Rediscovering the Lost Art of Cold Calling with Kevin Hopp

This is One of these LinkedIn talking head debate pieces I love. You know, like Morgan Ingraham Morgan and I like heavily disagree on intros. I gotta, I gotta say what I feel. It's so robotic. Yeah, I hear you. Well, it turns out it's not by chance. It's not random. It's not like, oh, I got lucky and the guy was in the market for it. And if you respect people's time, they'll respect your pitch later. So ask for permission and then get into it. Every cold call is just to get that person out of that stage in their prospect life cycle, which is cold into aware. And once they're aware, then all of a sudden they're going to be thinking of the business problems that you have if you follow up. Right? There's a saying that Ryan Reissert introduced to me. Fat stacks in the circle backs. Okay? And a lot of my clients, I tell all my clients this because I say, hey guys, you guys are running your follow up list every day, right? And they're like, oh, well, I did it yesterday, do I do it today? I'm like, do it every day. Follow up with them every day. You have to follow up. The difference between the good sales guy and the above average sales guy is the above average guy follows up. Right? Don't get so caught up in chasing new new new that you forget that every impression you have with someone. And by the way, when you connect with someone, the auto dialer, you know that that number goes to that person and they will pick up their phone. That's different, right? Like think about like the idea that if you have a hundred names and numbers on a list, the fact of the matter is there's a big portion of them that will never pick up their phone, right? That goes into list building strategy. We should talk about that in a minute. But let's go back to this idea of a script, right? A lot of people say, I can't use a script. I'm going to sound like a robot. It has to come from the heart. I got to say what I feel. It's so robotic. Okay, I hear you. Here's my answer to that. And I go through this with all of my clients. A script is a handrail. The visual looks like this. You got a door right here. This is our conversation. The conversation goes up and down. That's why it steps. Our script is a handrail. What does that mean? When you're a new sdr, you're getting beeped into conversations. This is hello, hello, You're Getting into the conversation, your goal is to get to meeting set, right? How do I get there? Well, it turns out it's not by chance. It's not random. It's not like, oh, I got lucky and the guy was in the market for it. There's a way to lead the conversation. And this is one of the basic tenants that make sales conversations different than any other conversations you have in your life. Right. That's why I think opinionated people make great salespeople. Because if you don't have the opinion that your product changes the way that these people are going to do their work, live their life, get things done, make money, whatever it is, then you're not going to have good conversations. So the script's a handrail. So when you're, when you're a kid, meaning you just started cold calling and you have to get up the steps. What does every kid do when they get on steps and they're going up? They hold onto the handrail and the script's going to take you there. It's designed, I design scripts as a, as a path through conversations that lead to predictable outcomes. It's not mistake, it's not chance, it's not, I know my universe. We understand all the things they could possibly say, right? And when you know everything that they could possibly say, you can craft an actual path for someone to go through a conversation. You're asking them the same questions, they're going to give you a either binary answer or an open ended answer. And you know where to take it from. From there. Because you're calling about a certain topic and you're calling a certain person, once again, it's not random. So just like kids always grab the handrail when they go up, adults sometimes don't. Right? Like when you get really good at it. Like when you, when you're, when you go to your friend's house, you've been there 20 times. Those big steps that used to go up when you guys were, you know, 10 years old, now you're 14, you kind of skip two steps and you jump. But what ends up happening is you get to the same outcome. So people say that they can't use a script. And I get pushback on this from time to time. Like, well, scripting is going to be robotic. They're going to know I'm a cold caller, this and that. Look, dude, you don't have to use every word of the script. And in fact, I don't want you to use the word, the script, word for word after your first or Second week, I need you to flow the script. The script is just a handrail guiding you along your path. Right. I think a lot of teams out there don't use scripts. If they do use a script, it might be like from marketing. And don't let a marketing person write a sales script like a call script. Right. It's not marketing, Schlix. It's not a pitch, it's a conversation. But you have to have a guide rail to it. So scripting and following up is like basic stuff, but geez, people don't do it.

