I just received a cold call example from a salesperson that led to him scheduling an appointment with me. I thought it would be good to break down the call and examine what went well and what did not.

 

Background

I will not mention the company name the cold call example was from but I will say that they are a software company. They have a variety of different products and I am a current paying subscriber to one of their software services. There was mention of a competitor during the call and I will not mention their name either and will refer to them as Competitor A.

 

Introduction

Me: Hello, this is Michael.

Caller: Hi Mr. Halper, this is James from XYZ Corp. I am sure you are aware of what we do but I actually wanted to call you to talk about something that you might not be aware of. I appreciate you taking time to talk with me.

Me: Sure.

There’s nothing really great or bad about his intro. Given that I am a customer, it is a company that I am familiar with, so it was a semi-warm call. However, I am not sure if he knew that I was a customer, as he did not say anything about that.

It might have been good to bring up or show me something that he is aware of at the beginning of the call to warm it up more. I am also a big advocate for confirming that the prospect is available early in a call by asking something like, “Have I caught you in the middle of anything?” He could have maybe done this a little better, but that is not major.

 

Pre-Qualifying

He did an OK job of pre-qualifying me.

Caller: I am sure you use something like Competitor A or Competitor B.

Me: Yes, I use Competitor A.

Caller: Oh, OK, do you mind if I ask how you are using Competitor A?

Me: Well, I use it as storage space for a lot of my folders.

I like the way that he jumped right to pre-qualifying me in this cold call example by asking for some information about my current environment. I think this took the call in a very good direction and he got me talking a little.

The main critique that I would say here is that he did not continue in this direction enough. He probably could have asked a few more questions to figure out what is going on or how things are going.

 

Building Interest

I guess his main tactic, whether he realized it or not, that he used to build interest was using FUD (Fear / Uncertainty / Doubt).

Caller: I guess you have are aware of some of the security issues with Competitor A?

Me: Not really.

Caller: Yea, there have been some hacking incidents lately. You can do an internet search and get more details. I am not sure if you are concerned about that or not or are looking for a more secure solution.

 

Close

He went for the close really quickly in this cold call example.

Caller: What I would like to do is schedule a call where we can show you what we have that provides a more secure version of Competitor A. How does your calendar look at next Tuesday at 9:00 am.

This is typically where you look for any excuse to not agree to a meeting but he did create a little fear and I was open to talking more about that and seeing what they had and how it was different.

Me: Uh, OK, I am available for that call.

Caller: Great I will send you an email with a meeting invite and put that on your calendar and look forward to talking with you then.

What I really like about what this guy did is that he sold the meeting and did not try to sell the product. Even though we began to get into some discussion, he could have kept that going and got into more detail on the product and tried to build more interest right there in the cold call example. Instead, he stayed focused on the primary goal of scheduling the appointment and went directly to that. He locked me in and now he can focus more on selling the product in the next meeting.

We hope this cold call example gives you some ideas that you can apply to your sales efforts.