We hold a public training session every week during which we make calls to demonstrate real cold calling examples.
Whether the cold calling examples go well or not, each call is a great opportunity to reflect on what went well and what could have been done better. I will try to provide a review or quick analysis of this call in this blog post.
Gatekeeper Interaction
There was not a lot of gatekeeper blocking on this cold call example. You may say that I got lucky with a nice gatekeeper, but there were also some small things that I did to avoid triggering blocking.
I had the name of the inside sales manager, and right away, the gatekeeper said she had not been there for 4 years. The reality was that I was a salesperson with a bad (old) call list, but I acted like I used to work with the old contact. It had indeed been a while, so I asked him to direct me to her replacement.
With my words and tone, I turned a bad situation into a good one by displaying social proof and he sent me through to the right person.
Call Opening
Like in many cold calling examples, the opening was a little bumpy. The target contact gave me a common sales objection of “What is this in regards to?”. This is a common question where if you answer it with any accurate answers to what you are trying to do, they will respond that they are not interested.
I responded to this objection with my value proposition. Which if you listen closely, it did not give her what she needed to say “I am not interested.” And that is actually what she got to later in the call so it is probably safe to assume that she was trying to get there when she asked what it was in regards to and I avoided that with my answer.
Objection Handling
The questions led to the prospect saying “I am not interested.” One of the great things about having cold calling examples to look at is that we can look at the objections that came up and think about how we responded and if there is anything that we could have done differently to keep the call going.
What I did well is that I did not try to overcome the objection of her not being interested. When we hear that, our natural instinct is to try to say something that makes the prospect interested.
Our suggestion is to avoid that desire and instead try to focus on getting away from the objection by asking another question. And I did this successfully to extend the call, but now looking back, I think I could have redirected toward closing for an appointment.
Missed Close Attempt
If you listen to the call, she says that it is important in her response to my question but then says not interested. I could have responded with something like this:
OK, I understand but I am a little confused. You say it is important but you are not interested. I am not trying to sell you anything or sign you up for anything, I don’t even know if you are a fit.
But you say it is important and that is an area that we help with. Now I did just call you out of the blue and I certainly understand that you don’t have time to talk about it right now, or maybe even this week or month.
But if it is important to you and this is an area that we have expertise, how can it not make sense to schedule a 10 or 15 minute call to discuss a little more.
Again does not have to be right away. We could even schedule 3 months from now. It just seems confusing to me that you find it important and don’t ever want to even have a short conversation about it. What do you think about putting a short call on the calendar?
We hope these help you to get some ideas of either what to do or what not to do from these cold calling examples!