Triple Your Cold Call Meetings – Steal This Proven Script

Today I wanted to walk through the cold call script that I use when I was selling and continue to coach teams on that consistently can get top reps to book. One in three cold call connects. That literally means if you talk to three people, you can get one person to agree to a meeting. So it is literally the best feeling in the world in sales to know that you can go into a one hour dial session and you can leave with a meeting on the books. And a lot of people are really, really struggling to generate pipeline book meetings. Cold emails basically broken nowadays because of all these AI spam bots. And you see a lot of teams that are going back to the phones. And the key here, folks, is the vast majority of the advice that I give you today is going to basically be doing the exact opposite of what most telemarketers do when they ask you how's your day going? Or when they hurl a pitch at you, or when they try to like handle an objection. So there are three parts to nailing the cold call and we'll walk through them one by one. Part number one is the opener where we'll use what I call the heard the name tossed around cold call opener. Part number two is the pitch, and that's where we use something called a problem proposition. And then part number three is when you handle objections. The way we're going to do that is with what I call the Mr. Miyagi method to handling objections. And by the way, if you've read our cold calling book, it's called Cold Calling Sucks. And that's why it works. We break all this stuff down inside of that sold 50,000 copies in a year. It was the number one prospecting book last year. And so this is really pulling from a lot of stuff there. But you'll also hear some more voiceovers from me. And the last thing is I'll be using an example for a company that I consult for. Their name is Covey. And the reason I'm using them is because it's really, really, really simple. What their product does is if you have like a million resumes that you need to screen, it's an AI bot that screens all of those resumes very quickly so that you don't have to review all 1 million resumes. You can review the hundred best profiles that actually are qualified to work for your company. Alrighty, so let's turn that into cold call terms. So step number one is let's talk about the opener. There are two banned cold call openers that you should never use in your Life. And they're the two most common ones that you'll see. The first one is, how's your day going? So whenever you pick up the phone and you ask a prospect, how's your day going? You know that you don't give a shit how their day's going. And they know you don't give a shit how their day is going. And so nine times out of 10, what you will hear is something that sounds like, fine, how can I help you? And that exasperated sigh is code word for, hey, I know you're a telemarketer. Just get on with it, and I'm just waiting to reject you. A lot of times you'll just get rejected after that. That's number one. Other one that's even worse is, did I catch at a bad time? It is never a good time for a cold call. And nine times out of 10, if you ask someone, a complete stranger, did I catch you at a bad time? They're going to be like, yeah, it is a bad time. And then you might ask, when can I call you back? And they're like, not now. Call me. Call me tomorrow. And then they're part of the witness protection program, and you will literally never connect with that prospect again. And so what we're going to do instead is we're literally going to do the exact opposite of what most telemarketers do is. My goal when I'm opening cold call is for them to actually forget that it's a cold call. I want them to actually think that I'm like, in their warm network, almost like I got referred to talk to them. And so that's what we call the herd. The name tossed around opener. Okay, There are three steps to nailing the herd. The name tossed around opener. Number one is you want to have some context. In other words, you want to find, like, the common thread between that customer and other customers like them. So, for example, like in this case, when I was selling insurance, I used to say, like, hey, Jane, we work with a few other partners in the DLA Piper office down in la. It's Armand from Northwestern. Have you heard her name tossed around? And that was like, I worked with other people in the same office. Like, the closer you can get to home, the better part of the reason they won't totally blow you off. It's like, even if you work with other people in the office, and they're like, I don't know this person, and I think they might be trying to sell something, they're probably not going to be A complete jerk to you because you work with other people in their office or you work with people who share the same investor. If you're like, hey, Jane, I work with other people who breathe. It's like, it's, it's not really close to home. They're going to be like, oh, it's like fake personalization. So you got to like, find that common thread. If you're stuck, sometimes you can combine threads. So you might say, like, hey, I work with a few other CFOs in like the Chicago area. It's. It's Armand from Acme Code. Have you heard a name tossed around? Even if they haven't heard your name tossed around, it doesn't matter. Like, I use this at startups where I was the ninth employee and like, no one knew who I was. I used this when I was 19 years old selling insurance and don't. Definitely, no one knew who I was. It's about acting like you should have. So the vast majority of the time people will say, like, no, like, I haven't. But, like, how can I help you? And you'll notice, like, their demeanor is a lot more positive than the fine, how can I help you? That you'll get like, with the how's your day going? Thing. And it's because you led with context. So if they say no, that brings us to the pitch. But before we go to the pitch, there's a chance that they say yes. They're like, oh, yeah, I've heard of you guys before. And here's a secret. If they've heard of you before, you don't have to pitch. You would be like, oh, I guess we must have screwed something up. Normally we'd be working with someone like you by now, I guess. What did you hear? And then they'll usually just like, bring you right to the objection. Or they'll be like, oh, I've been considering you guys for a while. Or, oh, I'm not super familiar, but I've definitely, like heard the name tossed around. And you sort of like, go to the pitch anyways. All right, so that brings us to step two, which is pitch, which is not actually a pitch. So the problem with most pitches is they tend to be like, we focus. They tend to focus on like, what you do instead of like, what the prospect is thinking about. So like, let's say, for example, you were looking at like nutrition