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Does cold calling still work? Picking up that phone book and calling all the numbers listed would probably no longer be as effective. But the short answer is definitely yes. Cold calling or cold email still works. The key is to have an effective way of prospecting.

My guest today, Marylou Tyler, is going to share with us some unique ways on how you can improve your prospecting skills. Marylou is the author of Predictable Prospecting and co-author of Predictable Revenue.

Here are the highlights of my conversation with Marylou:

Does cold calling still work?

Cold contact is a tool that you can leverage along with the other available tools now. The best tool depends on who you’re starting the conversation with. Help drive how your prospect likes to be sold, how they like to start the conversation, how they consume your content, and how they’re going to engage with you. Look at the person first and then build the tools around it, not the other way around.

Strategies for getting started with cold calling:

1. Assessing the “state of the union”

Where are you at today? What does your lead flow look like? Where is it coming from? Also review your pipeline, your process, the people you’re selling to, etc.

2. Leverage available tools to start the conversation

Know the relative position of where these people are along your pipeline.

• Cold status: No response to any type of your advertising but are good targets
• Tool you can use: Cold email engine and sequence
• Value: You help build awareness around the “why” – why people should change, why now, and why you.

3. Overlay that with levels of awareness

Some people may not be aware of the problem, so look at where you are relative to the position of the leads in the pipeline and their levels of awareness or where they are.

4. Start a conversation, it’s compelling enough for them to be interrupted

Prospects would be amazed knowing that you know where they’re at. That’s the purpose of the email engine – not the external searches for people to find you, but the internal need that drives them to make a change. That’s where your phone conversation must be focused on.

The Concept of Pre-Call Planning:

• Write out scripts including an “objection tree” so you’d know which rabbit hole people are going down and how you can steer them back into the active pipeline.
• Outline every conversation you have with prospects including the objection, how you answered it, why it’s important, and what’s the next step.
• Write things out. Internalize them and practice them daily.

Strategies for having more consistent and reliable flow of leads:

• Target the people you want to have conversation with.
• Practice, practice, practice. The more you’re on the phone, the better you’re going to get in terms of tonality, enthusiasm, etc.

How to get a high quality call list:

1. Go to some place that have lists

• List vendors where you can rent a list.
• Ability to scrape the internet and use tools to find companion phone numbers that go along with the name or email.
• Offshore services to find information for you.

2. Make sure who you want to target

• Have query parameters that allow you to fit your sweet spot.
• Farm that out via query just to get the counts of how many records are available.

When (in the sales process) do you use cold calling:

• Determine the nature and number of your touch points as a baseline.
• When to use cold calling or cold emailing is based on your buyer persona.

Tips for creating your email messages:

1. Cadence (Marylou has a chapter about this in her book Predictable Revenue)

• Craft your email based on the hero’s journey of your favorite movie.
• List the outcome. Contrast where they are now to where they could be. Leverage your other existing clients who have gone before them and solved the problem as well as people who chose to wait and what it meant in terms of loss aversion. Many people are more motivated by what they stand to lose than what they stand to gain.
• Call-to Action. You’re the guide, they’re the hero. Switch to logic with specificity so they will feel good about making that decision for the call-to-action.

2. Length of the Emails

Depending on the prospects’ levels of awareness, they will consume information roughly based on that level. The less aware they are, the shorter the email.

3. Subject lines

The goal is to get their eyeballs to move to that first line by using emotional/psychological triggers based on the buyer persona. (Refer to the 6 principles by Robert Cialdini found in his book, Influence: The Psychology of persuasion.)

Then get them to move from the first line to the second line and eventually to the end of the email which is your call-of-action.

Examples of triggers: Curiosity, Mystic, Power, Vice, Alarm

Marylou’s Major Takeaway:

Start with the prospect and really understand everything you can about them because that will drive the entire process and which tools to use. Then everything else will fall into place. Spend time working the persona definitions.

Episode Resources:

Visit www.maryloutyler.com/predictableprospecting and download the free chapter on Cadence.

Connect with Marylou Tyler on LinkedIn or go to her Ask Marylou page to drop a question or send her a voice message.

Predictable Prospecting by Marylou Tyler

Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

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