The Grow Show: Business Growth Stories from the Frontlines

[Season 1] Cold Calling Isn't Dead

July 15, 2022 Scott Scully, Jeff Winters, Eric Watkins Season 1 Episode 15
The Grow Show: Business Growth Stories from the Frontlines
[Season 1] Cold Calling Isn't Dead
Show Notes Transcript

No matter what you hear, COLD CALLING ISN'T DEAD! Abstrakt Marketing Group is built around cold calling and we believe this should be a part of every business's sales strategy. In this episode, we dive into what makes a perfect phone call, how many cold calls to make each day, and how to combat call reluctance.  

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Welcome to the grove show where we make it easier for entrepreneurs and leaders to grow their businesses. You'll hear from real leaders with real stories about their successes and failures. So you don't have to make the same mistakes. We won't break out textbooks or talk theory only raw stories from the front lines with actionable takeaways. The gross show is sponsored by Heil sound, world class microphones for stage studio, broadcast and podcast. Find your sound it Heil sound.com Here's the next episode of the grouse Show. Welcome back to the girls show. I'm here with my partners in growth. Scott scoli. What's going on everyone, Jeff winters, everybody, how we doing today? This is the topic we've been waiting for. We've gone through all these episodes, struggled through them. Just to talk about our favorite topic today, which is cold calling is not dead. It's not dead. Not even close. Not even close. And Jeff, I'm gonna let you start this one today. Thank you because you built your company off saying cold calling is dead. That's my tag you were wrong. I mean, look. First of all, it's fun marketing. For a company built on cold emailing, sick marketing, lying, whatever clever. It's a clever, it was clever. I believe our tagline was replaced the cold call slightly different localities. That said, I watched and these guys will give the stats. But it's it's undeniable. It's it's the undisputed, undefeated, undeniable truth that cold calling is not dead. It is here. And it is I dare to say never going anywhere. And if you're and this is a full stop if you're prospecting in any way. Do your full cycle rep. Your prospecting a little you're an SDR, you're prospecting all the time you work in an outsource, whatever your prospecting, if you're not incorporating cold calling, as part of your mixture of tactics, you are selling yourself short. And you're doing yourself your company, client whoever, and enormous disservice, you must be making cold calls if you're prospecting in any way. So much to say, you know, anytime you're communicating with other individuals, you know, the most direct route is always the phone. It always is. Yep. Like if you're trying to get a small group of people together to come over to the house for a barbecue on the weekend. What do you do? Right? You might send a text, but at the end of the day, you're picking up the phone, what do you bring on you bring in the burgers, Johnny, can you bring a 12 pack. But just any kind of effective communication eventually comes off of other sources and directly to the phone. We in 13 years have not been able to beat a call in everything that we do. building websites, writing content, strategizing on social media channels, how buying media doing television commercials, radio ads, we never can beat the cold call. And yet everybody's out there saying you shouldn't pick up the phone unless you know it's 100% qualified. It's like I feel like the message is go buy another piece of software to determine whether or not you know it's an effective lead, then maybe you'll pick up the phone. And it has always been the most effective tool to actually qualify. People spend 1000s and 1000s monthly on tools to hopefully start with qualified leads doesn't happen. We've used them. Right? And what could be more effective than getting on the phone and saying, Hey, what's up? Hey, what's going on? Hey, do you do this? Do you do that? Who makes the decisions? It just doesn't make any sense to me that people think that it's dead. It's not dead. It's not going away. And we made how many we make over the past estimates would be over the past three years. Between all entities We've probably made 20 million calls. Yeah 20 million calls. So that's where we're coming from. We're not just throwing out some BS. Like, this is real stuff. And you know what's what's interesting what I've been hearing a lot of you is, well, it's too competitive. Now, there's so many people making calls, that it's saturated, you know what our contact rate was this past month 8.3%. You know what it is historically 8.3% Our contact rate hasn't changed since we've started in the beginning, like we are, we are right around the same efficiency and what when we say contact rate, we mean percent of calls, we reach a key decision maker for our calls. So the, the argument would be, you can't get people on the phone. That's why cold calling is dead. If it's not dead, because of what you're saying to write, just suck at it. Yeah, you're just not good at it. Or you'll want to do it. Yeah. Which means you suck at it, the truth comes out. But you could probably be good at it. If you did, which you didn't, which means you suck at it, does it not? They're not tied together. Because if you don't do it, then you suck at doing cold calls. I'm just tired of hearing about it reminds me a direct mail like 25 years ago, everybody said direct mail is dead. Like every day I go to my mailbox, I have like 30 pieces of direct mail. It's not dead. People go to their mailbox every day. If you have, you know, a decent list up front and you do some things to qualify over time direct mail hits you right between the eyes, you go out and you get the damn mail every day, bring it back, you open the mail. It's not dead hasn't been and 25 years ago, they said it's dead now cold calling is dead. I just didn't save for