Mastering The Cold Call | Writing A Script That Converts

Record. I'm glad you guys had a chance to come here. I think you guys are gonna love the.

Workshop today. I figured if I put the two words cold call in the workshop, it would attract a lot of people, and it did. We got about 190 people to register, so we got people who want to get better at cold calling. Now.

Let me pull up. Going to go into presentation mode.

All right. I hope you guys love the image of our fabulous employee Amy here. I thought it would be a great photo for the cold call today because in her office, she still has an old school phone, which I absolutely love. So what we're going to talk about today is writing a script that converts. So my goal for you guys today, I got to look at zoom here because I know I've got to let people in. I'm going to let people come in here a little bit.

Here's what you guys are going to learn today. My goal is for you. Number one.

My promise is to make you more effective on the phone so you actually, dare I say.

Cold calling.

Number two, my other promise for you is if you feel like you are a 2 out of 10 on cold calling, meaning you're not good, which was me, I got one little thing I got to admit to you right now. I'm not going to make you a 10. Sorry. But if I can make you a 6 or a 7, you're going to be a heck of a lot more effective. Somebody asked, did you share something? Yes. I'm going to be pulling up my screen here in a second. I'm still letting people in. I am going to make you. If I can take you from a 2 out of 10 with cold calling and make you a 6 or 7, you are going to be drastically better. Now, I don't need. I don't need to see a show of hands, but I want you guys to think about this. When you have your cold call power hour time block on the calendar, how many of you start sweating, do not have?

I get to the screen and it says, all right, what's your username? What's your agency code? Create a password. You know, that's where I'm at.

We have somebody there. I'm going to mute everybody for a second if you guys don't mind. All right, So I am at this point going to dive in. I think we are far enough in. We won't have any new people joining. Let me get back to sharing my screen.

It's amazing when you're trying to do all this yourself, right, guys? This is why you guys didn't see me sharing the first time because I didn't share my screen. So let's go into present mode now. You guys should see this thing. All right, so.

Here'S what you're going to learn today. Number one, why is cold calling harder than it used to be? Two key elements of an effective cold calling script. And then I'm actually going to do an exercise with you to help you build your cold calling script. So my goal for you today is I want you walking out with a good feeling about a cold call script. If you know you need a better cold call script. Like I said, not going to make you a 10. But if I can make you a 7 because you're a 2 today, this is a massive victory. Now, why are you here? If you're here because you're hoping I have a secret script that magically creates a bunch of leads out of cold calls, I'm sorry I don't have that for you, but I do have this. You might be here because you are struggling to book appointments. When we talk to our prospects on a weekly basis, the number one reason they come to us is because they're struggling to book appointments. It's just harder today than it was, especially post 2020.

The other reason you might be here is because you're not trying to avoid cold calling. But you know you need to get better. You know it has to be part of your strategy. But you're like, I gotta do something different here. Now, I often get blamed for telling people cold calling is dead. It's not dead. It is just harder than it used to be. Now let me share, guys. Before I get to why it's so hard today, let me share with you my cold calling routine. Routine eight years ago. Maybe this will bring some memories back for some of the people on the call, both past and present. When I knew I had a time block on my calendar for prospecting, here was my routine. Number one, go fill up my cup of coffee. Because for whatever reason, yeah, you got to have a full cup of coffee to do cold calling. When the reality is I was wasting a little time.

Just so I can be sure if you guys can hear me, can I give it a thumbs up from people? You guys hear it? Perfect. Okay, step one, go fill up my cup of coffee. Really? That was a way to waste time. Step two, rearrange my desk. Because you need the perfectly arranged address desk to be able to be an effective cold caller. Who's done that?

If my pens and my paper and my Notepads are in the right spot. Man, I'm ready to go. Right.

Then I would go to work doing this. I would have my notepad ready to go. And my goal was to get through my cold calls as fast as I could. Because if I said I did my 25 check marks today, I'm good. But the reality was I had no plan, no script. All I wanted to do was get through it as fast as I could. It felt good to see this on my pad of paper every week. Look at all the calls I made, but they didn't go anywhere.

And so I had to have a hard conversation with myself that, you know what? I have two choices. I could either get better. All right, let me say it this way. I could either just stop cold calling, try something different, which I did lean into heavy, but I knew I couldn't just get rid of it. I could try to become better. I could try to become a better student of the game of cold calling. Now, one thing you're going to learn today, and I have some clients on this call, so, you know, we've talked about this, where one thing that became a huge resource for me.