plans or workout plans or something in the fitness space. No one cares about your seven day shortcut to shred weightlifting program. They care about, hey, I Want to like look really good during the summer without spending all day in the gym. That that's what gets their attention. And so you want to lead with the problem they're trying to solve and then just solve the problem in as few sentences as possible. Like this is where like marketing teams totally screw over salespeople is like they just stuff them with product knowledge and they're like, this feature produces this benefit and this feature produces this benefit. It's like we have this dashboard that gives you visibility across all your managers and like you end up speaking in product product language instead of problem language. And so the problem proposition is very simple. You're going to lead with a triggering problem that literally gets your prospect to like sit up and they're like, okay, that's pretty good. And then you want to solve it in one sentence with a one sentence solution. And then you just want to ask if they're open to learning more in like a low friction or an interest based called action. So that sounds like this. If we go back to that example at Covey, again, it like sounds an AI screening resume bot. You want to like describe this problem in like triggering specificity. That might sound like this. Normally when I'm talking to like other talent leaders in the Sequoia portfolio, they like are completely inundated with like 3,000 applications on the first day that they post a software engineer job posting. Covey uses AI and takes in like everything that you give us around your ideal candidate profile and it will surface the top 10, 10% of candidates so you don't have to screen all of the resumes. My guess is like, you're probably totally set, but are you open to like taking a look at this thing for one year olds? Not now, but like when I'm not cold calling you out of the blue. And so again the three steps there is like triggering problem. That triggering problem needs to have hairy lollipop specificity. What I mean by that is if I told you a story where like you're walking around, you're like licking a lollipop and then you dropped it onto a shag rug and you held it up to this light right here, what would you see? You would see like hair and like dust speckles like off of the lollipop and it would be disgusting. Like that's the level of specificity that you need when you're describing your problem. If the level of specificity that you're using when you're describing the problem is like people don't like screening resumes or like doing this task takes a lot of time. It's not triggering enough, it doesn't evoke an emotion. So like, and a lot of this comes forward in your tone where it's like, it's like absolutely ridiculous. They have to screen, literally. Like imagine screening like a thousand paper resumes. Like the stack would go this high on top of your desk. Like it is actually laughable to think about it. Some of this comes through in your tone. And then with your one sentence solution, you don't give too many details about your product. People don't care what your product does. People need to know enough about what your product does so that they can believe you can solve the problem. So notice in that case I wasn't like, oh, and we can filter by this, this, this, this and this and we have and these dashboards and reporting and all this nonsense that like no one understands. I was saying like, hey, like we use AI to take what you want to see in a good candidate and then we only show you the best candidates which solves that problem. It's dumb human language. No buzzwords like single source of truth, streamline, optimize, all in one platform leading provider of one stop shop. All of these things mean absolutely nothing to your prospect. They, they sound good to your marketing team, but they mean nothing to a prospect. And they're also all the words that like every other seller is using. And so they immediately put you back in the telemarketer category.

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And then lastly, don't ask them for a meeting in your call to action meetings feel heavy. Try to ask them for like interest if they're open to learning more. Or in the best case ask them to like take a test drive or come up with an offer. It's like hey, do you want to give this thing a spin on one of your roles. Not now, but when I'm not calling you out of the blue, right? See if you can like get them to take a seat in the car. Not like sit down for a 30 minute demo with a specialist, which like no one wants to do right now. And now at some point, like every once in a while you get a nice deal where they're like, sure, that sounds great, I'd love to meet. And whenever that happens, I'm almost like surprised. I'll like look up the person's LinkedIn. I'm like, they still work here. Like, did I even call the right person? But like, sometimes people say yes. Usually people will be like some sort of objection. All right, and so this is when we start to talk about the Mr. Miyagi approach to handling objections. What most people do when they are handling objections is, is they try to handle the objection, they try to fight the objection. And if you've ever had someone try to change your mind, the number one thing that I can do to not change your mind is I can tell you that you're wrong. Okay? And that's what most sellers do when they hear an objection. If someone says like, I'm not interested, they start like pitching harder and they're like, well, like, here's why I believe the solution that we bring is more valuable than what you're using today. Or if someone is like citing a competitor, you'll say like, oh, well, that competitor is not good for reasons like this, this and this. And other customers saw the value because of this, this and this. And the customer starts kicking away. Because like, usually when someone gives an objection, it's because they've made a decision to do things a certain way and that way was not your way. And so when you fight that objection, you're fighting the way that they do things. Okay? And so that's why the first step of handling any objection is to pattern break and you're actually going to agree with the objection. So let's pretend that someone gives us a competitor as an objection, okay? And so for the sake of covey, let's assume that they're using some other resume screening bot, right? Of which there are many. So I'm going to say something like this. I should have assumed you had something in place because honestly, like, screening thousand resumes would be a huge pain. And I'm not going to lie, like, usually when you have a bot in place, like it doesn't even make sense to switch off it. So they're like this person not going to sell me. That's what happens when