Why do most people end up hating cold calling? There’s only one reason and it might not have to do with your sales leads in the way that you think.
Most of the people I meet with looking to improve their phone skills are missing one thing.
They’re usually kind of down because they work hard, put in the time, but don’t get the outcomes they expect.
You can tell they’re the kind of people that belong on the phone because they’re still motivated, optimistic, and committed to winning.
So, what are they missing?
We spend our coaching time talking about understanding mindset, refining scripts, and the #1 objective of a prospect when the prospect answers a cold call.
We break down the anatomy of a cold call and the purpose of phone prospecting.
We get everything perfect. We have the potential, the script, the mindset.
We’re motivated, confident, and ready.
We’ve abandoned leading with product value and instead focus on what’s in it for the prospect to personally learn something new.
We’ve abandoned objection handling. Instead, we’ve converted that badge of horseshit into listening skills, saying back to the prospect what they said to us in a way that fortified and strengthened their position, creating trust, which sales leads to opening up and sharing more secrets.
We’ve abandon empathy and, instead, use steps to go from fear to curiosity to trust and create the conditions for a 2-way conversation.
Yes, we do all that, but there’s still one thing missing.
It’s the one thing that kills morale, motivation, and optimism in the cold calling and phone prospecting world.
That one thing that strips potentially excellent cold callers from the opportunity to become champion callers. The “1%’ers”.
With all the coaching, motivation, optimism, and preparedness in the world, what is that one thing that kills the potential for success?
IT’S NOT HAVING ENOUGH CONVERSATIONS!
The way the problem is framed today is that “nobody answers the phone anymore”.
Which is wrong.
And inevitably, this leads people to horrible solutions that speed up their demise, while killing the spirit and culture of their sales teams.
When the problem is framed this way, the solution becomes:
A lot of (purchased/decayed) contacts loaded into dialing acceleration and sales engagement platforms to automate high levels of activities because of the assumption of “low” connect rates.
All rooted in how you framed the problem: “Nobody answers the phone anymore.”
When you’re not having enough conversations, the only problem worth solving is:
How do we have more conversations in the shortest period of time, per day?
Reframed: Let’s aim at enabling our phone reps with the conditions to succeed, to meet their daily outcome (NOT ACTIVITY, BUT OUTCOME) goals using the phone in a 1.5 hour call block per day.
How do we do that?
We focus on only calling people who answer the phone. We get our reps the training and script so they know exactly what to say. And we provide them ongoing coaching.
That’s it!
