5 Highly Effective Cold Calling Scripts (and Email templates)

Do you hate cold calling? I did too, until I figured out some cold calling scripts that sounded natural and actually worked!

Take a look below and test them out!

Table of Contents

First Cold Call

Follow Back To Get Contract Back

Referral Email

Referred By A Friend Email

Cognitive Map For A Sales Call

First Cold Call

The following is based on the desire to make a sale to the person on the phone. This could be the sale of your product (assuming an appropriate price point) or the “sale” of an appointment.

GATEKEEPER STRATEGIES:

Quick Pass Through

“Hello, Ajax Company.”

“Hello, was hoping you might be able to help me out here…” [wait in order to engender attentiveness] “I’m looking to connect with the person in your department who manages social media marketing. Do you know who that might be?”

“Mike Mokaymo.”

“Mike Mokaymo does? Awesome, thanks so much.”

In their haste to get off the phone, this person will almost always reveal exactly who you need to talk to.

At this point you may ask to be put through or simply call back (with confidence, since you now know the name of the person you would like to speak with.

Co-Opt The Gatekeeper

“Hello, Ajax Company.”

“Hello, my name is Ben. I need some help. I looked on your website but I couldn’t find your name. Are you the one who usually answers the outside line? I’d feel much better if I knew your name before I asked my favor.” (pause)

“Ok, Donna – thanks.”

“I’d like to speak with your boss. How can I make that happen?”

We Have The Right Person On The Line

“Mr. Prospect, have I caught you at an ok time?” If they say yes:

“Great, thank you. I would like to take 2 minutes to tell you why I called. If at the end of 2 minutes you have any questions, I’d love to answer them. If not, you can just let me go. Okay?”

“Yes.”

“Ok, great. The reason I called is because I read though your website and I know you are recruiting sales staff. It can be a challenge to, number one FIND the right people and two to KEEP them on board once you have them. Because of our experience (using our proprietary software) and the skill of the people we hire to do all preliminary screening, we have a slightly better than a 90% success rate – helping our clients hire sales staff who become top tier producers within the first year. And as you can well guess successful salespeople tend to stay put for a long while.”

“Do you currently have a system in place that gains you the salesforce you need to meet your company’s demand?”

“Yes, we do.”

“That is great, the only way we’ll ever be able to help you is if we can assist you in doing that better.”

-or-

“No, we do not.”

“Honestly, that’s not unusual, we hear that an awful lot. It seems like we might have a lot to talk about. How would you like to set up a call for next week to see if it makes sense for us to work together?” (pause)

[We use a lot twice in the above exchange to make it seem more real – less scripted]

“Great, I have most afternoons available to chat. What day is good for you?”

Follow Up To Get Contract Back

First, if you have lost a contract don’t let more than a week go by before getting back into the game. Next, if you are simply calling to renew your agreement, start the conversation with a recap of what is going well. Then:

Hey, Steve, it seems like there are few bumps, mostly good stuff, and I’m looking forward to smoothing out the rough spots and continuing and even improving on all the good systems we have in play.

As we discussed earlier [yes, there needs to have been earlier conversations] I have attached our agreement from last year. It is as we planned with a 2% increase for XXXX. You said you’d be leaving for the coast on Friday so if I do not get this back by Thursday noon, I’ll give you a call, okay?

Thanks for the boost last October. It’s great to be trouble free now. Everything is running as smooth as silk.

Thanks again!

Referral

Hi Surya,

I am glad you’re doing well!

The fact that you are using our daily accountability + support + a system to monitor and track your progress speaks highly of you and your persistence!! And we’re just getting started! 🙂

Since you are succeeding, I feel comfortable asking you for an introduction to another serious minded person who needs and would benefit from our system.

In order to make the choice easy for the person you recommend, I would like to offer a free week of service. (maybe this too – optional – You can always say you have pull. “You know a guy”. -)

I’d love to help your friend/family member or co-worker as we continue to build a supportive – AND PRODUCTIVE group/family!

Thanks for the support,
Adam

P.S. Feel free to email this to the person if you feel more comfortable having them contact me directly.

Referred By A Friend

Hi Robert,

Steve and I are doing good work together and your name came up.

Your firm’s work with GEO-SPOT and ARNOLD, Inc. is really impressive.

We’d love the opportunity to promote your clean-tech solution for free to over 750,000+ professionals.

If it’s ok with you, I’ll call on Thursday (10/1/12) at 4pm. I hope this works. If not just let me know. (email address here if needed)

Really looking forward to chatting with you about “Clean Tech” and us. I’ll have you off the phone in ten minutes or less.

Be amazing.

Cognitive Map For A Sales Call

Using this map to guide yourself through a sale call is important for many reasons. Most importantly, you want to maintain control over the sales call itself. Having a system is the only way to have a consistent sales meeting.

