Podcast episode
How to Build a Cold Calling Culture | Colin Specter
30 Minutes to President's Club24 Apr 202535 min
Description
FOUR ACTIONABLE TAKEAWAYS: Schedule Everything: Cold call success starts with structure. Use scheduled power hours, follow-ups, and prospecting blocks to bring order and focus to your SDRs' day. Create Rituals That Boost Energy: Host a weekly kickoff meeting to align the team, recognize wins, and run call reviews. Energy is everything—ritualize it. Hold Reps to Input Standards: 150 dials per day is the expectation. If reps fall short, diagnose whether it’s a skill, will, or workflow issue and address it head-on. Use Your Top Reps as the Spark: Find your believers and get them dialing in public. Team momentum starts with a few people on fire—and then it spreads. COLIN'S PATH TO PRESIDENT’S CLUB: SVP of Revenue, Orum VP of Sales, Namely Senior Director of Sales, Namely Sales Manager, Zocdoc Sales Executive, Zocdoc RESOURCES DISCUSSED: Join our weekly newsletter Things you can steal 30MPC Training: 30mpc.com/training
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you're connecting with people at different times of day, et cetera. So 150 calls per day per rep, and those are two unique contacts. And then to get those people into the system, first of all, from a prospecting perspective, we do a one, two, three model. This is specifically for our commercial mid-market SDRs. “One account, two departments,” and then three contacts per department. Or business unit, depending on how you label it. So for us, we're targeting revenue leaders. We might call on the enablement side of that account. We might call on the sales leadership side of that account. We might also call on the marketing side of that account. And so we'll pick out at least two departments
you're connecting with people at different times of day, et cetera. So 150 calls per day per rep, and those are two unique contacts. And then to get those people into the system, first of all, from a prospecting perspective, we do a one, two, three model. This is specifically for our commercial mid-market SDRs. One account, two departments, “and then three contacts per department.” Or business unit, depending on how you label it. So for us, we're targeting revenue leaders. We might call on the enablement side of that account. We might call on the sales leadership side of that account. We might also call on the marketing side of that account. And so we'll pick out at least two departments based upon the research we found of where,
Connect rates, we're talking cold outbound, we hover around five to 6% for cold outbound. Gotcha, so I'm connecting with, say, eight, nine, 10 people a day in my 150 dials. How many of those should I book a meeting with? Like how many of those are meeting book rates? “We look for a 20% connect to meeting booked rate.” So you should be booking a meeting with one out of five people that you connect with over the phone. That's good, that's awesome. How good can that get? Like, what's the difference between the top performers and the average performers? Top performers are 30% plus. Wow, so like one in three. Yeah. Today's show was brought to you by 11X,
Like how many of those are meeting book rates? We look for a 20% connect to meeting booked rate. So you should be booking a meeting with one out of five people that you connect with over the phone. That's good, that's awesome. How good can that get? Like, what's the difference between the top performers and the average performers? “Top performers are 30% plus.” Wow, so like one in three. Yeah. Today's show was brought to you by 11X, your all-in-one digital GT.
who won call wars today? Who had the most meetings? Who had the most conversations? Who had the most follow-ups? Because the second best thing to a booked meeting is a follow-up. The lowest hanging fruit, the most likely people to book a meeting is a follow-up. It's actually less likely. At 20% of the time, you're going to book a meeting on the phone, the first connect. Most of those meetings actually get booked on the follow-ups, and “those can get high as like 50% plus.” It's funny you mentioned this part because my daughter came to me, and she was one of the top SDRs at Outreach after I left. And she's like, dad, the thing that's keeping me from being number one is my meeting book rate. And she was at 5% of the calls that she connected with the right person she was booking a meeting with. And so we went in
My uncertainty is reduced about Mark, right? So I wanna learn about Operator and everything that's going on there, my curiosity. And so when you catch me cold in that 5% pickup rate, my willingness, my uncertainty, because you have to think about this. People, when they answer the phone, are in fight or flight mode. They have a fear response, just a natural response. “Your goal is to reduce uncertainty as quickly as possible.” Now, if you've done a good job with air cover and if you're doing follow-ups especially, you can reduce that uncertainty. Hey, yeah, like you said, your daughter's doing it, right? She's reducing uncertainty with that 30-day calendar. Holding it, yeah, we spoke last month. You mentioned you're going to your kid's graduation and I know your budget cycle is coming up.
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can over time, but right now you can't. How do you balance that? When you have someone who's not doing the minimum activity standpoints, but they're finding success, how do you allow for that creativity without dropping your bar for the input that you expect your team to do? You've got to earn the right for that, right? “So when you first come into the organization, you got to follow the” playbook, the expectations that are set. And by the way, as a leader, you need to have very clear expectations of what is expected of them. How quickly are they expected to ramp and get on the phones? Are they expected to get on the phones within two weeks and book their first meeting? That needs to be very clear. Or if it's within 30 days, that needs to be very clear.
Like when we come in, we do call transformations in businesses. We take them from email-only shops to calling shops. That's one of the first things we do is we find a couple believers. Maybe they had called at a prior company. So you want to figure out where on the operational readiness scale that business is, that leader is. “Their data, their team, their script, their messaging.” Let's say you've got some basic messaging. Everybody's got an info database. Most people just haven't mapped the data in right. You get that mapped in right. You get a good message. You get a couple people bought in. They're the spark. When they start catching fire, the rest of the team is going to take notice. Like, whoa, what's that gal drinking? What's that guy doing?
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