Work this job to get paid for talking to strangers.

Photo by Petr Macháček on Unsplash

It’s my second week on the job and I started making sales calls.

These calls aren’t exactly cold. The phone numbers on my list come from information users put in when they signed up to view a piece of our marketing content (like a webinar or report).

You’d think that means the people I’m calling would recognize the company name, but it isn’t always the case. Learning how to respond to “who are you?” “what is this?” “huh?” at the start of a call is a daunting task for any beginner sales rep.

But what better way to learn than jumping into the deep end?

A Cold Call Means Talking To Strangers

Let’s take a step back. A cold call is when you call someone that hasn’t had direct interaction with your company. In other words, they probably aren’t familiar with your brand and aren’t expecting your call.

These are often famed as one of the more challenging aspects of being in sales, as the reactions to your call can range from pleasant surprise to curses and hang-ups.

So, to be clear, I spent the week getting paid to 1) talk to strangers, 2) ask them questions, and 3) determine whether our platform would be a good fit for them.

How To Approach Cold Calling

The first few seconds can make or break a call, and it begins before dialing. Here’s the mindset to adopt before picking up the headset:

• Choose to laugh if things get awkward. They likely will.
• Understand you are calling to genuinely listen to their problems.
• Asking questions is great. Use them to isolate a problem.
• This call has the potential to make their life easier.

Treat every call as an opportunity to connect. You may end up mutually, pleasantly surprised. No matter how grumpy, impatient, or closed-off your prospect may seem, you have the power to turn their frown upside down. I wound up having some great conversations and getting good advice from people who were on the other end of the line.

And don’t we all need human interaction now more than ever?

What I Accomplished

I made 109 dials and learned various tips and strategies for making my calls more effective. My first calls on Monday were basically the act of throwing spaghetti at the wall. By Thursday, I was playing around with SPIN technique and double-clicking…

SPIN and Double-Clicking: Strategies That Make the Sale

This technique is used to isolate the problem a prospect is having, determine whether our product can solve that problem, and persuade them the problem is bad enough to warrant an immediate solution…which happens to be our product.

SPIN stands for Situation, Pain, Impact, and Need Payoff.

The acronym represents the order in which you get the prospect to identify and build up their problem. It’s important they do this themselves, or else you will seem pushy and nobody likes being pushed around. So instead of telling them they have a problem, you ask them questions about it and allow them to draw their own conclusion.

Here’s an example flow of each stage of SPIN in action:

• Situation: How many customers do you email every day?
• Pain: How long does it take you to compose and send each email?
• Impact: What would it do for business if you could cut that time in half?
• Need Payoff: What happens if you don’t cut that time in half and you start to get more customers?

Double-clicking is the name for simply asking as many questions as you can about one thing until there’s nothing else to say about it. This is used within the Pain and Impact stages of SPIN to get to the heart of the problem and build the urgency.

Here’s an example of double-clicking in action:

IMPACT STAGE

• Seller: What would it do for business if you could cut that time in half?
• Prospect: We could double our email output.
• Seller: How might that impact revenue?
• Prospect: It would grow because we could handle more customers.
• Seller: Is more customers something you want?
• Prospect: …well, of course.

NEED PAYOFF STAGE

• Seller: What happens if you don’t cut that time in half and you start to get more customers?

You get the idea.

Little Breaks Mean More Productivity

Overall, this week I learned to pace myself. Taking little breaks throughout the day helped me retain more information and keep up my energy levels (even working from home). As a side note, I made a whole wheat sandwich loaf to decompress mid-week. And it was damn good.

When you spend the day talking to strangers, sometimes you need a short break and a good slice of homemade bread to bring you back to center.