Christian Seme
https://www.linkedin.com/in/semechristian/
Cold calling can be a daunting task, especially if you are new to an organization and/or how well you know the product you are selling in comparison to your competitors. Like anything in life, it is all about the confidence that you bring to the call and admitting you might not have all the answers to their questions (especially technical ones). I believe if you can humanize the experience and showcase real value to their role/organization when you are calling people out of the blue they are far more likely to give you a chance to get your message across. Also a key component of cold calling is doing your homework and personalizing the call to that particular person and their business.
How to handle objections
Our team utilizes a lot of third-party stories when we are handling objections and we also will be completely frank in our intro to help circumvent objections. We will say something like, “ that reminds me of X company when we called out to them a few months ago (of course now they are a customer of ours) and they were in a similar situation and thought that there current X was performing optimally, but when we actually did an apples to apples comparison of X value add compared to ours they quickly realized they could do x,y,z utilizing us where they couldn’t before, does any of that resonate/sound like something you have encountered?”
We will also set the scene early in the call to help prevent objections from occurring. “ I know I am calling out of the blue and to be completely frank we are a direct competitor of X, now I would be crazy if I thought I would get you to do X on a 5 min phone call but I would like to see if it makes sense to have a conversation about X, is that fair?”
A great book I recommend on Cold Calling is called Prospect The Sandler Way. The book showcases the Sandler selling method and gives examples of how to utilize pattern interrupts and asking for permission from the people you are outreaching to. We always want our SDRs to be curious, confused, and concerned when on a call with a prospect and this book gives you the tools to be successful at utilizing this selling methodology.
Onboarding/Training/Upskilling to help with Cold Calling
We are always looking to evolve and strengthen our onboarding process to make it more relevant and informational with regards to the types of questions/concerns/push back that our SDRs are likely to encounter when reaching out to folks. We find by creating realistic situations and listening to previous SDR calls (we utilize Gong and have created an asset library for new hires to listen to) our SDRs have been able to get up to speed much more quickly and start outreaching much more effectively, than they have previously. The second part to this is every week we have a “learning is earning session” where we bring folks in from inside and outside the organization to help educate us on new trends in the industry, advantages/disadvantages of our product compared to our competitors, and new products that we are introducing/launching and how we can weave that narrative into what we are already saying when out bounding to potential customers.