an oil change. Direct Mail got me. And you know, actually, you know what, why we're dumb. We're dumb because we're not selling software to salespeople? Well, because salespeople don't want to cold call. They want another piece of software to tell them who evidently is a qualified customer that's gonna buy tomorrow. So I guess we're the dumb ones. Because we should be selling that shit, because that's what everybody's buying. But at the end of why? Because they don't want to do it. Well, yeah. And if you sell software, you don't you don't get held accountable to results. We're in a unique position today. Because this is really, Scott and Eric have enormous expertise in this area. Very, very deep expertise. I'm, I'm new to this cold calling game. I've done it. But these guys are, you know, miles and miles and miles ahead of me. So Eric, talk to us a little bit about, Okay. Call reluctance, because you're cold cold. If cold calling is steps. Step one is making sure you're not reluctant to pick up the phone, like what is call reluctance? How do you get people over it? How do you get over it, if you have call reluctance? It's, it's tough. And I'll start by saying, you know, you try to vet this out as much as you can in the interview process, because some people just don't get over it. That's just the reality of it. But at the same time, I think anybody can get over it. So there's that for you. Don't let it don't let it put your mind in a pretzel. First thing I would say in that interview process, we've talked about this before, but making sure that they've gone through some adversity. Because if you have and you've overcome that in life, getting rejected on a cold call, or saying the wrong thing, or getting hung up on, it's not going to come anywhere close to that. So when you're starting out, let's say you've never made a cold call before, the important things is to define success in different ways. If you're defining success, as you have to do these million things, and then get the appointment. And then you're successful, they're going to feel like failures, every single call they make for those first 100 200 300. So you just make many wins. So this first call, all I want you to do is be really good about getting through the gatekeeper, gatekeeper. That's it, you get through the gatekeeper you want then from there, key decision maker when we get them on the phone, I want you to have your introduction memorized. And want you to say it exactly how you said it. And we're going to ask them Rowan one really good question. Then from there, once we've got some questions, we're going to add the second question and the third question. And eventually we're going to get to the clothes. And then those baby steps. It's not so intimidating. I think what happens is, people don't really train and they just throw them in there, sink or swim. And then the other thing I would say is when you are role playing with individuals, you should always roleplay the toughest situation they'll ever deal with. Like make practice as hard as possible. So when they're in the game, and they're actually getting rejected, it's a little bit easier. And then just be there to support like, share stories. I think this is where people probably missed the mark the most share stories like everybody who's good at sales, probably was in their same seat. Share and bring those people in have them talk to him. Talk about like, I went through this stage as well. You're not alone. You're gonna go through it. It's fine, but I promise you, here's what's going to happen on the other end, what we said, this is the controversial show, I've got two answers one step beyond and just pick up the phone, and you make a couple of dials and then you'll figure it out and you'll get through it. And we are way we are coddling people, we as a society are coddling people way too much right now. Like, look, there are people that have done more difficult things than pick up the phone and try to get somebody to connected, right? And then I guess my nicer answer is, I think that people will figure it out on their own. If they understand the product or service, and how it can solve a problem for the person they're calling, then they'll just figure it out themselves. We've got great playbooks and great training and your team are doing incredible things to get people better knowledge. But if someone like if it's an IT company, and somebody thoroughly understands why somebody needs a managed service provider, and they understand why this IT company is different than the other guys, and then then they understand who they're calling, and why a connection between those two would be a good thing, then I just think they figure out how to stay on on the phone, because they want to do the right thing. They want to connect to people that will help each other out. And that doesn't take a salesperson. Like they've done this for a lifetime. Like they've done this since a very early age where they've connected people that they know, that may have a common interest or could help one another out. And then all of a sudden they get on the phone and they think that it's different. And all we're asking them to do is to get on the phone, ask some questions, figure out if it's a company that has a need, and then connect them to one of our companies that we're representing so that they can solve a problem. That's it. And if they really understand that, then then they'll figure it out. So Scott, you design this thing, what 13 years ago started this business? This business? Yes. 10s of millions of cold calls, I tell everybody out there walk us through what is the ideal cold call structure? What's the anatomy of the cold call look like? First of all, I'd like I'll start backwards people before they make any, like get so hell bent on you know, what is going to happen on that call before they even make calls. So the first thing that I'll say is, there's no better way than just to make as many as humanly possible and just get