Cold call warm-ups
  • sales
  • Blog post

Cold call warm-ups

If you ever played a sport, you didn’t just hit the field and play. You stretched and limbered up. Sales coach Paul Castain recommends 15-minute prospecting “workouts” to help strengthen your sales prospecting muscles before hitting the phones.

Use morning drive time
Warm up while you are on the way to the office:

  • Rehearse a call or two you have that morning. Get your mind and vocal cords awake and ready to go.
  • Call your phone and leave the usual voicemail you would leave a prospect, or deliver the sales message you would use with a live individual.

When you get to the office, evaluate your message. Is it compelling? Do you sound believable? How are your “ums,” “you knows,” and “basicallys?” How is your pace? How is your voice?

Find a sparring partner
Call a teammate and offer your message as you usually would. Ask him or her to throw objections at you, which you respond to.

Kick it up a notch by having each other respond with three different rebuttals. The purpose of having three is that it will condition you to have a “How shall I respond?” mentality, not “Can I respond?”

Make exploratory calls
These are calls that you make to find out contact information prior to the actual call. This way you can avoid looking like you don’t have a clue with questions like, “Can I speak with the person who blah, blah, blah.”

Doing this will give you a sort of “twofer” — it helps you warm up and gives you contact names for the future. But make sure you keep this one as a 15-minute exercise. Otherwise it can become a safe activity that you might cling to.

photo credit: Tobyotter

4 Comments

  • Tomborg says:

    This is an excellent exercise that needs to be repeated on a regular basis. Cold calling, or as I like to refer to it as New Business Development (NBD), is like a muscle. It needs to be exercised on a regular basis.

    • Thomas says:

      Very true. As a verteran sales representative for a large supplier to the healthcare sector cold calling is still a reality with an established client. One can never become to comfortable in such a competitive market as the one we are in today! Excercise, excercise, excercise….

  • Tomborg says:

    This is an excellent exercise that needs to be repeated on a regular basis. Cold calling, or as I like to refer to it as New Business Development (NBD), is like a muscle. It needs to be exercised on a regular basis.

    • Thomas says:

      Very true. As a verteran sales representative for a large supplier to the healthcare sector cold calling is still a reality with an established client. One can never become to comfortable in such a competitive market as the one we are in today! Excercise, excercise, excercise….

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