Cold Call Tips for SDRs
How do you deal with a prospect saying: ‘Send me some information? How important is active listening when you make cold calls? How should you open a cold call? Read on for answers to these questions and more cold call tips.
“Send me some more information”:
Typically, it’s the classic blow-off by prospects, who simply want to let sales people down gently, rather than saying outright ‘I’m not interested.’
But when prospects say this, does this ALWAYS mean they aren’t interested?
Is sending information to them a waste of time?
Is it simply a knee-jerk reaction when actually they may well be interested if we dig a bit more?
For me, it all comes down to context and the words that come before or after they say it.
Active Listening When Making Cold Calls
Active listening is one of the toughest skills in sales to master but is vital if you want to achieve more successful outcomes in your conversations at ALL stages of the sales cycle.
Active listening is not just being silent and listening. It’s intrinsically hearing the specific words and phrases and tonality our prospects use, and then responding based on WHAT has been said (versus just saying what we were always going to say next).
Active listening also helps us reduce sales resistance with prospects, and even prevents prospects from giving us objections.
Here’s a REAL cold call from my newest SDR Connor Parry on his second (yes second) week as a brand new SDR.
It was a good call, but active listening could have helped him lower resistance and possibly have a more positive outcome.
He’ll have this mastered in no time though as he’s massively coachable. Making cold calls in his second week is pretty impressive too.
Cold-Call Openings
They are one of the things which many sales reps constantly struggle with, and think about improving.
How do I truly capture the attention of my prospect and make the most of that CRUCIAL opening few seconds of the call?
There are many ways which we can do this, but often, simply personalizing the start of the conversation can really make our prospects give us their undivided attention.
Even better – drop in some humor and ‘if you can make ‘em laugh, then you can make ‘em buy/give you more time’.
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