on the phone and start making mistakes. Because in a hurry, you're going to learn what you can and can't do. That's the very first thing that I say. The second thing that I say is take advantage of every call. Like and people don't because they want off in a hurry. So they may get to a gatekeeper. And they may say hey, is Jeff there? And well, nope, Jeff's not here today. Okay, thanks. And then they hang up, right, as opposed to, you know, building relationship with that gatekeeper, asking a few questions about their business. Making it an initiative if people say, Don't sell the gatekeeper, bullshit, bullshit, oh, the gatekeeper. Absolutely, like so the gatekeeper. The whole deal is that this is my person that is in between me and the decision maker, they need to know that the initiative that I'm in the middle of I need to make the gatekeeper understand why they're doing a disservice to the organization, if they don't let me through to talk to you. People don't take the time to do it. It's total shit. And the if they were to call here, the people that they would end up talking to know a lot about our business, they could find out how we manage our IT or, you know, if we're in a contract with a cleaning company, or like there's a lot of things they could find out without getting to me or you either want to you too, but people don't use the gatekeeper. They don't sell the gatekeeper. They don't use it as part of the process, which is crap. Then I would say, if you're not getting to somebody, people also don't leave really good voicemails. And I would rotate in between everything from Hey, Jeff, man, I was supposed to call you today. Sorry, I missed you, too. Eventually, a more detailed message of exactly why you're trying to connect to hopefully spark that. Then I would also get on these are all things before I even got to a decision maker. I'd also get transferred to someone else. If I'm not getting to you, I'd get transferred to Blake who run sales and I'd ask him a few questions and try to get him to influence. You know, you picking up the phone and talking to me people don't do that. And then once I do get you on the phone, it's got to be I've got to grab your attention right away. I've got to acknowledge the fact that I caught you in the middle of running your business. So I'm going to be brief, I'm going to tell them exactly why I'm calling, I'm going to make them feel like they're special, like I'm calling you, because we specialize in, manage it for marketing companies. And, you know, we did some research. And we found that you're one of the companies that we would actually have a perfect fit with. We know what you're in the middle of, we know what you, you know, the problems you need to solve on a daily basis. And I think that it would be worth 15 minutes for us to talk and explore, I'd make you feel special, but get to it quickly. I'd tell them the purpose. And then I would have, you know, there's going to be objections. And I would have good stories of other marketing companies that we've served from an IT perspective and how we solve their problems, how they became more effective, efficient, put more money, the bottom line, and you know, then I wrap it up, and I go for an appointment, I would not try to sell the services, or the product over the phone, I'd try to sell the next meeting, period. And I'd make it super sticky. And I'd make sure that I got an outlet, Outlook invite accepted while I was on the phone and call it a day. It's it's not that hard. And there's nothing that can replace that. Think about what I just said, having different conversations with different people in the organization, asking questions, leaving voicemails, building relationships, and doing that over and over. What replaces that. What software or marketing medium replaces that? Nothing? How can you replace that? It's never going away, not if you're going to be really good at sales. We can only we can talk about this because we make hundreds of 1000s of them. And because we sell frickin $200,000 a month and reoccurring revenue. Like I think we some I know what we're talking about. You can't replace the cold call, it's not dead. It's never going away. It never will. And people that want to grow their businesses in a significant way better figure it out, or call us. And we'll do it for you. He said a lot lot of gyms there. And Eric, I'm gonna give you multiple choice for which one to double click in. Unless you got some I got no, I really like what he said. I mean, he's the one who taught me how to do it. So those are that's the exact framework of how we do our calls. And I think well, what we could do outside of here is we could have a download for people who are really interested in some more stats from our 20 million calls and how we approach the calls, I'm gonna give you two tips. And I'm gonna say two mistakes. Okay, first tip is with the intro, you're gonna get a lot of people like people will go to war over how an intro should go, right? Should you open up? Should you ask questions should not ask questions. Should it be short, should it be long, etc, etc. Three things clear, compelling, confident, the person needs to sound confident about their services, they need to be clear on why they're calling you. And it needs to be compelling enough to continue the conversation. If your intro could be, however many words it is it's got to be those three things. Second thing, I would train your reps to know three relevant topics for the service that they're calling on behalf of. And the number one problem that it solves, and how your company is different in solving that problem. I wouldn't go overboard with what I trained them on. But relevant topic, key problem? And why is your company the best at solving that problem? Because then you can set your framework up in a way where you ask questions and then when they go for the clothes, they can use that differentiator to be able to set the appointment, two biggest mistakes and it goes along