I recently received an inbound cold call and I thought it is a cold call example that is worth analyzing because there are a few things that could have been done better. In this video, you can hear the actual call and after the call recording, I discuss a few things that I think are worth talking about.

Don’t open your cold call with “I know you are busy.”
In this cold call example, the salesperson opens the call by telling me that he knows I am busy. While I am a big believer in operating with empathy in all areas of your life and by the salesperson saying this, he is actually showing empathy – he understands that I am busy and communicating to me that he knows what is going on on my side, I think this is not as it sub-communicates weakness instead of empathy.

I do not want you to be a pushy and aggressive salesperson, but I do want you to be a confident salesperson. And when you talk about a prospect being too busy for you, you display more confidence than weakness. You are worried about bothering the prospect. But if you truly believe in the value you and your product offers, would you be so concerned about bothering somebody?

He sounds like a salesperson trying to sell something.
The other thing about saying “I know you are busy” in this cold call example is that it sub-communicates “I am a salesperson trying to sell something”. As soon as you let a prospect know this on a cold call, their guard will go up and they will begin to get rid of you.

Everything I recommend that you do will minimize how much you appear to be a salesperson trying to sell something. It is OK to be a business person or a consultant that represents a product or company and you may end up selling something as part of a future discussion, but that is different than “I am an annoying salesperson and I am going to try to talk you into buying something from me”.

You can tell he is reading from a script
I am with SalesScripter so you know that we are all about scripts. But we do not want you reading from a script. A script should be a guide of key points to say in different situations. It should never be something that you read from and you can tell from this cold call example that he is reading from a script.

Horrible phone connection quality
You can tell right away on this cold call that the phone connection is horrible. My guess is that he is using VoIP and not using a quality system or provider.

Making cold calls is extremely difficult with the perfect phone connection. If you add on top of that a bad connection, you might as well not even waste your time.

We hope this cold call example gives you some ideas on how to improve your cold calling!