I just received a cold call example from a salesperson that led him to schedule an appointment with me. I thought it would be good to break down the call and examine what went well and what did not.
Cold Call Example Background
I will not mention the company names the cold call 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; I 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 and am familiar with the company, it was a semi-warm call. However, I am not sure whether he knew I was a customer, as he did not say anything about it.
It might have been good to bring up or show me something he is aware of at the beginning of the call to warm it up. I am also a big advocate of confirming the prospect’s availability early in a call by asking, “Have I caught you in the middle of anything?” He could have maybe done this a little better, but that is not a major issue.
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 he jumped right into pre-qualifying me in this cold-call example by asking for 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, was using FUD (Fear / Uncertainty / Doubt) to build interest.
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, not the product. Even though we began to discuss it, he could have kept it going, gone into more detail about 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 ideas you can apply to your sales efforts.