Was this book right here. Actually, I take it back, I grabbed the wrong book. This book right here, Building a brand story. Building a story Brand. If you want to get better at messaging, sales, communication, marketing, go read this book right now. It is a book that'll change your life. Now, we are a certified guide for storybrand, so I can use their content. But this is what changed everything for me. When I said, wait a second, I've got to be better at cold calling, I said.

It'S not always just about handling the objections they throw at you. I got to develop a whole new strategy that just lets me come on the phone with confidence. You see, my biggest challenge years ago with cold calling is because I didn't like it. I wasn't confident what I was selling.

I wasn't confident that I could help people.

And I was trying to avoid cold calling, though I was picking up the phone. Well, think about all that, gang. If I'm not confident in what I'm selling, I'm not confident that I could actually help these people. And I really don't like the task of picking up the phone the second I heard any objection. Guess what I did. Oh, okay.

I was terrible. So where I want to start today when it comes to cold calling is let's level set about why the fact you might be struggling more today with cold calling than you used to. Why is it harder than it used to be. Guys, it's just facts. Number one, it's harder to get somebody on the phone right Now. It takes 18 calls on average to get a prospect on the phone that's just on the phone. That's not even a yes.

Now do the math.

If you are making one dial per minute.

And it takes 18 calls to get one person on the phone, that is 180 calls. To get 10 people on the phone at a minute per dial, that's 180 minutes. That's three hours to get somebody on the phone.

It's just harder than it used to be. And to make it even more challenging, look what's showing up on phones now. We're calling cell phones more than we ever have. I don't know about you, but when I get a number on my cell phone I don't recognize, I'm not picking it up. It's going to voice message. But worse yet, that number might. Your phone might tell me your spam.

It is just harder to get through to a human today. That's it. Now we're gonna imagine we're able to get through. That's what we're gonna use today. We're able to get through. We get that prospect on the phone. What can we do? So what I'm gonna help you do now, now we're gonna get into the teaching content. If you've got a pen and paper, you're taking notes on your laptop, I'm gonna walk you through some exercises that are gonna be extremely helpful for you to help you craft a better cold call script. This is what made me a lot more effective.

And these are exercises that are very. This is where the workshop begins. So here's where we're going to start. We're going to start with.

Let me get through this right here.

Here's where I want you to think. An effective prospecting strategy going into 2024 has to hit all four of these boxes. There are four ways we can reach out to prospects cold one to one, which is how every one of us was taught to sell. We were all taught the cold one to one. And that's what we're going to focus on today. We have the warm one to one, which is either a personalized email blast, so you send an email to a bunch of people, but you can personalize each one, or a referral. A referral is a fantastic warm one to one. We have the warm one to many, which is what we spend a lot of our time on with our clients, which is social Media, webinars, podcasts, public speaking. That's the box. Our industry has not gravitated fast enough yet to and then we have the cold one to many, which is not as often used because that's usually done through paid advertising.

And public speaking is a very effective cold one to many because you can walk into a room, stand on stage in front of a bunch of people who have no clue who you are, and by the end of that talk, they can come up to you and say, we need to talk.

Public speaking can be a cold one to many, but it also can be a warm one to many. But a good prospecting strategy has to encompass all four of these boxes. You have to find a way to hit your prospects all four ways.

Now we're going to spend our time on Cold one to one. This is the most traditional way to do it, but it's also hard because it's cold. It's a lot of people who don't know who you are.

Now, I'm going to preference all this by saying if you just watch my content on social media and adopt some of the strategies I'm sharing and do a little more warm one to many.

Your cold isn't going to be so cold anymore.

You'll be picking up the phone and calling people who might already know who you are. You'll be sending emails to people who may already recognize your name. But that's for a different workshop on a different day. Let's talk about how you can increase the value of your cold call script. So.

We'Re going to do an exercise we call the five Star Prospect Profile.

We're going to go through some questions I want you to contemplate.

And I want you to write answers down because this is going to start building the framework for your script.

Now, to give you guys a little bonus on this, what you're about to learn with a script can also be used in email. I would take the same script you're about to learn and I would fire it as an email to cold prospects as well.

But it starts by answering a few questions. Here's what I want you to think. Number one, who is your favorite client today? If I said you need to pick one client you wish you could replicate over and over and over and over again, who would it be?

Just write the name down. Most of you are probably selling group insurance, commercial group or benefits. So write down the name of the company. Who is your favorite client?

Now let's answer the question why? The only answer you can't give is because I make the most money on it. But we have to figure out why they're our favorite client. And there's two ways we do this. We do this using demographics, and we do it using psychographics. So here's what I want you to think about. Demographics in the sports world is like an athlete's height, weight, and speed. So when you look at your ideal prospect, give me some of the demographics. What industry are they in? How big are they? If you sell benefits, how many employees do they have?