you agree with the objection is like you release pressure. Step number two is you need to incentivize conversation. I don't have enough information to handle this objection yet and I need to start to get them talking. When people start talking, they tend to feel comfortable. The job of a good therapist is to get their person talking. If the therapist is doing all the talking, then the person will start to clam up, be like, ah, don't give me advice, don't solve my problem for me. Like part the of of the reason therapy works is like they get you to talk yourself into the right solution, right? And so we're going to do some like sales therapy here and we're going to do something really slick. So here's a secret. With competitors, I need to ask them a trap question and I need to know like at least one trap question per competitor. What that means is I need to think of what is one thing that my competition can't do that I can do. And then I'm just going to ask them how they do that thing so that they come to the answer on their own terms. So in the case of Covey, a lot of times someone's existing recruiting software will have like an AI bot attached to it, but it's like pretty crappy. It's like glorified filters, right? And there are certain things that you can't look for. Like you can't look for like someone who got multiple promotions and a short period of time, like trajectory or worked for like certain blue chip type of companies. And so I'm just going to like ask that in a trap question. So I'm going to say like, hey, Jane, just so no one from my team calls you again. I noticed that your team is like hiring a bunch of like software engineers. And I have to assume that in the bot you're able to do things like point out the human level nuance of things like quick promotions over a certain number of years or worked for like blue chip tech companies in this industry or like worked for both big companies and small companies. So they've seen scale in startups. Like are you able to like get that level of nuance? Just because I want to make sure that this is like actually a dead deal. So notice I'm doing a lot of incentivizing here. And what I mean by that is I'm constantly throwing in little things like, hey, just so my team doesn't call you again, or just so I like actually make sure that this one's, like, a complete, complete waste of time. Could you, like, really tell me, like, why this thing doesn't work? But then I'm, like, layering in little traps, and I'm like, hey, like, my guess is you can probably see if someone's gotten four promotions in the last seven years, and, like, that's something that I know the other competition can't do. I'm, like, laying these traps so that they'll usually give you an answer that's, like, it doesn't do all of that, but it sort of gets the job done for the most part. And that's my opportunity to do step three, which is, like, selling the test drive. Okay, so here's the thing is, like, you're, like, right at the finish line, you sort of, like, poke this hole of doubt in the competitor. And a lot of times, this is when, like, sellers will come in with, like, pressure pitch, and they'll be like, well, our product, like, has the ability to, like, do all these advanced filters and show you these types of candidates and these types of candidates, and immediately the prospects, like, sales pitch again, and, like, you lose the deal. Right? And so you never want to sell the product. You want to sell the test drive. Okay, so you don't want to, like, sell people. Here, here's this, like, nice shirt that I want you to buy right now. Here's this, like, Tesla that I want you to buy right now. You want to be like, hey, like, I know you got a car already. Like, do you want to give this thing a ride? Like, just so you know it's out there. And nine times out of 10, like, people want to take the test drive. Like, Tesla has sold a ton of cars to people who, like, never thought they were going to get a Tesla. And then they took the test drive, and they're like, oh, like, that's. That's a car, right? And so you're gonna do that with your product. And so if I was selling the test drive at Cubby with Jane, I'm gonna say something like this. I'm like, jane, honestly, like, I've noticed, like, you're hiring some, like, really awesome engineers. And, like, my guess is you have a pretty refined candidate profile. My guess is you're probably not gonna switch off of your existing tool. But, like, are you open to, like, us running this on one of your roles? Because we can filter for a lot of that, like, human level nuance that you're talking about. And if nothing else, like, you'll know what's out there and you can see what it looks like. And nine times out of ten they'll be like, yeah, I'll take a look. And then like once they're in the car, then you can be like, so like, maybe we could talk about financing. Maybe we could buy out your current car. Maybe we can like buy out your lease. Like you can do all that stuff and quote unquote, sell the value of your solution when you aren't doing a cold call on a complete stranger. But like a common mistake that people will make is like, they'll try to like turn these cold calls into sales pitches. And like the phone is a meeting setting device. Like get them on an actual call where you can like sit down. You're not catching them in between meetings. You're not going to get like interrupted by them like being like, shoot, I got to jump to my next one. And then you can actually walk them through a proper sales process. If you like this one, there are a couple of resources that I'll give you free. One, like we have this entire script template for yourself that you can get in the show notes. We have 18 objection talk tracks. I literally went through one of them that you can access for free down in the show notes. And if you really like this one, we put together an entire cold calling course that walks through the opener, the problem prop, the objections, how to manage your day, and a million other different things that I didn't cover in this video inside of a step by step course. And because you're watching this video, there's a special discount code down in the YouTube show notes. You can go check those ones out. Alrighty folks, if you like this one, it would mean a ton if you liked and subbed. This channel is the number one way that we can continue to keep doing content like this. And if you like this one, let me know what you want to see down below in the comments or something like that. We cover all types of cold calling things and I've talked about cold calling so much that I don't always know what is top of mind for people out there. So let me know what you want to cover or if you have like a product that we would want to do like a pitch on or something like that and I'm sure we'll come up with something fun. Artifacts, pace sa.