You: “Hey, Jim?”
Jim: “Hey, who is this?”
You: “Sorry for calling you out of the blue, I was calling beca-”
Jim: *Click*
You: “Hey…. Jim? Ya there?”
If you’re an entrepreneur, business owner, or sales rep. This happens to you every, freakin, day!
You’ve probably convinced yourself;
“Hey, it’s just a numbers game.”
“It’s a part of the process.”
While this is sort of true… getting hung up on doesn’t have to happen as frequently as you let it happen.
What sales professionals forget when they make cold dials is that not only are they the sales engine for their company but they’re also the marketing engine.
So, let’s do some marketing work first!
Email over a case study, connect with your prospect on LinkedIn, comment on an article they posted, or congratulate them on a recent award or promotion via social media.
Look how different your first call will sound if you try something like this.
Step 1: LinkedIn Connection Request with a message.
Message: “Hey Jim, feel free to use me as a back-pocket resource if you ever need help automating your FP&A processes. I’ll email you over some case studies in the meanwhile.”
Step 2: Email over case studies.
*48 hours later*
Step 3: Phone Call
You: “Hey Jim!”
Jim: “Hey, who is this?”
You: “Jim, it’s Ahmed. We connected over LinkedIn and I sent ya over a few cases studies about how we helped company XYZ automate their budgeting & forecasting processes. I’m assuming you maybe didn’t get around to reading it yet is that correct?”
Jim: “ Yes, that’s correct, sorry about that Ahmed”
Ahmed “Don’t sweat it, if you’ve got a few minutes I’ll walk you through the case study now…
Three things can happen here:
1) They did read the case study. Which, AMAZING!
2) They didn’t read the case study but will let you walk them through it now.
3) They didn’t read the case study and don’t have time to chat, you’ll kindly oblige and schedule a proper follow-up and pencil it in their calendars. Be specific.
“No problem Jim, does tomorrow same time work for a quick chat? I’ll throw something in your calendar.”
All three of these options are far better than the first scenario. So what exactly did we do here?
BOOM, what you’ve done is built a reference point and some rapport before the call. This builds credibility and trust. Which is your “marketing engine” going to work.
This will in turn make your cold call, not so cold after all. 🙂
Happy hunting, crush 2021!
Crush your Sales Goals 