I think it's so funny when people fight back on scripts because everyone uses a script. Everyone uses a script. Just whether or not it's written down. And if it works. If you are saying something that is your script, that is your script. That's what you're saying is the delivery of your script. Just most people change their script on every call or they don't track it, or they don't have an intention behind it. They don't have the best practice you talk about.

Right.

So touch on that real quick. We think about a script. What are some of the best practices?

Right.

Maybe there's two best practices I'd love for you to touch on, the intro and the asking for the meeting. Because if you don't nail the intro, you don't get to go up the steps. Right. You don't get to have the conversation. But also at the end, a shockingly high amount of reps never actually ask for the meeting. They hope the prospect will say, yeah, okay, so what do we do now? Or can we set something up? So let's talk about the intro first. Or like, how do you earn the right to keep the conversation going? Let's talk maybe best practices on like how to actually ask for the meeting.

Absolutely. And this is, you know, one of these. This is One of these LinkedIn talking head debate pieces that I love. Like Morgan Ingram. Morgan J. Ingram and I like heavily disagree on intros. And I'm going to be on his Muffins with Morgan podcast talking about that pretty soon here because I'm a huge fan of clearly stating who you are and asking them how they're doing today. Right. And that's controversial. There's people that are screaming at their phone right now saying, dude, that's stupid. Kevin. Don't ask them how they're doing. There's 100 ways to do it. The reason I do it this way is I know that it works using the systems. Right. So the other thing that I have to Touch on here is the way that I teach cold calling is using technology. My list building methodology, then my script, it all is connected. It's not by chance. It's not. Yeah, use whatever here and then, like throw a list in the dialer and then I'll use this script. It all has to line up, so. Or using a dialer that gets you beeped into a conversation means you're going to have way more conversations that day because you're skipping all the people that are picking up, which is amazing. I start with, hey, this is Kevin from Voris. How you doing today? And you say that very genuinely. The more genuinely you say that. The analogy I use with the reps is pinball. So that pinball of, hey, how are you doing today? This is Kevin with Voris. Goes into their head and it goes, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Now what do we know is going to happen? It's not going to hit green anywhere. It's not going to be like, I know Kevin, I know Voris. I'm doing great today. That's not what's going to happen. And I love that because it's a predictable outcome. So what comes after that 99% of the time is, I'm okay, who is this? Or they just skip to, where'd you say you're calling from? Or, yeah, I'm all right. What would you say your name was again? Mm. Which I love. What do they. So, so they go ding, ding, ding, ding out the other end. And the pinball comes back out and says, who are you? And then you restate who you are. Yeah, it's Kevin with Voris. And then I'm a huge fan because we're using a dialer, which makes automated follow ups really easy, and sequencing technology, which makes it so you never have to like, put someone back into a sequence. It just keeps them in there. I'm a big fan of asking for permission, which again, is another. Another hot take. Right. Talking head to LinkedIn. There's a hundred ways to do it, by the way. Like, you don't have to do it my way. I'm just telling you the Kevin hop voice way of doing it. Ask for permission. Hey, I know I'm an interruption. Do you have 30 seconds? I'll tell you exactly why I called. Right. And what their brain is when we say that to them. Their brain is going to click and say, I'm too busy. No. And if that's the case, I love that. Awesome. Bye. You hang up on them and then they're back in your sequence the next day and the next day, and then you'll catch them again if they're busy, don't pitch. The worst thing that we can get in a cold call is a false negative. A false negative is I'm not interested. It's like, you know, rep will look at me and say, oh, they're not interested. And I'm like, why? What are they doing today? How are they solving that business problem? You know? Oh, we didn't have a conversation. Oh, you didn't have a conversation with them? It's false negative. Right. So anyways, their brain is hungry for that information. Yes. Like the two things that every single person, every single person on every call ever wants to know. Who are you and why are you calling me? Who are you and why are you calling me? So you have to give that to them right away. But then I'm a fan of acknowledging the interruption. And by the way, this asking for permission thing became much bigger deal during COVID because you hear the dogs barking in the background, you hear the kids screaming. You hear something going on, and if you respect people's time, they'll respect your pitch later. Right. So ask for permission and then get into it.