Imagine for a moment that you are the head coach of your favorite NFL team. You get up early, get to the office before dawn, and work with your coaching staff to devise original and innovative plays for both the offensive and defensive ends of the football. You use your gift of instruction and inspiration to train your team on what you need them to do and get them energized about your system.
By the time the regular season rolls around, you have an incredibly well-developed playbook unlike anything the league has ever seen. Additionally, your players have practiced what you need them to do to perfection and everyone is on board with what you are doing.
In the first series of the first game, you notice that your quarterback, before handing the ball to the running back in one of your new plays, scratches his nose twice with his left hand. The running back gets the ball and is stuffed for minus three yards.
On the next play, you call for one of your wide receivers to run a post route that you drew up in the offseason, but before the ball is snapped, your quarterback takes his right hand, taps the top of his helmet once, snaps the ball, and throws an interception to a cornerback who was in the perfect position at exactly the right time.
This happens several more times throughout the game with the same result. Upon review of the film, you see that those nose scratches, helmet touches, and cadences were used by the quarterback to tip off the defense as to what was coming. Before your quarterback even snapped the ball, the defense knew exactly what was coming and snuffed out the play before it had a chance to be successful.
Whether you know it or not, you are doing the same thing to a certain degree with your cold calls. Most sales professionals that I know spend a good amount of time, effort, and resources developing the perfect cold call script. They know exactly what to say, how to say it, and know going in what they are trying to accomplish in order to maximize their chances of success.
They rehearse their scripts, feel comfortable in delivering them, and are confident that success is within their grasp. Funny thing is, however, they do not meet with the success that they envisioned. Worse yet, five seconds into their script, they are getting shut
down, hung up on, interrupted, and sometimes are exposed to harsh language on the other end of the phone.
Befuddled, after ten calls and ten straight rejections, the sales person has no idea what is going on. Why is the script not working? What is not going according to plan? Why is the prospect not interested?
The answer usually lies in the fact that the sales person is tipping off the defense before the ball is even snapped. Although sales is a truly noble profession and those in that field are touching lives and making the world a better place every single day, people do not want to spend their days talking to sales people they have not met over the phone.
How can they possible know we are a sales person before we get into the meat of our script? It’s because you are tipping off the prospect based on what you say in the first few seconds of each call!
My money is on the fact that you lead with some variation of the following in your first few sentences:
– “My name is…”
– Your employer’s name
– Your job title
– The reason behind your call
What do the words “my name is” mean? They represent the fact that you have never had a conversation with this person before. If you have never had a conversation with this person and you are calling out of the blue and are unfamiliar with this prospect, what type of call must this be? A sales call!
If you are leading with your employer’s name and your job title, those two aspects must be very important to the remainder of your call. If where you work and what you do professionally are relevant to the next few sentences that come out of your mouth, what type of call must this most likely be? A sales call!
Lastly, if you give the reason for the call right out of the gate, you then leave it up to the prospect to determine if this is worth his or her time. If they don’t know you, have never had a conversation with you, and you are offering solutions to problems that they never told you they had to begin with, what type of call must this be? A sales call!
Before you pick up the phone next to make another batch of cold calls, take a look at your script and see if you are giving away tells or letting the defense know what is coming before you even snap the ball. If you can keep the defense guessing, even for five seconds, the odds of you finding a hole in the defensive line, or being able to get behind the secondary go up dramatically.
Let the play develop a bit before this information is made known. Focus on piquing curiosity, generating interest, and buying time before giving away any information that might be deemed salesy. Doing so will ensure that you are put in the best possible position for success.
If you can do this successfully, make plans to see a Coach of the Year trophy on the case in your office!
Want more information about The Cold Call Coach and how we can help you create a customized script that ensures you don’t tell the defense what is coming? Then give us a call today at 414-313-8338 or visit us online at www.coldcallcoach.net and let’s get to work!