with that with those two. One I think people are trying to be too cute these days. Like people want to be so different and what they're saying that I think they're losing sight of you know, our intro for example, we end our intros with an open ended question where I've seen a lot of people coach against that people answer it like people answered almost every time and they go into it and the people that don't work in to talk to you no matter what our numbers are numbers so I think it actually gets that prospect talking earlier in our conversation I think people are gonna be are trying to be too cute we're like this is a cold call and all this so you don't agree with that because I don't I just watched a video of all these different cold call openers and people say people there's like two schools of thought there's acknowledge that it's a salesperson and a cold call in either a funny or a serious way some to the effect of you know hey Eric How you doing as Jeff winters? Look, I'm I'm calling this is this is admittedly this is this is a cold call. I know I'm interrupting your day like starting with something like that or going into exactly like not acknowledging that there's sort of two schools of thought sure. And anyway is fine. What's more horn is your tone, regardless of what you're saying. So I think it's what really separated that first intro was your tone. You're cordial, you're friendly. I'd want to get into a conversation with you. Oh, the people that? Well, it was because you put on an act, not how you normally talk, but how you talked in that intro. But I, I feel like the people that are like, Oh, haha, let's get into a conversation are the same people that would have just answered your question in the first place? I don't think you're getting this whole new audience. And I think you're turning some people off the other way, who are a little bit more logical, little bit more business? What do you think on the opener, Scott, I agree that if you are sounding excited that I'm going to want to engage with you. And I think the bigger deal is actually that someone's doing the activity, because there is a law number Stein. And if you're making over 100 dials a day, day in day out, and I'm talking about if you're in that type of position, right, certain salespeople potentially can't make that many daily, however, I will say the salespeople that make the most amount of money in the world probably make two or three times that. But you got to have the activity, and people will do it sporadically. If you do the consistent activity, and if you have the way in which you're gonna attack the call, and you do it with the, with the right tone, you're gonna have success, you didn't want, you don't want it number two, or thing not to do number two, I got so you'd love to get so entranced with tip number one. There's another one, there's another one, this is the biggest, this is the biggest mistake, this is bigger than the other one way bigger, too much information, you will train an SDR to death, you will give them six pages of notes, seven case studies, the read the whole website do this, this and this for a three to seven minute call. They need to know the smallest amount of information they can to be able to sell the meeting exactly what Scott was saying earlier, and people over inform. And then we talk about call reluctance. That's why people don't want to get on the phone. Because they think they need to know everything about every little detail. And this something we actually have to coach our clients on because they think in this three to seven minute cold call, we actually get their undivided attention for an hour in a conference room where we can go over every detail of their company, where we are, you know, it's a quick interaction, right. And it's important that I think of the funnel, you need to start with all the information about your company. But by the time you get to how you're going to structure your call track and train your SDR. You should have worked that all the way down to the funnel to exactly what the needs need to haves are on the call. That was the big one. That was the big one. What do you think? I think it's probably dead on want to hear a really gray statement, but I believe in it wholeheartedly. It's like, Look, if you want to progress, you want to be a salesperson or you want to move beyond this position, figure it out, make the dials, like don't come over here and talk to me about why it's not happening. I said make 135 dials, know your clients, and have good tone when you're doing it. If you're not excited, they're not excited. If you do those things week in and week out, you're going to figure it out, you're going to do a great job and you're going to progress. If you don't want to progress, you're not going to figure it out. So go home and figure it out. And we don't do enough of that. So you think all this So Scott, let me let me parse through the gray. Sounds to me like you think like on the margin, a great cold call and a bad cold call aren't that far away from each other. Like if you make 135 of them, the best are gonna get X The rest are gonna get 75% of x just make the dials like don't worry so much about the training, make the dials and my person through that right. I'm in the beginning, I think that you can get somebody making the dials and focus on making sure that they sound confident. Because I think that that's a huge part of it. And then and then I actually what I'm saying is that I think sometimes companies fail because they are weak in their accountability. And when we fail, we are weak in holding people accountable to going and taking care of themselves, figuring out their clients, gathering the knowledge that they need, and then getting on the phone and representing their client in the right way. I if somebody out there if people listening, if they have somebody that's on the phone, make sure that they are calling in an industry that you can solve a problem in and that they sound