Bundle Up for Cold Calling - Parts 1 and 2

Part 2 - 8 Hot Script Tips

Ok, so you’re ready to start cold-calling, but every time you pick up the phone and dial, you find your tongue tied in more knots than one of your aunt’s macramé planters. What should you say? What shouldn’t you say? What you need, gentle reader, is a script.

No one expects an actor to entirely ad-lib an Oscar-worthy performance—even Tom Hanks needs a script to follow. There’s no reason for you to hold yourself to an even higher standard than a three-time Academy Award winner.

While a movie script and a cold-call script are very different, in both cases a little script-doctoring can make a big difference in the power of your performance. Here are eight simple tips from the script doctor to make your cold-call pitch as effective as possible.

1. Identify Your Audience

You can’t be all things to all people. If you’re a Web designer, selling to the sole proprietor of a retail store is very different from selling to a marketing manager at a major e-tailer. List your audience’s likes, dislikes, and hot buttons. If you don’t know what those are, research them. If you still don’t know, guess, and refine your audience as you go along. The point is, fine-tune your script for your target.

2. List the Business Benefits of Buying from You

Here’s where you get into the mind of your audience. List all of the business benefits that your customers get when they choose your solutions. Can’t think of any? Better find another line of work. Make sure that these benefits are concrete and reflect the way that your audience things. “Get a cooler Web site” is not a business benefit. “Reduce dropped shopping carts by 50%, increasing monthly revenues by 15%” is.

3. List the Possible Objections to your Good or Service

...and list the responses that overcome those objections.

Guess what? When you make cold-calls, you’re going to hear a lot of objections. That’s actually a good thing. If someone comes up with an objection, it shows that they bothered to listen closely enough to apply you pitch to their situation. That gives you a perfect opportunity to overcome the objection and make a sale. To capitalize on that opportunity, sit down in advance and try to list every possible objection, and then compose the best possible responses to overcome those objections. Trying to overcome objections on the fly is likely to be more frustrating and less fruitful.

4. Hone a One-Sentence Pitch

As we discussed in Part 1 od this article, you’re not going to have a lot of time to make your pitch. Boil it down to the essentials so that you can deliver it quickly (and naturally), and get to the important part of the call: listening to what your potential customer has to say.

5. Call and Ask for a Specific Person

Even at a large company, it’s surprisingly easy to get through to the right person if you ask a specific question. For example, one of my clients wanted to sell software to IT departments that would help them better manage their Websites. I simply called up the main switchboard of a major portal and asked, “Who is the person in your IT group that is in charge of Website performance?” Two minutes and a little chit-chat later, I had a name, phone number, and email address.

6. Make your Pitch

When it comes to the actual pitch, there is no magic, and there is no substitute for practice. If you stumble, pick yourself back up and make that next call. Some people are more naturally talented than others, but the ultimate determinant of success is persistence.

7. Listen

This is the step where you make or break your sale. The temptation is to relax and let down your guard once you finish your initial pitch. Don’t! If anything, completing the initial pitch is the easy part—all you have to do is follow a few simple directions.

Really listening to your prospects is hard. You have to swallow your pride and resist all those urges to say, “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard!” when your prospect begins to raise objections. You have to go against your instincts to defend yourself. Just remember, you’re not here to convince your customer to buy from you. You’re here to help your customer convince herself to buy from you. Without listening carefully and understanding her exact business needs, you can’t possibly do that.

8. Work Off your List of Benefits and Objections

Once you understand your prospect’s situation, match it up against your list of benefits and objections. Pick the benefits that matter most to your prospect and explain them. Ask for objections (“Are there any factors you can think of that could prevent a sale?” and overcome them. If you run across any objections that you haven’t prepared for, do the best you can, and make sure that you’re prepared for the next call.

If you’ve gotten through your pitch, explained the benefits of your solution, and overcome your prospect’s objections, your script has done its job. Now it’s up to you to follow through and close the sale. Good luck, and happy hunting.