Having a consistent sales meeting is the only way to be able to improve your technique.

Step 1. Set The Stage

“Thank you for taking the time? Do we still have 15-minutes to talk?” (they answer)

“I think we’re here to see if it makes sense for us to work on the XYZ project, does that sound right?” (they answer)

“May I tell you my thoughts about today’s meeting?” (they answer)

“I thought I’d start with a few questions, like where you’ve come from, where you are now and where you are headed. I’ll have some questions about (XYZ)” *1 see below

“Of course you will have questions also, such as what is our track record, who we have worked with before and what does our process look like in practice. And you will want to know what your investment might be.” *2 see below

At the end of this meeting, one of three things usually happens. One of us will recognize that we’re not a fit. In that case we’ll both just go on about our business. Or TWO, hopefully, we will both agree that we are a good fit and if that happens we will then figure out the next steps. AND SOMETIMES people tell me they want to “THINK IT OVER.” This is usually an attempt to say no in the nicest way possible.

“So if you tell me you want to think it over I know you’re just trying to be polite and I’ll let you off the hook and we’ll just call it a no ? sound fair?”

“Well, if it’s ok with you, I’ll get us started with a question?”

*1. At this point you will want to state the questions that you will want to ask in a few minutes. This brief recital of the questions you are about to ask serves as a “softening” action. For instance, I will mention at this time that I will ask about the budget. My intention is to prepare the prospect for the money discussion so that when it happens it is not a total shock.

*2. At this point you want to “feed them” the questions you hope they will ask you.

Step 2. Learn Everything You Can

While you will have already done as much research as possible on your prospect and their needs, It is now time to get as much information as you can get in order to speak intelligently during the sales meeting.

At this point it is up to you to have what I call a curious conversation. This means that you ask questions that reveal you are the enthusiasm about their company or their needs in order to set the stage for them to have an open conversation in return. You may ask questions that sound like this: “So tell me how do you get started as a programmer?” Depending upon your product and the person you’re speaking to you last frame the question so as to orchestrate the conversation in such a way that leads to you having a better understanding of what they need to bridge the gap between where they are now and where they want to be.

As you uncover the gap, or the pain, your prospect is suffering you must make every attempt to discover for yourself and for your prospect that cost of not implementing the solution you could provide. (This is, of course, predicated on the fact that you can provide a solution.) For example, if your business to business client has excess inventory and is leasing extra warehouse space and your inventory management system would reduce the need for this space – what is the cost of the warehouse? If the warehouse and lease is costing $10,000 per month, your prospect has a $120,000 a year problem. If $120,000 a year is a big enough problem for your prospect they are likely to be highly motivated to solve their problem.

Step 3. Talk Money – (And Time And Other Resources)

During this step your task is to determine if your prospect has the budget to pay for your solution. At this point in the sales meeting you may simply come out and ask, “Do you have money in your budget for an inventory management system such as ours?” There are many other ways to determine if your prospect has the readiness willingness and ability to purchase your solution. The important thing to remember is that you must talk money earlier sales conversation. If you are talking only about a solution your prospect will be thinking only about cost and will be unable to listen to the reasons that might persuade them to use your product or service.

Step 4. Find Out Who Decides And How Do They Make The Decision

If your prospect has no budget and sees no way to secure the funds for your services there is no need to continue the sales process. Depending on your product or service you may be able to help your prospect finance the purchase but in general staff three is an early part of your discussion so that you don’t waste your time or your prospect’s time.

If you find out and you both agree that money is not an insurmountable barrier then you can move on to learn who makes the decision and what criteria they will use.

You might say something like this:  “Tell me, James, how do you guys decide whether or not to buy new in inventory management equipment?” Again you are engaging in a curiosity based conversation keeping it somewhat light, although it is a very important conversation for you. Your goal is to learn who decides, how they decide, and when the decision can be made.

Step 5. Close The Deal

You may have heard the term “buyer’s remorse.” This refers to a prospect changing their mind after you thought the sale was already made. No business owner wants to take a call on Monday morning saying please don’t deposit that check; I’ve changed my mind. Therefore, once we have closed the deal we want to ensure that our new customer is happy with their decision – while we are still in close contact with them.

Therefore we might proceed like this:

“Thank you for your business. We’ve had a pretty exciting meeting and sometimes the day after a meeting like this a person gets cold feet. I don’t think that’s the case here. I’m not going to get a call tomorrow asking me not to deposit that check, am I?”

You’ll want to say this with a smile your voice.

I haven’t actually passed the contract back across the table and asked the customer to tear it in half if they were not really pleased.

In summary, it is your best interest to remain in control of the sales conversation.

Go ahead and try any of these cold calling scripts and leave us a comment down below if this worked for you?

Categories: Business, Cold Calling

Hi I’m Jaime. Each and every week I bring you the top business advice from the people who know best.

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