confident and that they put the right amount of calls in day in and day out. And then over time they will develop. And my guess is that they have to do that position before they get the next one. And I don't think we knew it do enough of that. It's okay if you, if you figure this out, you can progress into the next position. If you don't, you're going to stay here. This is a really important skill set in life. And if you learn it, you're going to be more well rounded, and you're going to be more successful in life. I don't care what they want to do. By the way, if they learn this cold calling, breaking through gatekeepers, overcoming objections, time management, if they learn this, they're going to be incredible in their lives. If they don't, they're not going to be as good. But this is a must. To Scott's point of, I fully believe in process is more important than what you're doing on the call 100%. Because he was talking about being intentional with every dial, if you're moving records forward. And luckily, we've spent millions of dollars and have an automated process that runs to force us to do this at abstract. But if you're just if every dial you make is an independent event, that you are not investing, you're not going to reap the rewards of that activity in the future. You're wasting your time, like you're wasting your money. And the thing that separates like, the worst caller can set an appointment with someone that needs your service, I promise you, if someone needs your service, the worst caller that you've ever heard can set an appointment. The good callers what they end up doing, is they get the appointments of the people that weren't interested. Yeah. Which is typically the sales that you have to nurture longer. So what why we feel what's more important is that they're putting in the activity, and they're working the process consistently. Because we know we're never gonna miss, you just never want to miss the person when it's the right time. That's how you know you have the right system in place. You know, it's weird, like if there if you were going to have an event, and you had 100 people on the invite list. And you said to somebody, you can only have one way in which to communicate to these people to get them to this event to have an incredible event. What would they say? Like? Most people would say, Well, I guess I just call them then. Right? Especially if it was a life and death thing. It's like you need to get 100 people to show up next Saturday at this event. And you can only use one form of communication to get a hold of people to get them to this event. Well, if they could only use one, they probably pick up the phone. Why? Why then, are we talking about anything else? When it comes to business, a lifeline people's jobs? Like, I don't get it? Well, unless those people were like 14. Unless an event would be 14, then you'd have to you have to hit him on the snap. You have to tick tock him, you'd snap to Snap, Snap Chat him I just this is like I we spend all day together three of us do in some form or fashion talk all the time. I did not think y'all were gonna say that. And I think people out there going to be surprised to know that if I've 20 30 million calls over the last few years, the people that know who were overseeing all this calling, with millions of probably the biggest sample size of any company of our kind out there are saying, Hey, don't worry about overtraining, don't worry about overthinking, worry about accountability. That's what you worry about. That's just it's no big deal. People need to hear that. Keep in mind, I mean, we're not saying don't have a script, do both. We made a playbook. And we made it easy to understand. And then the best way to train hundreds of people like we have to do is to have them follow the same playbook. You can't have everybody doing different things. But the most important, like if we couldn't do both, the first thing we'd pick is someone making 135 dials sound and excited with some limited knowledge of how they're going to get somebody do an appointment. Period. Here's the unfortunate reality that people don't want to hear. And it's a little it's a little sensitive, when you make a cold call, right? Even if you schedule an appointment, that was not the most important event for that person ever. One month from now, they won't remember that call. Like it's the iceberg mentality. You all the cold call is just above the surface and people obsess over how perfect was the call? And did you say this? And did you get this across? It's not about that. It's about the meeting, like did you get in front of a qualified company that now you can make a lasting impression on? We call people all the time. These people. If you talk to a gatekeeper today and you talk to him a week from now, they don't remember you. They get hundreds of these calls. It's the volume game and it's it's the exciting Like that comes first. And we talk about our pipeline playbook. We think it's great. It's logical, it makes sense. Is it the best plate playbook out there? Probably not. But the where we combat that is how consistent we are with our process, and how well we adopt it with our team. If you were if you were a commercial cleaning company, and you knew that facilities managers made the decision, you know, on what cleaning company they're going to use. You wouldn't call them. Like, if you had a list of facilities managers, you wouldn't call them and ask a couple of questions and say you'd loved her in their business. I guess you just send them a piece of mail or, you know, I don't know, connect, kind of write some content, hope they come to you or send them an email, kind of avoid the call, I guess you avoid the call unless they make them turn themselves into a lead 17 things have to happen before it's hot enough for somebody to pick up the phone? Or do you prep, proactively kick the shit out of your competition, and call the facilities managers in town and ask a few questions and steal the