Ryan Dohrn says cold calling fails because prospects see you as a stranger. Warm them up first with light LinkedIn engagement, then ask for 5-15 minute meetings instead of 60 minutes. Volume dialing loses to any structured plan.
What is going on, friends and fans? Ryan Dohrn here, your friendly neighborhood sales coach, and this month we're focusing in on why cold calling really stinks and what we can do to make it a lot better and a lot more effective. Hey, whether you're listening on the podcast or watching the video, be sure to subscribe down below. Give us a like, give us a subscribe, let Google and YouTube know how it is that we're doing for all of you. All right, so if we're just being honest, which I think we should probably be, let's be honest with each other as sales professionals. Cold calling really, really stinks. And if you say that it doesn't stink, maybe you are just a rogue warrior out there, you're highly calloused or something like that. But the effectiveness of cold calling has really gone down dramatically, especially in an all-digital age. As a matter of fact, some people have said, Ryan, do people even have phones out there? And the answer is Yes, everybody has a phone, and most of the time it's in our pocket and goes with us everywhere from the bus to the bathroom to the beach to the bar, and you name it. But let's flip cold calling and that script a little bit on its head, and let me give you 3 ideas that I think you might want to consider why cold calling doesn't work as well and what we can do to flip it so we can make it a lot more effective. All right, first, typically stranger danger is a very real thing even in 2024. What I mean by that is since birth, your parents, your grandma, you know, your auntie or somebody that raised you did a really good job, I hope, and said, don't talk to strangers. Now because of that, and it's been a part of our code as a human being, okay, everyone's code as a human being, it's very likely that when you're reaching out to someone, you're a stranger to them, you're actually going against the code of life. You're basically saying, I'm a stranger to you, but I want to meet with you. And it goes against what all of us have been taught since birth, not to talk to strangers, or at least I hope you had. So if you weren't taught that, it's very important to recognize that stranger danger is real, and I've been talking about it for years. So what you do to beat stranger danger is you recognize that it's real and you deploy strategies like I'm going to share with you to potentially beat that stranger danger. Look at some of our other videos where we talk about warming up customers. Warming up someone before a cold call, whether you're a sales development rep or you're a hardcore seasoned national seller, when we warm people up and become a known entity to them before we reach out on the phone or with a prospecting email, we will always respond better to a known entity. Which leads me on to point number 2, and that is how do you become a known entity? So we know that stranger danger is real. That's the number one reason that cold calling doesn't work effectively, because you're talking to strangers. Okay, the second thing is we've got to beat that human code by being highly relevant and warming people up. Now, how do we do that? We follow them on LinkedIn. When applicable, we like and comment on things on LinkedIn. If we're dealing like with a marketing director or somebody like that, maybe we're liking the stuff that they're posting on the company's Facebook page or that company's X profile or that company's Instagram feed or something like that. Now, what I'm not suggesting from a warming up perspective, and I'm not saying this doesn't work, I just don't do it this way. I'm not suggesting that you connect with a marketing director or a CEO on Facebook or Instagram or on X. I'm, I'm not really suggesting that. I'm not saying it doesn't work, but that's not what I'm really talking about. What I'm talking about is becoming, in a very light way, becoming found on somebody's LinkedIn profile by following them, by liking, by commenting, by mentioning how good things are, by sharing their content and things along those lines, by reaching out in an email without asking for a meeting, by doing marketing touches, by sharing research, doing things to become a known entity in a non-sales way. Okay, so number 1, we know stranger danger is real. Number 2, to fight that, we want to be following people, engaging with them, and being— trying to be really super relevant, which is number 3. And that is the more relevance we have and the greater our respect for somebody's time, the greater our chances when we are cold calling on somebody. So now point number 2 about engaging and things like that really is about being relevant to somebody and not reaching out in really generic ways. When we think about the third thing, relevance in time, there's nothing more important to somebody than time. Now, maybe their God, maybe their family, maybe their bank account, but number 4 then is probably going to be, you know, their country, whatever. Number 4 or 5 is going to be their time. Follow me on this, friends. It's so important. Most people out there that we're going to be prospecting think of us as 60-minute people, meaning that if they grant us a meeting, it's going to take 60 minutes. Because because that's what we've done forever. As a matter of fact, most sales meetings— if you were to say, how long does a sales meeting take with a client? Typically someone's going to say, ah, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, 2 hours. No one's going to say 15 to 20 minutes. So what I want you to consider— and this is not a gimmick, this is just the truth— when I request a 5-minute meeting or a 10-minute meeting or a 15-minute meeting or a 30-or-less-minute meeting, where I ask for a quick chat, I almost always get further faster. So rather than just saying, can we meet about this? Can we chat about this? It's important for us to make sure that we're specifying a time and we're specifying that, you know, hey, we want to meet for 5 short minutes. Could I have a quick chat with you for 10 minutes? Could we meet for 15 minutes or less? I want to be declaring that as well. So again, folks, in review, remember, Cold calling does work actually if you warm up customers. Otherwise, what you have to do is use quantity to your advantage. So the first thing that we want to be thinking about is recognizing stranger danger is real. The second thing is we want to make sure that we're being relevant, we're following, we're engaging with people. And the third thing is we want to make sure as we're reaching out to them that we're being highly respectful of their time and declaring that we only need 5 or 10 minutes for that brief introductory call. Friends, cold calling doesn't have to stink. We can just be better at it using our AI tools, being a lot more relevant, and just having a plan of attack. I would say to you, just dialing for dollars every day and picking up the phone probably is not going to be the most effective way to be effective in your sales business. But when you add these 3 tips to it, cold calling doesn't have to stink. It just needs to be done better. Never forget, friends, if this was easy, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. This is a great career. It'll feed your family for a lifetime if you're willing to adapt, if you're willing to adopt some new ideas, if you're willing to change your strategy. But the key there is, do you actually have a strategy or are you just running and gunning like an old-fashioned, you know, gunslinger in an Old West town? Everybody needs a strategy. Any strategy is better than no strategy at all. Love to train your sales team. Love to motivate you at your national sales conferences. Reach out to me over at ryandohrn.com. All right, friends, we'll see you next time.
