How to Make a Cold Call

[Eric Eickhof]

Making an impact as a cold caller in a world full of cold callers is an art. You have all these people out there who are constantly beset on all sides by scammers posing as the IRS, Microsoft, Carnival Cruises, you name it, all these people fumbling around until they trick some poor sap into forking over their social security number. This competition means you have about four seconds to prove that you aren’t a crook reading off a script and then compel them to hear you out.

I’ve made more cold calls than most people have made...well, calls. Only a whole book would satisfyingly cover the subject, but I can boil my experience down to a few key tips you’d be well advised to follow.

First way to do this is to throw away the script. Certainly isolate your talking points and aim your conversation in the direction you want to go, but the second you start reading into the receiver the person at the other end is going to let their eyes glaze over and think of any excuse to hang up on you. Be organic. Be human. Inject a personal anecdote, tell a joke, invoke a story from your experience. The better you can convey the notion that you’re a pro with everything in the world going for them, the better they’ll appreciate that they’re talking to a real mover and shaker and not some corpse stuffed into a cubicle somewhere in a call center.

Divert the conversation into something personal. I don’t mean you ought to start talking about your feelings, but if you have a story about the neighborhood they’re from, tell it as soon as you get the chance. If they have some horror story about an agent or contractor that tried to bleed them dry, tell them about the same thing that happened to you one time. Mention the weather if you’re near where your mark lives. It immediately shows you’re a trustworthy local instead of some shady outsider. The goal is to humanize yourself, make yourself a sympathetic character who they’ll remember by name rather than the interruption you caused in their day.

Be confident. State your purpose for calling right off the bat. Beating around the bush is a death sentence. You tell them exactly why you’re worth their time right after you tell them your name. If you want to sell their house for them, say “My name is Eric and I want to sell your house.” Since most cold calls are going to amount to nothing, it saves time to launch right into the objective.

I like to listen to a great monologue on YouTube before I make calls. Listen to Pacino’s closing speech from Scent of a Woman or Williams’ park bench monologue in Good Will Hunting. Heated oratory like that is going to put you in a loquacious frame of mind. You’ll be surprised how much a little pick-me-up like that can affect an entire day’s worth of phone calls.

Finally, remind yourself that you’re the best before you start calling. Only you have to believe it at first, and if you believe it strong enough others will pick up on your confidence and follow suit. Cold calls are tricky, but they’re singular in their objective. All you have to do is make them want to listen to and believe a total stranger who called them from out of the blue. What could be simpler than that?