before it hits the shag rug. Is that even moderately interesting?

Nice. So what Arman did right there is he said, typically, when I talk to other dental patients. Right. Other people like you, he is showing that this isn't the first dental patient or professional lollipop eater he's called. He's immediately signaling, hey, I talk to your peers. And the reason he's using that typically language, which is when you lead a statement with typically or some of the time or oftentimes or occasionally, we find what he's not doing is forcing me in a corner and saying, everybody like you experiences this. He's saying, oftentimes, people like you, and that's why I'm calling you. Then what he's doing is pun sort of intended. Here. He is naming a very specific hairy problem that he knows or suspects that the ICP he's calling is dealing with. The key here is you should not be saying anything related to saving time or saving money. If you are mentioning those benefits of your thing, you are too general. You are better off being too specific in your pitch, because at least if you're too specific, the other person's going to say, all right, like, this guy sort of gets my world. But if you're too general, you're going to get swatted away with that. Not interested. Because they won't understand the problem that you solve. And then Armand is only giving one sentence on how he helps. And then his call to action is, hey, was that even moderately interesting? He's not trying to push me for a meeting yet, because first he needs to figure out, do I have that problem and do I want to make it go away? And until the answer to both of those questions is yes, he should not waste breath explaining what he does in further detail or trying to force me to book a meeting. Okay, so some of the time, the customer. And we're going to get to objections in a little bit, the prospect is going to say, you know what, Arman, this sounds interesting. How do I go about booking the meeting? When they're interested.

Alrighty, folks, so always suggest ranges. And those ranges should be as soon as possible, if at all humanly possible. And so that might sound like, awesome, Nick. Well, look, I know I called you out of the blue. Would you be completely against taking a look at this thing? I don't know, maybe tomorrow in the afternoon or Thursday in the morning. And so try not to pinpoint a specific time on the calendar, but give them a range so that they can sort of snap on to a time that works for them. Oftentimes what they'll say at that point is, is, I don't have my calendar in front of me. Send me an email. And what you should never do is just send them an email. Instead, always send them a calendar invite and say, awesome, I'm gonna put a hold on the calendar. It's probably not gonna work, but I'll follow up with a couple other times that do work. If that one doesn't work, would you mind just declining it and suggesting a new time that does work for you? And that's how you book the meeting, folks. So we've gone through your 10 minute opener problem prop and how to book the meeting. And I really wish it was that easy that you could just open, talk about the problem and then book. But usually what happens is people object. And so, Nick, I hit you with an objection. What do you do?

Okay, so most salespeople, when they get hit with an objection, immediately seek to respond to said objection. Instead of doing that, instead of responding immediately with your rehearsed battle card phrase that you learned and memorized, do these two things first. Step one is use a ledge. This is a technique that we learned from Jeb Blunt, which is simply a rehearsed phrase that gives your brain a minute to catch up to the. Wow, just got punched in the face with an objection. It might be something like, you know, I figured you might say that, or it's interesting, everybody says that. Or that's exactly why I called you. Right? All I'm doing is I'm saying something that's memorized to give my brain a second to recalibrate. Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to follow Armand's famous Mr. Miyagi framework. And the idea here is I do three things. One, I agree with the objection. When you get an objection, it is an emotional response to feeling like someone is trying to sell me. And when I agree with them, it actually gets them to pattern interrupt and they lean into you once. I agree, I incentivize them to give me more information. So I need to say something to draw this person out more. And then what I can do is I can use that information to sell the meeting, not the product or service. So let's put this into practice, Armand. Let's say you call me and you give me a great problem proposition and I hit you with, well, sorry, Armand, we're using Acme Co. How do you respond to that? Using the Miyagi framework?

Totally, Nick. And so look, I'll be completely honest. I would have been pretty surprised if you guys weren't using something. And acmeco is an awesome company. Okay. Hey, you know, just so no one else calls you here, could you give me a sense of as it pertains to you guys in ACMECO, is it like a 10 out of 10? There's like nothing you'd hope for, or is there anything at all that you'd want us to follow up on closer to your renewal?

Well, it's maybe an 8 out of 10.

Yeah, Nick, that's still pretty good. So look at the reality is like most customers don't really switch off of Acme Company. Most of them are like an 8 out of 10. But every once in a while, you know, I would say the folks are who might be a 6 or a 7 out of 10, they switch over for reasons A, B and C. We've actually had a couple folks switch from ACME to 30 MPC recently. I'm not assuming that's going to be you, but would you be completely opposed to taking a look at this thing just so you know what else is out there? And if you decide to switch eventually, you at least have another option. And so what I've done there is I agreed with the fact that he's on a competitor, and I explicitly pushed him away to switching off of that competitor. And the way that I got more info from him is I said, just so no one else calls you, would you mind telling me how it's going? And based on that, again, I pushed him away and I said, hey, even if you don't switch off of this thing, do you want to take a test drive of the Tesla just in case you decide to buy a new car? And so folks, that's competitor, why don't we assume that now Nick is making cold calls and Nick is calling a similarly nasally prospect. And that prospect might have a different issue. So, Nick, why don't you give me a call?

