I’ll go ahead and say it. Prospects don’t love cold outreach. In fact, some of them hate it.
Why? Because cold calling farms in India and sweaty-palm salespeople have ruined it for the real sales pros like you and me. And this isn’t earth-shattering news.
So what? You should pack your desk and find a new career, right?
Not a chance! We are salesmen and saleswomen. We are cut from a different cloth. We were made for a challenge. We aren’t in this line of work because it’s the path of least resistance. We’re in it for the thrill and the chase!
All right, so your prospects don’t love cold calls. So what do you do? What steps can you take, starting today, to overcome the negative perception?
Honestly, you’ll be surprised by just how easy it is to turn this handicap into a BIG opportunity and close more deals.
First and foremost, you must get your prospect to drop their guard. And then you elevate your status by following the tips and tricks I outline below. Let’s get into it!
RELATED: The Avalanche Effect of Cold Calling
How to Disarm Your Prospects
Low-Status Approach
You can’t have a meaningful conversation if your prospect is walled off.
Now, one way to get your buyer to drop his guard is to become low-status. A lot of times your prospect will stay on the phone if you display low-status (because you’re not a threat of selling him something). But you’ll never make meaningful progress or close a deal this way.
If you display low-status by rolling over and showing your belly, your prospect becomes master over you. This low-status approach — the sweaty-palm approach — is no good.
Some low-status signals include:
- Speaking too much or too fast
- Asking things like “can I please have a minute of your time”
- Offering discounts too early
- Poor communication; i.e. stuttering or relying heavily on a script
- Allowing your prospect to set the pace and dictate outcomes
Thankfully, there’s a better way that actually works to generate pipeline and close more deals. It’s called the high-status approach.
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High-Status Approach
With a high-status approach, the gatekeeper or prospect feels as though they are in the presence of a true professional, someone who speaks with authority and has their best interest in mind.
Take this illustration. You wake up at night to the smell of smoke in your home. Scary, right? So you call 911 and they send firefighters. Within minutes the fire trucks arrive and you already feel more at ease. After all, professionals are on the scene.
Then, the fire captain approaches you and assures you that everything will be alright. He’s seen this before, and it always turns out well. Plus everyone got out of the house safe and sound. You breathe a sigh of relief as they get to work putting out the small fire.
When you call your prospects, you must put on the fire captain persona. Your prospect is in dire straits (whether he knows it or not), but thankfully YOU are on the scene. You are now his trusted advisor. And trusted advisors walk, talk, and act a certain way. They instill confidence in others.
Of course, your prospect is also high-status. So sometimes he or she thinks they have it all figured out and that there’s no need for intervention or “saving.” Nevertheless, you have to establish and maintain high-status to move the deal forward. Don’t worry, I share all about how to do this below.
Sales Tip: Another reason you must display high-status is because you’re calling high-status prospects (the C-suite). They prefer to do business with others who are like them. Birds of a feather flock together.
Other High-Status Signals
You Come Prepared — Imagine firefighters showing up to your home without their gear ready. They scramble to find their hoses and helmets. This doesn’t happen. They have a job to do, and they are always prepared to do it.
In the same way, you have to take every call seriously by doing some prep work. Take a few minutes to research each prospect — their role, their company, recent news, their background and interests — to get a lay of the land. Do your homework and it will pay off. Trust me, 95% of salespeople don’t do this, so it’s an easy way to stand out and get ahead.
You Speak Clearly — Imagine the fire captain talking like an insecure teenager. Imagine if his voice cracked or he talked in a monotone pitch. Would you trust him? No! You expect a professional to speak clearly and articulately. This is almost always a sure sign of a high-status person — especially in the business world.
So it’s time to focus on your tonality, your vocabulary, and your confidence speaking in front of others. Do this and you will hook your prospects from the start. And I promise this will pay off in dividends throughout your career.
You Are an Industry Expert — Getting away from the firefighter analogy, let’s switch to doctors. Who do you trust more… a doctor who is well-versed in medicine and can speak at length about it, or a doctor who is sitting in his chair literally Googling things to find answers? The former, of course!
In a similar way, you WILL be “talking shop” on cold calls and sales calls, especially if you’re an AE. So you need to become an expert not only on your product/service, but also in the industry in general. You may not be able to dive super deep on certain IT trends like the CTO you’re calling can, but you should at least have a general breadth of knowledge on the most common topics in his industry. Do this and you’ll become high-status in your prospect’s eyes.
You Focus on Value, Not Price — If you play the pricing game, you lose. Everyone wants something on-the-cheap. And it’s a race to the bottom of the barrel. So you need to shift the focus of your calls to the value gained from using your product or service. After all, do you think high-status millionaires sit around talking about nickels and dimes? No — they want the big picture VALUE.
When you effectively communicate this value, you win. The prospect can begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The transformation will take place, but it is your job to effectively convey that. This is so critical to high-status selling that I wrote an article on it titled Sell Value, Not ROI. I highly recommend that you give it a read.
RELATED: The Rule of 7 In Cold Calling
Beyond the Cold Call
The way you approach your prospects should not and cannot change from call to call. By that I mean if you display low-status signals on the first call, you can’t suddenly change to high-status on the following warm calls. You won’t be taken seriously, and you’ll get laughed out of the room. In the same way, you can’t go from high-status to low-status. You have to display high-status signals from the very first touch and maintain it into the future.
Final Words
High-status isn’t about having the latest Benz or sporting a Rolex. It’s about how you speak, talk, walk, and hold yourself in a room. And it’s about the topics you focus on in any given conversation.
Unfortunately, most people have a default mode as low-status… and that’s even true for salespeople. Displaying high-status is something you have to intentionally work toward. Thankfully, you now have the tools to make it happen.
Remember that high-status requires you to put on the Fire Captain persona. It requires that you become a trusted advisor who instills confidence and delivers value on every call.
Also remember to always show up prepared, speak clearly and with authority, become a true industry expert, and focus on value over price.
From your first cold call, you set the tone with your prospect as to who they’re dealing with. It’s up to you whether you want to be seen as high-status or low-status. But trust me, your sales numbers hang in the balance.
Now get out there and elevate your status to close more deals. You’ve got this.
Until next time…
Johnny-Lee Reinoso