Sales has changed over the past twenty years, and nowhere is this more clear than in cold calling. Many people say that cold calling is dead. They’re wrong. If your cold calls aren’t producing the results you want, you need to update your toolbelt. Start improving your cold calls with these ten tips.

1. Ten Tips for
Cold Calling Success

2. Use a sales script
A good sales script will:
• Provide structure and clarity by forcing you to think about and polish your process.
• Facilitate teamwork through a collaborative and growing framework.
• Promote active listening by freeing up mental energy to focus on your prospect’s needs.
A script equips you with the mental tools you need
to confidently face any sales situation.

3. Use our sales script template to get started!

4. Document prospect’s objections
Follow these three steps:
• List the top 25 objections you face in your market.
• Create a short (1-3 sentence) response to each question.
• Review your answers with at least ten others.
Instead of trying to formulate responses in real time,
create an objection management document.

5. Check out our full walkthrough and start building
your own objection management document.

6. Ask these three questions before calls
Before you pick up the phone, ask yourself:
• Why am I calling?
• What do I want to accomplish?
• How am I going to achieve this?
The three most important questions in sales aren’t
directed at your prospect, they’re for you.

7. For the full story on why these questions work,
check out this article.

8. Captivate your prospect
Hook your prospect from the start with these strategies:
• Optimize for energy | Your emotional state is contagious; make sure it’s something worth catching.
• Use silence as a tool | When your volume goes down, their attention goes up.
• Ask for attention | Say, “This next bit is crucial. If there’s one thing I want you to remember, it’s this.”
First impressions are everything. Unless you engage your
prospect immediately, you’ll lose ‘em.

9. Learn all about how to use these powerful tools in
How to captivate your prospect.

10. Laugh in the face of fear
How about trying to fail? Sabotage your next three calls like this:
• Speak reaaaaaaaaaaalllllyyyyyy slowwwwwllllyyyyyyy.
• Stutter y-y-y-your way th-through the p-p-pitch.
• Talk as quickly as you can as soon as the prospect answers the phone.
Rejection is a big part of cold calling. How do you get
over that fear of failure?

11. Sounds crazy, but it works. Learn why in How to
turn your fear of failure into fearlessness.

12. Create a distraction-free environment
Here are three ways you can minimize screen distraction
• Turn off your monitor.
• Install a productivity browser extension like StayFocusd or Momentum.
• Put on a wireless headset and go for a walk.
The computer can be hugely distracting in a sales call,
and distraction is the death of a sale.

13. Learn more about how to combat the dangers of
distraction in our article about multitasking.

14. Never pitch price before value
Your initial sales call should be about gathering insights. Find out:
• Your prospect’s budget.
• The challenges they’re currently facing.
• How your solution solves those challenges.
When you talk about pricing before you establish your
value, you’ve given away all your sales power.

15. Learn more about how to redirect a prospect asking for
pricing in Never talk price before value.

16. Stop leaving voicemails (kind of)
We got tired of leaving voicemails too, so we created a feature that:
• Records a standard voicemail message once
• Leaves that message with one click
• Allows you to move on to the next call while it records
How many voicemails can you leave before you want to
throw your phone across the room?

17. Our voicemail feature is a huge timesaver. Learn more
about it in Voicemails: Drop ‘em like they’re hot.

18. Recover quickly from bad sales calls
Instead, take a five minute break before the next call and ask yourself:
• How can I deal with people like that better?
• How can I develop more emotional control?
• How can I respond to this differently in the future?
Venting about a rude prospect feels good in the
moment, but creates a negative work environment.

19. Anyone can sell to an easy prospect. Learn how to deal
with the difficult ones on our blog.

20. Track your sales data
Track these three metrics:
• Activity | How many cold calls did you make?
• Quality | How many decision-makers did you reach? How many of them were qualified?
• Conversion | Of those who were qualified, how many deals did you close?
Every process has room for improvement, but you need
to track your data to know what to improve.

21. Learn more about how to use those three metrics
to transform your sales on our blog.

22. Want more?
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