Ring, ring. Here's your opener. Here's your problem proposition. And what's the objection, Armand.

You know, Nick, this is really nice, but you should call me in six months.

You know, Armand, I figured you were going to say that. I'm happy to call you in six months. I'll actually put a note in my calendar right now, I guess, just so I don't sound like a complete weirdo or rando when I do call you in six months, I guess. Is something happening then that is prompting you to want me to call you then that I should know about? I want to make a note here.

That's a very good question, Nick. In fact, we don't have any budget right now and our budgeting cycle begins in three months. And so I'll have budget in closer to six months.

Oh, man. You know, Armand, it's actually interesting because a lot of folks are saying that right now and I appreciate you sharing that. I'm going to make a note about that, I guess. I don't know if the timing for this is totally going to work out, but one thing that I'm thinking about is if the only thing that's really standing in between us even figuring out if we should work together right now is the budget piece. Would you be against taking a look at this thing maybe now to get a sense of like, is this even going to be a close to a fit when you do have budget or are making those budgeting decisions in three months? That way you get a better sense of what is out here and it might give you a little bit more time to digest information as opposed to me cramming this down on you when you have to make budget decisions. What do you think?

I like it. Okay, so what Nick did again there is when I gave him the objection of call me in six months, he didn't disagree with it and try to push the meeting. Now what he said is totally, could you tell me what's going on in six months so I can follow up more effectively instead of calling you again and again today or trying to sell you today. And then he used the information of the budgeting cycle to say, hey, let me help give you information so you're at least prepared for that budgeting cycle. So he's selling the meeting, not the product. Okay, so those are two common objections, folks. You can use this for not interested. You can use this for send me an email. But that's the framework for how to handle an objection. Okay, now let's say that we don't get an objection at all, Nick. Let's say we get silence or a tone that says beep Usually what that means is we're hitting a voicemail. So oftentimes sellers have no idea what to do when they don't even get an objection or they can't even talk to someone. So you hear that dial tone. Nick, what should I be doing in a voicemail?

So what you don't want to do when you're leaving your voicemails is sound like every other salespeople. And 98% of salespeople leave voicemails. It sound like, hey Armand, this is Nick Sigelski with 30 minutes to President's Club. The reason that I'm calling, click delete. Delete, delete. Those voicemails get deleted because you sound like every other salesperson. So here's what you should be doing instead. Three part formula. Lead with context. Lead with the trigger for why you called, point to the email that you are going to then send them. And then the third part is put your name and company at the end of the voicemail. Which you shouldn't do is never include that information because that's just sort of weird and spammy. So it might sound like let's go back to the example of I work for a company that helps orgs that are expanding into Europe. I might leave a voicemail with Armand that sounds something like Armand. The reason I'm calling you is I just finished reading the press release in time about your company's expansion into Europe. I'm literally about to send you an email with the subject line. Insert personalized subject line here whenever you get a minute. It would be helpful to know your thoughts on that. By the way, this is Nick Sigelski with 30 minutes to President's Club. Okay, so that's voicemail number one. Voicemail number two is I'm going to again reorient around that context, but I will add one sentence of the problem that I solve and how I solve that problem. Okay, so voicemail one is just context, the trigger, and I'm going to send you an email. Voicemail number two is the trigger plus the one sentence on how we solve said problem. Once you get to the third voicemail, there's a law of diminishing returns. It's probably not worth leaving a ton of other voicemails if you're going to leave them, keep them short, keep them less than 5 seconds. If you're consistently using 30 seconds to re explain your problem, solution, context, et cetera. Probably better use of your time to go make an extra cold call. Okay, so that's voicemails. Now, Armand, sometimes before we even get the chance to use our opener or the chance to practice our brand new spanking voicemail script. We get hit with a gatekeeper. Somebody answers the phone and it is not the prospect. What's your approach there?

All right, so folks, there are three types of gatekeepers we're going to go through. The first is a real gatekeeper, which is someone who is intentionally designed to put a gate between you and other people and screen out calls. The second is an operator who's literally designed to just transfer calls. That's the easiest one. And then the third is a dial by name directory. Okay, so let's say I get a true gatekeeper and they say, hey, tell me the reason for your call. All I'm going to say on my first pass is I'm going to be super casual and try to get them to think that I'm just a casual call. And so I'm going to say something along the lines of, hey, get me over to Johnny, it's Armand. Or hey, could I get over to Johnny? Super, super simple, as if I were a friend calling a friend. That'll get you there. I don't know, maybe a third of the time. For the remaining other times, usually they're going to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, who is this? Right? Or what's this call regarding? My second pass is then only leading with context. So I'll say something like, oh, totally, we work with a couple other Andreessen portfolio companies. I sent Nick a note. He should know I'm giving him a ring. It's Armand, right? That second pass will usually get a couple other people through your funnel. What's tricky is if you get stuck after that, usually they'll be like, no, no, no, no, no. What's this regarding? What's the reason for your call? At this point, I might give a light value prop or a light real reason that I'm calling, but then ask to be transferred to their voicemail. Because very, very, very rarely if they figure out that I'm a vendor, are they actually going to transfer me over. And so I'll usually say, oh, totally. Look, I'll be completely honest. My name's Arman. I work at a company called 30 Minutes to President's Club. I sent him a note and told him that I'd be following up over phone. Would you mind just shooting me over to his voicemail so I don't bug him during the day? I'll leave a voicemail and then I'll mark that in my CRM as a gatekeeper So I know not to keep calling that gatekeeper. Nick, is there anything else that you're doing as it pertains to gatekeepers?

