In this video, we analyze an example of a cold call for software development and provide three areas for improvement.
Sell the meeting
The first tip that we discuss in this example of a cold call for software development is that the sales rep could have focused more on selling the meeting. About 90% of cold calls can be fixed by this tip because most salespeople focus more on selling the product than selling the meeting. And that can impact the questions they ask, how they handle objections, and what they ask for when they try to close.
This salesperson actually did have good intentions in this area and mentioned meeting with the prospect when he said:
Obviously, we’ll have to have a more technical conversation to see if we’re a good fit, but do you think you’ll be open to to that?
And then again toward the end of the call:
Is there is there any way of hopping on a call with my director to see if we can just be a fit within the first, like, three to five minutes of the call? And then kinda expedite the the whole process?
But the problem with both of those moments is that, while he was selling the meeting, he was selling a meeting to sell the product. To truly focus on selling the meeting, just sell a meeting to talk more.
Improve his questions
The second tip for this cold call for software development is to improve the questions he asked. Instead of outlining why the questions the sales rep asked are not great, I want to focus more on what questions to ask and those are pain questions and current state questions. Pain questions are designed to probe to see if the prospect has any of the pain points that the product or service can help make go away. Here are some questions that I created for this salesperson.
- How often do you have software development projects that are not progressing as fast as you would like?
- How happy are you with the quality of the code that your developers are creating?
- Have you ever needed a software developer with a particular skillset that you did not already have on your team?
- How important is it to decrease your software development costs?
Current state questions are designed to learn more about what the prospect is doing in the area where your product fits. Here are some current state questions for this service.
- Do you currently have software development projects?
- Are you using in-house or outsource developers?
- How is everything going with your developers and projects?
- How many software developers are you working with?
- How many applications are you currently managing?
- Are you currently managing and developing mobile applications?
- What type of programming languages are you working with?
- When was the last time you considered making changes with your development resources?
- Are you the right person to discuss this area with?
We hope this example of a cold call for software development gives you new ideas for your cold call script!