shit out of your competitors business. You make the freakin phone calls? No, I agree 110%. And I think the thing to think about is like, every cold call isn't equal necessarily. So like we start with a list, but we have a process to work it through. When you're in year two, year three, you're not making cold calls, you're calling people that you've built relationships with over time. And I think the issue is like, when people think cold calls, they think I have a list of 12,000 or 1000 companies I'm going to call everybody wants, they're not building, right? They're not creating momentum, that snowball effect to like, just continue to make this bigger and bigger and bigger until it's too big to fail. I mean, we have clients have been around for 789 years. Their pipelines are ridiculous. They know every company that's worth anything in there, Mark. And I don't think they could have done that through email. Right? I don't even think they could have done it. Knocking on doors because you can't get to as many as quickly. I keep hearing the number 135 dials. And I asked this question because this is something that I see questions on LinkedIn with the polls, I get asked this question. How many dials should my STRS be making per day? And I know it depends. But like, I would love to give people some advice on Okay, I have an SDR how many dials do I because I hear people say my STRS are making 20? Well, there's a difference. Like if they are I don't know, out connecting with people from a social perspective and writing content and dealing with lists and sending emails and doing other things that that our marketing department and team members within our marketing department do, then maybe they would make less but the best thing to do is separate that should immediately like you have people do that activity. And then you have somebody that dials the shit out of the phone, it's 17 plus an hour. And they should have a list in front of them. And the people that are good at making phone calls should make phone calls. And the people that are good at writing or engaging on social or doing that activity should do that you should split that activity right now. That's a really good point for context. So for people because we when they think I think when people think STRS they think, okay, they're gonna send the emails, write the emails, create the cadence, do the LinkedIn, make the calls, like when we talk SDR here internally, it's more more calling your Yeah, it's calls and then we spend hundreds of 1000s in those support departments to specialize in that. But it's worth noting, if all you're doing I mean, you can work backwards on the math, if all you're doing is making phone calls. With no Robo dialer, right? Correct. It's 17 plus an hour. That's like that's the that's the Min 111 conversation minimum an hour. And then you have we have people who are making 170 calls, having 15 conversations in a day setting three to four appointments. So just as far as like what's possible, like Yeah, if someone really wants to sit there and grind all day like that we have people that are doing that. But we've come up with, on average, what's a good threshold is 135 calls and eight conversations a day without an automated dialer. When if you do that there's no way you're not setting an appointment or averaging set an appointment right? So you get through the month, and you have at least 20 new opportunities from this one individual. You should probably have 40 It depends on the industry a little bit, but there's no way you lose if someone's on the phone doing that. activity in they're pumped up about talking about your products or services or why we should meet, then then it's going to happen. But people get talked out of it. They watch the videos, they read the blogs, callings dead. Buy the software, it'll make you all better. Give this software to your salespeople, that'll really make them sell more. And at the end of the day, you need more new sales meetings. And the best way to do that is to make phone calls period, and a story. We work in all 50 states with 1700 plus people, like I don't, we're doing the beginning stages of the sales process for 1700 companies in literally every state. It's the only reason we can talk about this act. The only reason I'm from Iowa, I'll talk about Iowa. I can't talk like I can't listen to the one off person in Waterloo, Iowa talking about how calls don't work. Like they don't know. Sorry, that's the controversial part. We do this for a living we know, right? We don't we set what fixed air conditioning units we don't six support it. Six 7000 appointments a month, every single month and 36 7000 appointments a month over the phone. Crazy generate some email, but yeah, like at least afford $1 to 5000 over firing to do an email app. So but generating millions for our clients monthly, millions monthly. It's an amazing perspective. 27 This past month. It's an amazing perspect it's beyond it's amazing. When I say amazing three more times. It's an incredible is it amazing. I just Katie Can you note that it was amazing. It was like my my drive last Friday. Oh sorry. off track. We go on off track because I got a great off track. I took the kids you were born off track. took the kids to the Dude Perfect show on Saturday. Oh, what do I totally know what Dude Perfect is it? Do you know? You know, Dipper, for those of you listening that don't know, you're one of very few. It's these tell me if I'm explaining this, right? If these guys there's like six of them. And they shoot trick shot. Effectively they shoot these trick shots. Like they take a football from the top of a stadium and throw it into like a tiny water bucket. Right? That went from and if you're listening and you don't know your head's about to explode, so you should sit down. That went from a couple of occasional videos with the boys to like 75 million followers huge tour. buckets of money crazy anyways, took the kids to this. I had no idea what that expectation. They