Yeah, one thing that I have done with some success. It's similar to your context, only inclusion is if I send a really personalized creative email, I might call that out when they're pushing back on me hard. I might say something like, you know, well, no, no, what's this regarding? I need to know what this is about before I transfer you. I might say something like, well, I sent Armand an extremely creative email earlier in the week about cheeseburgers, and honestly, I just wanted to see what he thought of it. What I'm doing here is now, in this scenario, cheeseburgers are somehow attached to the problem that I solve for Armand's Persona. And so use this one. If you've sent something really creative to someone that's hard to get through to, at the very least that person is going to go mention to that CFO somebody called about an email about cheeseburgers, and that gets their attention again on said email where you're hoping to get your reply. Same as you. Law of diminishing returns. If I'm getting shut down once, twice, probably not worth my time to keep calling and trying to get blood from a stone. Let's talk about the toughest gatekeeper, the one with the weirdest voice. It's our wonderful phone tree. How do we handle phone trees?

So with phone trees, what you need to do is you need to navigate that phone tree one time and figure out what the order of numbers was to type in this person's ridiculous name into a phone. So it's probably 1-364-5672, right? And once you find the path that gets you to that person, write it down and document it in your CRM or in a tool like Outreach if you're using it. Okay? And so every time you dial that person moving forward, you just go right to that dial by name. Now, if you get a dead end, meaning a no ring directly to voicemail, or you get a busy line or anything like that, it is critical that you mark that as red. Red as in a red stop sign, meaning you should not be dialing that number again. The most aggravating thing in the world, folks, is you do your first batch of dials and then you keep running into stop signs. And then the next batch of dials, you keep dialing the bad numbers. And so you need to document the greens so you can have as quick of a path to connect as Humanly possible. And if you get stopped with a busy line or a dead phone tree, you to market. So you never dial that again. And this brings us to our final section of today, which is dialing like a machine. So one element of dialing like a machine is documenting the path. But another element of dialing like a machine, Nick, is making sure that you treat your entire call block like a workout. So how do we do that?

One thing to consider is that all of these tips work. Everything that we've talked about to this point in this playbook works. But if you only end up making three cold calls a day or two, you're probably not going to see results from that. You need to have an appreciable volume of calls in order for this stuff to work. And so what you should never be doing is sprinkling your day with cold calls at 9 o' clock and a couple at noon and a couple at 2 and a couple at 4. Not only are you seriously impeding on your productivity because of all of the context switching you're doing, you're also literally spending your whole day making cold calls. And I don't know about you, but, like, they've sort of put me in this anxious fight or flight state that I don't want to be in all day. You will burn yourself if you spend all day peppering it with cold calls. So the way that I recommend sellers handle their cold calls is block time on your calendar to only an exclusively cold call. For AES, you might need one hour block a day. For a SDR or bdr, you might need two or maybe three. This depends on where your pipeline is, what you're calling into, et cetera. But the key here is block time on your calendar. Shut down Slack, shut down email, put your cell phone away. We're treating our callback like a workout. You would not squat while texting or checking Instagram. Don't treat your cold calls the same. And then try to get all of your dials in one or two sessions so that you can be done for the day and you can move on with your life.

Exactly. And as you dial, folks, the final tactics of the day are. We already talked about documenting the path. So continue documenting things as you learn about the organization, but also as you dial various in the organization. Whether it's positive, negative, or you're getting referred to other people, it is critical to take really, really good account notes. So for example, if you get referred from one person to another, you should write that at the account level. Or if someone gives you some intel on a cold call. You should probably write that down on the account level and then use that in your opener on the next person as you bring in additional context. So do not do dials independently as if you called this for the first time ever. Build a story and a bank of research as you dial so you have a higher chance of success every single cold call you make. Alrighty, folks. So we went through your openers, your problem, props, and then ultimately how you booked the meeting. And then we went deeper on objections, voicemails and gatekeepers and how to dial like a machine. And so hopefully this was helpful to you. But Nick, how could people help us?

We made two things for you. Yes, you, the listener, to help you with your cold calls. So you can't have Nick and Arman sitting next to you while you make your dials, but you can almost have the same thing. We've put together two cold calling resources for you. One is a cold calling battle card. Two is we literally documented our friend Sarah Brazier's cold calling script and her responses to the top objections she gets. There are links in the show notes for you to steal both of those things. We'd love to give them to you so you can have Nick and Armand and maybe even a little bit of Sarah Brazier supporting you while you're making your dials. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next week.