Be sure to register for my free training on, "Why Prospects Push Back on Price, Give 'Think-It-Overs,' and Ghost in Sales Until They Meet a Sales Superstar Who Is Following These 7 Simple Keys" https://salesinsightslab.com/training/ 1. Stop cold calling. I know, I know—I just got through talking about how I’m going to help you improve your cold calling strategy. And now I’m telling you to stop cold calling. What gives? Well, traditional cold calling is an antiquated sales approach that makes connecting with new prospects much harder than it has to be. So I’m not saying you should stop making prospecting calls...I’m saying you should stop making traditional cold dials. Instead, you should always be warming up your calls through other mediums. 2. Master your IPP. Your IPP stands for your ideal prospect profile. This is one of my biggest passions in sales. I see so many salespeople out there making dials to prospects who aren't even necessarily a good fit for what they offer. Making dials is painful; it's hard work. So do the effort up front to make sure the people that you're calling are actually going to be good fits. That means making sure they have the right title, the right challenges, the right geographies, and the right ability to buy whatever it is that you sell. 3. Know your blueprint. Your prospecting blueprint is what will enable you to warm up those dials so that prospects know who you are when you call them. This is the essential key to modern-day cold calling. Your blueprint is the way you organize this process and execute it every single time with every prospect, without having to guess when to do what. 4. Have a kick-ass CTA. When most salespeople make cold calls, they think the only logical call to action is trying to schedule a meeting or make a sale. But the reality is that there are a lot of other next steps after a successful cold call that will bring the prospect in. To pull them in, use a kick-ass call to action—something like a complimentary piece of content, an audit, or some valuable insight that's more interesting than just “hopping on a call with you.” 5. Script out your call. This is so basic, but we cannot be cold calling prospects in any manner without a script. It's genuinely insane to me that hoards of salespeople today are out there right now making cold calls to prospects without a script; they're just saying whatever comes to their mind. That's like watching a really, really, really terrible movie. A great movie has a great script. That's the basis of a great movie. A great prospecting call is going to have a great script, too. Have a script to make sure that you follow a good process and stay on track in every cold call. 6. Know your contingencies. This is a big one. Prospecting calls have a number of areas in the call where the prospect is likely to push back or try to get off the call. Because of this, it’s essential for successful cold calling that you have contingencies in place in order to meet and overcome those moments of pushback. 7. Live by next steps. Number seven, live by next steps. The only thing that matters in prospecting is next steps, in today's world of selling there are no cold dials or prospecting calls that typically end in a sale. I don't see a lot of that anymore. If you were selling something that is big or to businesses, your goal is not to make a sale in that call. It is simply to schedule a meeting. So live by next steps. You want to make sure that you're never in the world of following up with a prospect. You want to have a scheduled next step. That means a calendar invite goes out from your calendar into their calendar and you have a scheduled next step. That is the only good outcome that comes out of a prospecting call. 8. Be very firm. This may go against what a lot of modern-day sales techniques suggest, which is to avoid all that high-pressure stuff. But the reality is that when you're making a prospecting call, you're dealing with a very cagey animal. The way you tame a wild animal is not to be really nice and just do whatever the animal wants, but instead to provide guidelines, to be very firm, very strong, and assertive—and that's exactly what we need to be doing on our prospecting calls. Of course, if you determine that it's just not a fit, which is fine, then you can let the prospect go. But don’t settle for any kind of wishy-washy stuff if you think the prospect is a good fit. 9. Nobody can hurt you. This is one of the most critical keys to prospecting calls. So many salespeople are simply terrified of making cold calls. It’s as scary to them as doing stand-up comedy or giving a speech. But the reality is that no one can hurt you. They can't physically harm you. They can't bring violence to you. There's simply a person on the other end of the phone. And so the only harm they can do is whatever you're willing to allow.