In this interview, Abdoulaye Ba and Speaker A dissect why sales closers who excel with warm, personal‑brand audiences struggle when tasked with cold traffic. They argue that warm‑audience closers act like cashiers—reacting to questions without a disciplined call framework—while cold‑traffic closers follow a strict, multi‑phase structure that educates and reframes prospects. The conversation critiques the prevalence of low‑quality high‑ticket sales programs that train closers only on the specific product they sell, neglecting broader role‑play across industries. Both emphasize the need for live call reviews, multi‑niche objection‑handling practice (e.g., roofing, B2B), and hiring SDRs/closers with proven cold‑traffic experience rather than personal‑brand backgrounds. They also discuss the broader skepticism toward the high‑ticket sales space, noting that many view it as a pyramid scheme due to inflated closing rates on warm leads. Ultimately, the dialogue underscores that success with cold leads requires thorough education of prospects, belief‑shaping mechanisms, and credible positioning of the seller.
Chapters
The one who is accustomed to warm audiences, I view them more as cashiers. To me, you're not necessarily great at sales, you're great at marketing. I've also encountered a lot of people that actually believe the high-ticket space is appearance key.
A lot of those coaches have tried to crack cold, right? But they fail massively at that.
I don't wanna talk bad on anyone, but there's a lot of bad sales programs out there.
You believe that, for example, a cold closer would have more success into like an offer that has a personal brand and a huge following compared to like a warm closer that would go to an offer where it's completely with people that never heard of the business or even of the offer?
Definitely. And the thing is, because a closer who has experience closing cold leads, they're not educated, they haven't been through hours and hours of content and all these kinds of things. Such a closer, is very strict with his structure. He has all these phases on point. He knows what phases he needs to go through, knows what points he needs to touch on before he actually moves on. And he holds himself to that same structure every single time. But the one who is accustomed to warm audiences, I view them more as cashiers, you know, they're just there to respond to some questions and then just cash in the money. And I actually had such a closer on one of the offers that we were managing. It was a B2B offer. When I had that closer, who was a top closer in a warm audience, he was struggling.
The thing is, even when I start hiring, you know, SDRs, I never hire SDRs that only did closing for a personal brand. The reason is just because they can get away with so much stuff. Like you said, a cold SDR has way more structure and as well goes over the structure in details to make sure that he hits every single point that's needed in order to You know, reframe, you know, change the person's belief. Yeah. Educate that person well enough as well.
Mm-hmm.
You know, 100%. Yeah. But I feel like a lot of these SDRs do get sales training though, right? They do follow a program. Mm-hmm. And still there's a big difference. You believe like the program that they're buying from, sometimes they're not getting teached on how to actually close calls. Yeah.
I mean, to be fair, and I don't, I don't want to shit on anyone, right? I don't want to talk bad on anyone, but there's a lot of bad sales programs out there because I have a lot of closers and setters coming in, but they started out with someone else.
Okay.
Because I don't work with beginners. I only work with them if they are already live on the seat. They have live calls that we can review, that we can train upon so that they make more money. Okay. So that's what I'm doing. But when they come and we work together, the first training and the first call review or the first roleplay is always so eye-opening to them. And they're always baffled by the level of feedback and the level of detail that we work with.
Yeah.
And one thing that made me cringe a lot is that these closers and setters, they get training from someone, but the only roleplays that they train on Is to close for the program they got closed on. That just doesn't make any sense to me.
Yeah.
You know, and when I ask them like, okay, do you have any call reviews that you can show me? Try to close B2B that you try to close for a roofing company, for another biz op, for anything. They cannot show me. The only thing they can show me is how they sold for that coaching program and it floods or it makes the high ticket sales space look very bad because I've also encountered a lot of people that actually believe the high ticket space is a pyramid scheme. They get closed on a program and now they have to become a setter or closer for that specific program. But you already know which ones I'm, I'm probably talking about, you know?
See what you're saying? 100%. You know, there are a lot of sales gurus in the space as well that are selling coaching and that claim to close X amount, but most often it's always on their own offer that they're closing. Hence why that they have such high closing rates and cash collection, et cetera. And a lot of the people right now are very skeptical of the sales space because of that. Mm-hmm. Because even them, they're more sophisticated, those sales gurus, into like warm leads, closing warm leads, easier deals, layoffs. Yeah. Almost because their content doesn't work. Exactly.
What I would say, if you want to teach objection handling, show us how you objection handle prospects, for example, in the roofing niche, for example, in the building niche.
It's a very different ballgame.
Exactly. With A-type leads, that's a whole nother ICP than showing us your objection handle sales reps that want to master objection handling.
Yeah.
All right. That's the easiest thing. I did that too. You know, I was closing. I had to close some, some sales managers or whatever. You're selling something to them that they already believe in as well. Do you understand that difference? And that's something that does tarnish the high ticket sales space is what I believe. It baffles me that people, you know, fall into that trap. I'm not saying that these closers aren't great at closing, but you're selling for a big personal brand. You're selling objection handling. You show us objection handling in your content and you're selling it to people that want to master objection handling. So to me, you're not necessarily great at sales. You're great at marketing.
Good at marketing. Yeah. Because the only reason that those people also want to buy from them is because of their content on how they objection handle and how they do sales as well.
Exactly.
Which means they're already far more nurtured compared to a cold lead who has never seen you. Have it like very difficult to crack cold audiences. Yeah. It's literally what I make my living on. Yeah. Your pool of your warm audience runs out. Either you closed a lot of people there, people are not willing to buy anymore, that warm pool runs out. So now a lot of those coaches try to crack cold, right? But they fail massively at that. The reason why, and that's what you're teaching your sales reps as well, you have to educate them first about your mechanism. Then you have to let them believe that the solution to their problem is that mechanism. And then you still have to convince them that you're the right guy that can get them that result.