just shot balls into hoops and arrows into you know, bull's eyes that were they have sponsorships. Oh my gosh. You know this was jabbed. That's when they wanted big sponsors. I bet they picked up the phone and call them. They did. I just couldn't believe all right, believe they didn't call the grocery, I'm gonna I'm gonna I want to I want to go. I'm digging in again. Most of these cold calls, you don't call. You give them a great intro. And they go oh, my gosh, I've been waiting for you. Thank goodness you called finally, you have an objection. Eric, tell the people tried and true. How do you handle objections over the phone? Give us a methodology. I think first you got to understand where they're coming from. And the majority of objections are subconscious. They're just we just reject things in our lives off the bat. Like we're not even thinking about. It's just going through the motions. Okay. Yeah, I've heard your sales pitch before objection. So the first thing is, don't take an objection as this person doesn't need my service or doesn't have this problem. And I think that's important to understand. Because then then I think your people will be more apt to get excited when they hear objections, versus okay, this person doesn't need my service. Second thing is to always clarify. So before you jump all over handling an objection, you got to understand where they're coming from. So when we talk about these relevant topics, and we bring up let's say in it, we're talking about how do you handle your security? And they say something to the effect of, well, you know, I have this company and they're doing like, they handle it and everything's going great. Okay, well, tell me about what would take your security the next level, we teach them to brush through to the next question, first, finish the relevant topics. Yeah. And in that order, typically what we talk about is how do you handle What's your most consistent issue? And then what would take it to the next level? It's just a quick framework to get three questions deep and in a way where if you're new and you're doing it, you can add you can get three questions deep without getting into too nitty gritty of a conversation. Then they stop you, right, they will Stonewall you, you can't go any further. We use feel felt found Like just just very simple tried and true, you don't use the words feel felt found, but we use the stories that we have to solve that problem. So this is where the training comes in. So when we talk about relevant topics, and I say only have three, because you're going to have three, you're going to have a story with it. And then you're going to have a value prop differentiator with each one. And so you're going to get the objection, hit him with the feel felt found, which is the story of someone that was like them, and then you're going to close with the differentiator that sets them apart for it. It's just a quick like, you can just hear it logically how it would be easy coming in to understand that, Ken, why don't you unpack the feel felt found, because I know it's just over here. It's been ingrained in everybody's conscious, but I've never heard of it coming into this business, I bet a lot of listeners haven't was feel felt found. It's I mean, it's just simply put, you know, me saying to you, hey, I understand how you feel, Jeff, you know, other owners of it, organizations have felt the same way that you do when I reached out. But after we had a couple of minutes of conversation, and we ended up sitting down and meeting, what they found is we could help them be more effective with their it, you know, they've got an average of 15% more the bottom line people are, have more uptime, just that kind of thing. But people get better at masking the feel and the felt in the found and what they say. And it's not new. It's been used for years, but it still works. And it's one of the most effective things that especially rookie salespeople could latch on to and be pretty effective with. And it's an awesome framework. I mean, I think people when they get that objection, Eric, I think you you said it first is realize like, this is not the end of the world. Second, roll through this process and using feel felt found as part of that process. I mean, it's maybe it's maybe it's old, but a lot of stuff that's old, still plenty good still works. Yeah, it still works really well. And I think that's helpful for people to hear out there is like, using the feel felt found. I like that, I still go back. So I'll go back 30 years aging myself thinking about the people that have been the best in our sales departments, and the best in setting appointments. And they were to had an enormous amount of confidence. And they they had the right tone, right? They just, in fact, I mean, if I went back to the automotive days, some of our best salespeople, like I would listen to their sales presentations and almost cringe a little bit. Like that's not how I would have said it, but they were so damn excited about what we had to offer. It was infectious. And the people bought it left and right. Like in the putting in the act to tivity and having enthusiasm is right at the top. Like if you call me and you're all jacked up about how we have to meet or why we have to meet like, what's up Jeff below. Like, I'm like, I don't know what this guy's offering but holy crap. He was confident excited. And why not take 15 minutes to see what's going on. But most of the time when somebody calls you. They're not that way. Thank you. Bye. Hey, this is Eric with abstract Marketing Group. I hope you're doing well today. But don't you if someone's super jacked up and they fight with you at length? You know, they stay on the phone a little bit joke with you and they're pumped up, aren't you like, Huh? Sounds like there's something going on over here. Yeah. be pumped up. So here's another debate going on on LinkedIn. And I see all the time personalization. A lot. A lot of leaders thought leaders SDR leaders say, gotta