In this video, we provide a real cold call example that shows what not to do. The salesperson on this cold call is using a product-focused sales pitch and approach, which we discuss in many of our videos, so this is a great real-life demonstration of many of the concepts we try to explain.
Product-Focused Sales Approach
The product-focused sales approach is where the salesperson primarily talks about their company when communicating with prospects.
This is who I am.
This is the company I am with.
This is the product I sell.
Do you need what I sell?
Can we meet to discuss what I sell?
Product-Focused Cold Call Opener
The salesperson on this cold call example is clearly using this approach because he opened the call by saying:
We are a direct sales organization.
We work on all stages of the sales process.
Whether that is frontend development, developing prospects, setting next stage appointments.
Product-Focused Cold Call Close
He then went for the close by saying:
Without us getting into a conversation around if you guys are working with an outside company, what I would like to do is get you guys a small breakdown of our services in the next week or so.
The owner of our company can tell you about who we work with, how we execute the sales process,
Are you available for on Monday or Tuesday sometime?
While it can seem logical to use a product-focused approach, especially if you have been hired to sell a product and get paid when you sell that product, it is not a great way to sell because it makes the call all about the salesperson (their product, their company) and all about their interests (selling their product). And this cold call is a great example of that because 95% of the call is the salesperson talking, with not even one question being asked.
Here are other reasons why the product-focused approach is not a great approach:
- All about me
- The salesperson’s interests
- Prospects get sold to a lot
- You sound like a salesperson
- More objections and rejection
- Prospects not in buying mode
- Missed opportunities
- Fewer leads and fewer closed deals
- Selling is difficult and stressful
Prospect-Focused Sales Approach
An easy and immediate way to improve what this salesperson did is to change to a more prospect-focused sales approach. This would be to completely flip everything around, and instead of being all about the product, we can be all about the prospect.
This is how I help.
These are the problems I solve.
How are you doing in those areas?
We might be able to help.
Are you available for a conversation?
To achieve this, we will ask questions to learn more about the prospect and shift the conversation to them. And instead of opening with an explanation of what we sell, we will introduce it after we identify what the prospect is doing today and present it as a solution to their needs.
I am not interested.
Value Prop Cold Call Opener
Instead of opening the call by talking about the product, we can share our value proposition by saying something like:
The reason for the call is that we help businesses to:
- Get more clients and revenue
- Increase sales revenue from new clients
- Generate more leads
- Decrease time spent generating leads
I don’t know if you want to improve those areas, and that is why I was calling with a question or two.
Questions
We can then make the call about the prospect by asking questions. We can start by asking pain questions.
- How much of a priority is it to increase your growth rate?
- How do you feel about your ability to get into new accounts?
- How do you feel about the amount of leads you are currently generating?
- How important is it to decrease time spent on lead gen activities?
We can either mix in or transition to current state questions.
- What are you doing to generate leads?
- Are you performing any type of cold outreach or outbound lead generation?
- Are you working with a provider or agency for lead generation?
- Do you have internal resources to work on generating leads?
- How many salespeople do you have?
- How many meetings are you currently setting with potential new clients per week or month?
Pain Points
If our questions do not uncover any needs or challenges, we can share the problems our product or service helps to fix.
Businesses that we work with often find it difficult to:
- Always a need to get more clients and revenue
- Challenging to generate leads
- Difficult to get a foot in the door of new accounts
- Time-consuming to work on lead gen activities
Are you concerned about any of those areas?
Product Intro
After talking about the prospect and, hopefully, identifying areas where there is room for improvement, you can introduce your product as a solution to the prospect’s needs.
Well, it might make sense to talk more because we provide sales outsourcing services:
- We are a direct sales organization.
- We work on all stages of the sales process.
- frontend development, developing prospects, setting next stage appointments.
Customer Example
A nice thing to add to this approach and cold call example is to share examples of customers you have helped. Not only does this establish credibility, but it can also help to explain what you sell and how you help.
- We worked with ScaleSoft.
- They weren’t getting enough leads.
- We helped to solve that with our Appointment Setting.
- This helped to increase their leads by 40%.
- This ultimately led to an increase in revenue by 15%.
Cold Call Close
After you introduce your product, you can go for the close, which is about setting up an appointment, call, or meeting. This is different from the product-focused approach in that we are not trying to schedule a meeting to talk about the product; we are trying to focus more on the prospect and share examples of how we have helped others in a similar situation.
But I have called you out of the blue, and I don’t know if this is the best time to discuss this.
Are you available for a brief call next week to discuss how we have helped businesses like yours to generate more leads?
We hope this cold call example provides some new ideas for your cold calling efforts!
