In this video, we provide a cold call example for public relations. After the call recording, we provide three easy to implement tips that would not only immediately help this salesperson, but they can help you regardless of what you sell.
Don’t have to trick prospects
There are a lot of salespeople who use tricks and manipulation to try to get prospects to meet with them and buy their product. This cold call example for public relations could be an example of that by the salesperson making it look like two big publications want to talk with the business owner by saying:
We’ve got a media request from Business Insider and USA Today.
They were focused on innovative platforms and tools. And then we came across you.
For just about every product or service, there is value that is delivered to the customer. With that, there is no reason to trick your prospects into talking with you. They either need or want the value you offer, or they don’t. And you can focus on explaining the value you offer instead of playing games and trying to trick them into talking with you.
Sell the conversation
This cold call example for public relations is a good opportunity to look at how it can help to focus more on selling the conversation. This is helpful to talk about because what most salespeople do is sell the product. But the next step in the sales process is simply talking more and having a conversation.
In this salesperson’s defense, he does try to close for a conversation by saying:
I wanted to see if you would be open to a chat tomorrow or Thursday to see if it is a fit getting you featured there.
But if you are closing to have a conversation where you will talk about selling your product, you are still operating in more of a product-selling mode than selling the conversation to simply talk more and learn more about one another.
Objection handling
We can look back on this cold call example for public relations and reflect on what objections came up and any improvements that could have been made with the objection responses. And the first objection the salesperson faced was the prospect saying, “No, thank you.” We can classify this as a version of “I am not interested.”
The salesperson responded to this by asking, “Do you mind if I ask why?” The good thing about this question is that it could be good to learn more about why the prospect is not interested. But another way to respond to this objection is by deflecting to your pain questions to keep the conversation going and get away from the prospect’s objection.
The other objection faced on this cold call example for public relations was, “We are not paying for articles right now.” The salesperson responded to this by saying, “Oh, okay. Thanks.” A better way to respond to this is by deflecting to the close and the next step of the sales process, which is simply talking more and having a conversation by saying something like:
I understand. I am not reaching out to you to try to sell you anything. We are just looking to have an initial conversation.
We can learn about you and share some information about us. That way, when you are ready to use articles to boost your business, you can know who we are and how we can help.
Not only does that give the salesperson something better to say for that particular objection, but it is actually a more logical response because the next step in the sales process is not to sell the product, it is to have a conversation.
We hope this cold call example for public relations provides new ideas and tips!