make sure you know something about this prospect personally. Yeah, you ready for this? Yeah, I want to hear what that is so that you don't have to do as much during each day inactivity. You know, who made that up? The people that didn't want to make the dials to made that up? I knew you're gonna say is personalization, bullshit dumping immediately. Yes, I'm saying that you could develop a framework where you can dump in the industry or you can like have a couple of statements about the industry. We're not talking about us here and the fact that we may represent 20 different industries. Most people that are listening, right, they have right, one product one service, they're in one thing, and it pretty much works the same way for most people that they do business with, like enthusiastically make the dials and sell the appointment here. Here's my math on personalization. Yeah, so we've been doing this for nine or 13 years and we have a 8.3% Contact rate. So that means 10 people I do research on for personalization, I'm going to get less than one on the phone at 8.3% Contact rate. So I would suggest to take that time you were going to do for personalization and make more calls and get more get three more people on the phone. This is like that's just my, my in if you can do it in a scaled way great. And I know like scaled personalization, yeah, doesn't come off as personalization in writing, but it can over the phone with your tone. I can say tone like 12 times on this podcast, I can't say how important your tone is on a cold call. And you can do that if you're making 100 that we're gonna get shattered on this episode because all the SDR gurus in the world, they're gonna be like, bullshit, you got to do this. You got to do that. Why would you pick up the phone if it wasn't qualified by these 17 pieces of software, integrate them together and only call people that like have a flashing red light and 17 triggers. And they don't know shit. That's what I have to say about those people. The people that are giving you the most advice on LinkedIn don't actually do this for a living these guys every day. 20 million. All right, Scott mentioned it earlier. This is another raging debate. voicemails, Scott said, gotta leave. Oh, yeah. Can you Eric, can you spin on that point? I mean, it's, yeah, I if you have a automated way to do it, I think that's great. I think dropping a voicemail every single time I have no issues with that. I think you're cheating yourself from a just strict marketing standpoint, then I could see how someone could say if you don't leave voicemails you could have you could get to more people and set more appointments. But I think you're cheating yourself in the long term. And we get a lot of callbacks we honestly do. It's crazy, because I've never called anybody back personally, from a voicemail. But a lot of our appointments come from callbacks. You know what I do if you can get a direct line? Leave one at 10 at night. Be the first one in Jeff. Man, I was sitting here thinking about you. And I know it's late. I probably missed you. But I wanted to just get this item out of my head and into your voicemail box. So you have it when you get in in the morning. We got to talk like give me a call. Those kinds of things, right? Just drop 20 voicemails that from nine to 10. At night, make people feel special, like you're working at night and got an idea for them. And you could you could drop the same damn voicemail to 20 people, but at least other than their name is the variable. They're still going to feel special. I feel like we people are going to get a lot out of this episode. I hope so. I feel like I've sort of been it for our loyal listeners. I've been a little bit of the Eric, on this episode. You did a good job distributor. You might have a new role. Would you guys mind if I wrapped it up? Yeah, wrap it up, man. Okay, yeah, perfect. Be gentle. All right. We're wrapping up. And I'm gonna give you my takeaways. I felt like I was a little bit of a listener on this one. Number one, Volume. Volume can overcome a lot in making cold calls. Make sure people are spending more time on the phone, less time thinking about being on the phone, less time research and being on the phone. Second, tone, tone matters almost as much as, as anything. Make sure you're enthusiastic. Make sure you're fired up, make sure you're jacked up to be there on the phone. Next objections, they're gonna happen. They're going to happen, make sure you have a framework, whether it's feel felt found or whatever you use, make sure you have a strategy for how to handle your objections. And last, you got to make sure you have a script. Like make sure you have a script. Make sure you've tested that script. You've tried that script. We didn't talk as much about this on this podcast, but it was sort of implied throughout volume, tone, objection handling script. Those are my takeaways here. Yeah, we didn't get to closing up the appointment and making it sticky and making sure it shows up because the most important thing like if you scheduled meeting and it never shows up that's but we could probably do a whole episode on that. On the lookout and going on, he wasn't gonna let me close the patient on that one. He was gonna come in and put in that final sketch. Just pretty obvious gap. I think he'd be worn out you. Could you note that I want up, Jeff. Thanks for listening to the growth show. Leave us a review and let us know how we're doing or if there's a topic you'd like us to cover in the future. The growth show sponsored by sapper consulting. Let us schedule your sales appointments so you don't have to abstract cloud solutions leveraging the power of the Salesforce platform to solve complex business problems with straightforward solutions how many cold call meetings have you scheduled last 30 days yourself? Six. I scheduled for me those aren't if you're following up on emails, those aren't cold calls bullshit. Those are warm calls. Call suspect a little bit