>90% of Cold Calls fail in the 1st 30 seconds. 

Imagine doing 50 dials today only for 1 prospect to put the phone down as soon as they’ve picked up. 

No wonder SDRing feels exhausting. You dial, dial and dial some more only for 1 in 10 people to have a conversation with you for longer than 30 seconds. 

This is what drives leaders to say ‘‘do more dials’’. 

Instead, we should be asking ourselves ‘‘how can I improve my conversion from pick-up to past the first 30 seconds’’? 

In this newsletter I will share 3 steps with you on how you can triple your conversion in the hardest part of your phone calls; The first thirty seconds. 

Let’s dive in.

1: Understand Your Objective 

Most sellers start with the wrong objective for their calls. 

To get it straight; you aren’t dialling to book meetings or start conversations. 

In order to book a meeting your prospect needs to think you’re valuable enough to give you 30 minutes of their precious time. 

They need to trust you enough to believe you won’t waste their precious time. 

They need to believe the call will benefit them so much their lives will be materially easier. 

This is why you need to think of calls differently than ‘‘just doing your KPIs’’. Instead, consider calls as an exchange of trust. 

In other words; everything you say needs to build trust you aren’t going to waste their time. 

So that’s your starting point. Trust. Stop calling to start a conversation. Start calling to build trust in you and your company. 

The more trust you build, the more time you prospects will give you and the more meetings you’ll book. 

I visualise this using a cold prospect funnel:

2: Optimise For Tone

Now you know why you are calling (to build trust). You need to optimise everything you say and how you say it to build as much as trust as as quickly as possible. 

This is where most sellers go miles off track. We think telling prospects stories about other customers is what will get them to trust us. 

But it’s not that easy. In fact, it’s too early for that in your relationship with the prospect. 

Imagine someone approached you completely cold in the street and said ‘‘hey, look at all the companies I work with’’. You’d probably make up an excuse to leave the conversation quickly. 

Instead of doing what every other seller does focus on delivering something very simple in a great tone. 

After all, tone is 4.5x more powerful when building trust. 

The best way to do this is via a script. The more you know what you’re going to say at the top of your conversation to easier it will be to respond to your prospects objections (which will happen). 

Here’s my Script

Note, I use the SAME opener and reason template for every call. The better I know this the better I can deliver it and build more trust.

3: Responding to Push Back 

You’ve got a prospect on the phone. Delivered a great opener and your tone is on point. 

What happens next? Well, in most cases your prospect will give you some pushback. 

This pushback will come in two forms; questions and statements. 

Questions mean your prospect is in ‘‘fight’’ mode and wants more context from you as to why they should trust you. 

For example they may say where are you calling from? 

They aren’t asking you to just say ‘‘I’m calling from XYZ’’. Instead they want context on why your company can help them specifically. 

This is where I use a technique called ‘‘Repeat with Context’’. Simply put I repeat my ask in the opener but proceed it with context answering my prospects question. 

For example: 

Me: Hey, its Chris, from CRSales, can I get 30 seconds to tell you why I called? 

Prospect: Where are you calling from? 

Me: Calling from CRSales, I help [insert persona} with {insert problem}. As I said I’d love to get 30 seconds to tell you why I called, is that okay? 

All this does is build TRUST with your prospect to help move them through the prospect funnel. 

You can use this for any question you will receive. Just give context on why you or your business can specifically help that persona then repeat your original ask. 

Sometimes, your prospects will give you statement based responses. This means they want to exit the conversation as quickly as possible. 

These types of responses will often look like; ‘‘I don’t take cold calls’’ or ‘‘I’m in a meeting’’. 

In these cases, it’s harder to build trust but its still doable. Especially when you prioritise building trust in your responses. 

Here’s an example: 

Me: Hey, its Chris, from CRSales, can I get 30 seconds to tell you why I called? 

Prospect: ‘‘I’m in a meeting right now’’. 

Me: Got it. So you know I’m Chris Ritson with CRSales, I help {insert persona} with {insert problem}. I’d love to get 30 seconds now to tell you why I called but if your busy shall we do later? 

Again, all I am doing here is giving context to the prospect to build trust then repeating my original ask now the prospect has context to help them make a more informed decision. 

Note - I am also giving the prospect an out (this builds further trust). Anyone who tells you the ‘‘keep the prospect on the phone’’ is teaching you wrong.

TLDR: 

1. Understand your Objective - build TRUST 

2. Optimise for Tone - use a script to help aid delivery (better delivery = more trust) 

3. Respond to Build Trust = objections are a great chance to give context and build more trust.

Conclusion: 

Cold Calling is hard because there is no trust between you and the prospect when the conversation starts. 

That doesn’t make it impossible. It just means you need to optimise everything you do to building more of what will help you win; trust. 

PS. I’m running a free Cold Call Masterclass March 27th, you can join here {if you can’t make it you’ll get the recording}.