Do you work with CFOs? Do you work with controllers? Do you work with HR professionals? Write that down. Really start defining who this ideal prospect is.

Maybe their revenue size, their how much revenue they earn matters. If you're selling benefits, are they self funded? Are they typically fully insured? Commercial industry niches, Right? What industry are they in? Just list out the demographics.

Now let me share something with you that's really important about demographics. You cannot identify a prospect on demographics alone. Here's why. I have never had a client of mine say, andy, my favorite client is ABC Manufacturing. Why? Because they're in manufacturing. They have 75 employees, and I get to work with the CEO, but the CEO is a jerk. He never does anything I tell him to do. He pushes back on everything. He treats my staff like crap. But they're my favorite because they're in manufacturing. No one's ever said that.

The psychographics where the gold is.

So I want you to think about your favorite client. Who are these people between the ears?

What do they believe? What are their opinions?

What do they think about what you sell? Commercial insurance benefits? Who are these people up here? Because this is why you love working with them.

And think about that. Make a short list of why do I absolutely love working with Janet Smith, the CFO at ABC Manufacturing?

You see, the punchline to the these questions is they're your favorite because they let you do your best work. That simple.

So now you have a favorite client. You're starting to build out the why. We go to the next question. Oh, I missed a slide. What problem do you solve?

So I want you to think about this for a second. I know your natural response is, andy, we solve a lot of problems. I get it. But I bet you there's one problem that fires you up more than anything else.

When you walk into a prospecting opportunity and the prospect has that problem, you're like, yes. What is that problem? Write it down.

Now, if you're wondering at this point, Andy, what in the heck does this have to do with cold Calling, you'll see here in a few minutes.

What is the problem that lights you up to get up every day to come? Sell insurance. Because let's face it, folks, selling insurance isn't all that sexy. But there's something that gets you going. What is it.

Now? We got a problem. We've established a problem we love solving. How do you solve it? What is your process for solving that problem?

Look back at how you turn prospects into clients. I guarantee you have a process you repeat.

If you don't, it is my challenge to you going into next year. Create that process.

Here's why processes are so important.

When you have a process, you sell. Notice I say process, not a product, a process.

Brokers sell products. Consultants sell processes.

When you have a process you sell.

What happens is you start interviewing prospects to see if they're a fit for you, not the other way around for another day. What is your process now? Here's step two of the process.

Come up with a name. Do you have a name for your process?

You'll see in the cold call script where that could become very effective.

The process I built when I was selling health insurance in Colorado was Empower Health. That's what I called it. Empower Health.

Why did I call it that? I don't know. Sounded good. Just came up with a name.

So now you have, who's your favorite client? Why? What's the problem you solve? What is the process you use to solve it? The last question is, what result does that process create? Now take a minute and draw out the dream, the future of your prospect. When you are able to help them with this process, help them solve that problem using your process, what does their life look like?

You're painting the picture of their future.

Now.

What we just completed, the exercise we just completed, by the way, is not only good for cold calling, I bet you if you take time to do this again, you're going to get very clear next year on who your ideal prospect is. This exercise goes above and beyond cold calling. Folks, I have a lot of clients or a lot of prospects right now. I hope our clients don't have this problem that don't know who their ideal prospect is. I've had brokers say to me, andy, my ideal prospect is Anybody willing to say yes? No.

You've got to know exactly who your ideal prospect is. This is how you build a clear and effective marketing strategy. But now we apply the same concept to cold calling.

Because what we're going to do with this now is we're going to dovetail.

Into storytelling because we're going to focus on what you are saying. That was the framework to identify your ideal prospect.

Now we're going to say, now we're going to turn it into a conversation, a phrase, a statement.

We're going to use the brand script storytelling formula, which comes right from the book I just brought up, building a story brand.

So now I want you to take that framework. I hope everybody's still tracking with me here. Who is your favorite client? Why?

May have a short list of the demographics, the size, location, the industry, CFOs, HR. You've got a short list of the psychographics. Who are these people up here? What do they believe? What do they stand for?

We have a problem you love solving.

We have a process you use to solve it.

It's got a name even better.

And we have a good picture of the result you actually help prospects create when you run your process. Perfect. Now we're going to dive into the storytelling part of this. And here's where I want to give you guys a big mindset shift that helps you become a better cold caller.

What most advisors do when they pick up the phone, this is the mistake I always made, is the second I got an opportunity to speak.

I made it all about me.

I used pronouns like we, I, mine.

I just talked about what I do. I talked about my agency. I made it all about me.

