Playbook: Nick and Armand teach you how to cold call

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1. 1:05

   And so it begins with the way that you prepare for your calls. And so Nick, we talk about a lot of the things you need to know before you pick up the phone. What should people be doing? I think a lot of people completely over-research their cold calls. Something that we learned on one of our early episodes with Joe Caprio was look at the buying triggers. “Look at the reasons that you might pick up the phone and cold call somebody.” And so for me, I look at a couple things. I call law firms and so I look at the type of law they practice. I look at the persona of the person I'm going to be calling and I look at the piece of technology that I'd be kicking out for what I'm selling. And so if I know those three things, that pretty much dictates what I'm going to say from a value prop and an opener perspective.

   In Relevance-led cold call openers

2. 2:06

   closed. It would drive me up the wall when people would schedule these 30 minute dial blitzes with me because I would get into the room and by the time I grabbed my LaCroix, open my laptop, get my outreach cadences teed up, then it would be already 10 minutes into the session and I'd only have 20 minutes to dial. “And so 60 minutes, 40 dial tasks, locked and loaded all of your research in one place.” So you know your top three buyer triggers for this specific customer are X, Y and Z and you can just unload your openers back to back to back. I like what you're talking about of having all of your tasks queued up. I don't use outreach or sales loft. I just use Salesforce. That's where I'm doing my prospecting.

   In Call block structure

3. 2:06

   closed. It would drive me up the wall when people would schedule these 30 minute dial blitzes with me because I would get into the room and by the time I grabbed my LaCroix, open my laptop, get my outreach cadences teed up, then it would be already 10 minutes into the session and I'd only have 20 minutes to dial. “And so 60 minutes, 40 dial tasks, locked and loaded all of your research in one place.” So you know your top three buyer triggers for this specific customer are X, Y and Z and you can just unload your openers back to back to back. I like what you're talking about of having all of your tasks queued up. I don't use outreach or sales loft. I just use Salesforce. That's where I'm doing my prospecting.

   In Call timing and call blocks

4. 3:39

   You can call at 12 p.m. You can call on Mondays. You can call on Fridays. But I can tell you guys, you will make every excuse in the world to not dial every day. And so what I do suggest is not to perfectly time the market, but to make sure that you “dial when you know you will dial.” And what I mean by that is if you're hot and high energy in the morning like myself, I always, the moment I get into the office, I clear the inbox for 30 minutes and I hit those phones. And an hour into the day, if I can get myself two meetings booked, I'm feeling really good at myself and then I don't have to do it again for the rest of the day. I've heard it called eat the frog before.

   In Call timing and call blocks

5. 12:09

   “you structure yours like context, value, ask” What I want to do is address a problem that I think the person I'm calling might have. And so what I'll do is I'll use that opener. I know you didn't expect me to call you. Do you mind if you give me one minute? They'll say fine, go ahead. And I'll actually respond to that with the laugh that you talked about.

   In Value proposition

6. 16:16

   If you got a real objection at the end of those 45 seconds, now is where the cold call actually begins because you're having a conversation. And let me be abundantly clear that the first objection that we'll talk about is not a real objection. And that is not interested. And what “that is, is it's a dismissive objection to get off the phone as quickly as possible. It's not a real” objection around why they're not interested. So the goal of handling not interested is to buy yourself another 15 seconds to figure out why they're not interested. And that is the goal. And by the way, this is probably one of the toughest objections to handle because they've already got one foot out the door, but if you're going to handle it, you got to use what Katie gave

   In Phone objection handling

7. 17:09

   And so Nick slams me with, I'm not interested. And I'm going to laugh and be like, look, shocker, man. When I picked up the phone, you weren't immediately interested. Typically when I'm talking to folks, they're doing things on spreadsheets with their attorneys, whatever that might be. And could you at least give me a sense of how you guys are doing this stuff today? And then I'll leave you alone. And then they'll give you the answer of how “they're doing this stuff today. And that's the real objection.” now I can go back to my typically language. And I say, typically when people are on spreadsheets, they tend to have problems with having an accurate set of books. And now I can go into a classic pain funnel or whatever you want to call it. And you should know what those top three or four situations are for your buyers. I like the idea of you're trying to buy a little bit of time

   In Objection diagnosis and probing

8. 21:31

   Should I send them sometimes? I'll say, hey, I actually had my calendar open. I don't know if you have yours handy. I don't want to blow up your email, your inbox with 47 emails with a bunch of different times. Does Thursday at three work for you? And I say, I'm stuck in the stone age. I don't have my calendar on me. Right? What comes next? You're going to want to send an invite anyway. “And the show rate on this is not going to be as great” at four works for you. But what I'll say is, okay, Armand, here's what I'll do. I'll send you a calendar invite for next Thursday at three. If that time ends up working, great. If it doesn't end up working, would you mind declining the invite and letting me know a better time that works for us? And what I'll typically try to do is book for the same time that we're talking there

   In Meeting commitment signals

9. 23:06

   The other thing you're going to do is you're going to confirm these meetings two times instead of one. And so instead of just doing the day before, looking forward to our meeting tomorrow, one week before, I'm going to say, hey, Nick, I was thinking about our conversation and you told me you guys were with this folks. “I thought it would be helpful if I could share a case study with you over here.” And I thought this might be relevant for your business. Or I saw you guys just raised around in the news, congrats on that. Remember you won this customer deal, congrats on that. I'm going to do a compliment and build goodwill with you so you feel really bad if you no show with me. And then the day before, I'm going to confirm the meeting.

   In Proof relevance and matching

10. 25:22

    With your openers we talked about too, Nick's was, hey can I get 30 seconds to tell you why I'm calling and you tell me if we're a fit, and mine was the heard your name tossed around opener. We talked about the value prop, which is all about leading with typically language, and “then saying hey we're just going to solve this problem for you, not pitching your product.” We talked about three major objections, not interested, send me an email slash call me in six months, and then competitors. In general, you need to get more information and then calibrate your pitch based on what they give you. And then lastly, we talked about going in for the kill, never ever ever leave a meeting

    In Outcome-based value propositions