In this vlog, Ryan Shank from PhoneWagon shares a practical framework for modern cold calling. He critiques the common “feature‑dump” script and argues that successful outbound calls must (1) reach the decision‑maker, (2) sound human and unscripted, (3) open with a data‑backed pain point that resonates with the prospect, (4) position the offering as a “painkiller,” and (5) convey genuine enthusiasm. Ryan illustrates the approach with a cybersecurity‑training example, using statistics (e.g., 60% of breaches occur at the employee level) to dramatize the risk and then pitching training as a cheap, effective remedy. He also stresses the importance of a multi‑step outreach flow—initial call, relationship building, and a later ask—rather than pushing for a sale immediately. The video promises a follow‑up that will detail the post‑call flow and specific ask strategies.
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What up, guys? It is Ryan from PhoneWagon. Today we have a special video. We're back. We got the headset back on. I know you guys missed the headset, all you original OG vlog followers. Today I want to talk about something that we've been doing a lot of recently that I think a lot of people get a lot of value out of, but they think it's dead. It is called cold calling. Today I'm not going to actually dive into like scripts or funnel metrics. We've done that in different videos. I'm going to put the link to those in the description, so check those out. We're also launching another video and blog post this week about customer acquisition costs and how long it takes to pay back the cost to acquire those sales. But the thing that I do want to talk about is the approach and how to actually go into a cold call and what should you do. So someone actually who follows the vlog sent me something recently and they said, "Hey, I want to start going outbound and doing cold calls for my services." They provide like security services or something like that and they said, they gave me a sample script that they were going to do. And by the way, before they even gave me the script, they said, "Hey, here's the flow of what I want to do. I want to make a dial, I want to call someone, I want to set up a demo, and then I want to make the sale and a follow-up meeting." And I said, "Look, the flow is right. The flow is right." And then they sent me the actual script and they basically, inside of the script, it was this feature dump. There was no pain points that were pressed on. It was like, "Hey, we do, you know, like security training for businesses and security training helps businesses, blah, blah, blah," and like all these like feature, feature, feature, and I was like, That is not heavy hitting. If you called me out of the blue and started telling me that you do that, like, one, I want to go to sleep. I want to slam the door in your face, slam the phone in your face. Like, I can't even get excited about that at all. I was like, so what I told them and what you need to do when you're cold calling someone, first of all, you have to get to the decision maker, which is like difficult in the first place. So you got to not sound like a robot, not sound like you're reading from a script, not sound like you're doing 100 phone calls in a single day. Okay. You got to sound like this is your only call. You're kind of curious. You don't really do this very often. You're like, hey, I'm— hey, what's up? "What's up? It's Ryan. I'm over here at Ryan's Security Training Firm. I was actually on your site. Do you guys— I'm sorry, by the way, is John available?" And they're like, "Oh no, yes, no." John, he's never available. I totally get it. I get it. We're all busy. "So I was looking. Do you think you could just maybe send me to his voicemail? That's fine." Whatever, but you want to sound like you're figuring it out, you don't do a lot of these calls, that sort of thing. But then the other thing, by the way, once you get to a decision maker, you want to hit hard on a pain point. Be like, did you know that 60%— so by the way, this pain point is going into security, like this company in particular sells like security training, cybersecurity training, right? So one, you want to use data. You want to use data to drive home the fact that, you know, there's this crazy pain point and they need your services. Like 60% of cybersecurity breaches happen at the employee level, right? Right? And guess what? 100% of those could be avoided if your employees just went through some basic training. So guess what? If you get breached right now, all of your clients are probably going to leave you, right? They're going to leave you because they don't trust you. You're not secure. You don't have the proper training. They're going to go to one of your competitors. And that way you're actually not going to have any more clients at all. They're all going to leave you. You're not going to be able to have any more business. You're probably going to have to go out of business. Unemployment's not going to show up. Then you're not going to have any food and you're going to go— you're going to be completely poor and on the streets because You didn't have this cybersecurity training that is so easy, it's so cheap, and you know, it's going to help prevent you from getting a data breach. That was a little exaggerated, but you kind of get the point. It's like you want to like hammer home this pain point of like, look, you need to get this training because guess what? If you don't, your employees are going to get breached. And then guess what? Your clients then aren't going to trust you and they're going to leave you for another company. But by the way, you can apply this into all businesses, right? So if you're— regardless if you're selling like CRM, right? It's like, hey, you need to keep track of all of the communication with your clients. Because you don't want to call one of your clients and not remember the previous conversation and then them think that they don't matter to you and then they are going to go to one of your competitors. They are not going to retain or you are not going to be able to close them if this client thinks that you don't care about them or anything like that. The point is you want to always lead with this pain point. A lot of times you are going to want to lead with just data. You want data that says like 60% of the time cybersecurity attacks happen at the employee level. That is just Fact, okay? And then from there, you wanna then just hammer in, hey, I have a painkiller to alleviate that pain point from you, okay? So that's what you wanna do. Hit 'em with the pain point and tell them how you're gonna be able to help them with that pain point. The other thing, by the way, when you're doing cold calls is like, you wanna be enthusiastic. If I call someone and I'm just like, hey, did you know that like 60% of the time, like cybersecurity attacks happen on the employee? Like, who gives a shit? If you're enthusiastic, that is contagious and then that will rub off on them. They'll get excited about it and then will want to buy your services. So that is the lesson today about cold calling, about going into someone, leading with this pain point, showing them that you have something to alleviate their pain. That's what we are going to do. We are going to come back with another video and talk to you about once you are actually talking to someone, what the flow should be, what the ask should be. It's hard to just ask for a sale right away, but hey, if you can have a multi-step process.