And if there's one thing you need to know.

All your prospect cares about is what's in it for them.

That's the first mindset shift, is what you're about to learn is a format to use to just make it all about them. If we just make a shift in the messaging to reflect them, not us, not our needs, our goals, we will see more traction with our cold calling. Now we got people chiming in on the, the, oh, there we go. You guys say we've got people chiming in on the chat box. I want to make sure we're addressing it. If you just shift your message to make it about them, your cold calling will be more effective. And that's what we're about to do with the brand script storytelling formula. So here's what we're going to walk through step by step.

I want you to think about this for a second. Take your ideal client.

Knowing the problem you solve. What's their goal? Take your ideal client and think about what is their ultimate goal.

Now it can be around what you sell, commercial insurance or benefits. What's their goal?

What are they trying to accomplish.

Now?

Easy answer. What is the problem that's keeping them from their goal. Just go back to the five star prospect profile and insert that problem you love solving.

What's their goal?

What is the problem keeping them from their goal?

By the way, guys, you know what something that's really cool nowadays is after this workshop today, if you wanted to go test this out and have Chat GPT help you with it, the good news is Chat GPT knows the story brand framework from Donald Miller. It could actually help you design your script on chat because they know this framework.

Now. Part three.

This is where we got to get into the weeds a little bit. Which makes your message a little more impactful.

Every problem has three layers.

There's an internal problem. Excuse me, an external problem, an internal problem and a philosophical problem.

For the sake of cold call, I'm going to focus on the first two. The external problem.

Is nothing more than this problem that's keeping your prospect from their goals. So just remember that the external is nothing more than the problem you love. Attacking might be rising insurance cost, uncovered risks, whatever that problem is, that's the external.

But more important is the internal problem. The internal problem is.

How the external problem is affecting your prospect internally. What are the emotions that your prospect is dealing with because of the external problem? Maybe it's frustration.

For my benefits people. Maybe it's hopelessness. Nothing will do will ever work.

What are the things they're saying to themselves when they look in the mirror and nobody else is around? What are the doubts they have about that problem, that external problem?

Write it down. Write down a couple things.

We live in an industry where we believe most people buy on logic. Because a lot, a lot of what we do is based on rates and premiums, numbers, spreadsheets. So we think people buy on logic. They don't. They still buy on emotion. They justify it with the logic, the numbers. So you've got to find a way to include some of that emotion in your message.

So the external problem is the problem you solve. The internal problem is that internal conflict they have because of the external problem.

Now this is where you come in.

In the story framework, you are the guide. Notice what I said there. You are the guide. You are not the hero.

The hero is your prospect. You are just the guy. If anybody on this call is a Star wars fan, you're Yoda prospect's Luke Skywalker.

Too many agencies in our industry pivot themselves or pit themselves as the hero. They're not the hero. That prospect is.

You have two jobs as the guide. Show empathy. Show them you understand their problem, their pains.

And you got to establish credibility. Now on a cold call, very hard to establish credibility. There's not enough time.

That's for a different day, different topic on how you could build and establish credibility before a prospect ever meets you. But for the sake of a cold call, it's going to be hard to establish credibility on one call. Just is.

But you are the guy. That's your job on the phone. Think of yourself as that way. That's a great way to just create that mindset shift from the get go. I'm on the phone as a guide, not a hero.

Now your job is to tell the prospect about your process. So go back to the five star profile.

You're just going to talk about your process you use that helps prospects overcome their problem.

So write down what is my process that I use to help my prospects solve their problem.

And a bonus, bonus tip there is if you come up with a name for it, it's going to be even more powerful.

And the final step is what result does your process create? Again, going back to the five star prospect profile, you're just going to paint the picture of what my life will look like.

After I leverage your process.

So in totality, here is what storytelling looks like right here. Every story has a hero, a character, your prospect who has a goal. But they have come upon a problem that's keeping them from their goal.

Therefore they need a guide who's got a plan, your process that helps them avoid failure and achieve success.

This is storytelling 2000 years old right here. I just ruined every movie you'll ever watch from here on out or every book you'll ever read. Because they're nothing but. They're nothing but repeating story loops, that's all they are.

Think about every movie, how it starts out. In the first 10 minutes the main characters life looks great. And in a matter of minutes they encumber a big problem.

If they made a movie about everything going right all the time, it would be the most boring movie you've ever watched. That's why we have to constantly encounter problems. Because we've got to find that guide who's got the plan to fix. You are the guide to your prospects to help them fix their problem. Now.

A very key point right here, if you can see what I'm circling between, the has a problem and needs a guide.