How to Cold Call

在HubSpot，我们在过去的九年中都表明了入站的力量improve lead generationand customer acquisition. But the grim reality is that many salespeople don’t have enough inbound leads to fill their pipeline and hit their numbers. Cold calling -- working your way through a purchased list or even the phone book -- seems like the easiest way to compensate.

So how do you cold call effectively?

Step one: You don’t.

Cold calling is hard, has an extremely low connect rate, is usually a negative experience for the prospects you manage to connect with, undermines your status as a trusted advisor from the first call, and can even have a negative impact on your brand.

It’s also a terrible experience for salespeople. We all have awful stories of our own最糟糕的电话，其中一些是“Aha!”moment that made us realize there had to be a better way to do sales.

My seminal cold call moment was in 1985. At that point in my sales career, I was an outside sales rep at Businessland, a computer retailer company, but we had to do a lot of inside prospecting to generate business. Every day followed the same routine.

我和我的同事们会很晚去办公室，因为我们不想真正想在那里。我们会看我们的数字和叹息清单 - 我们知道我们正在遇到痛苦的一天。我们会翻阅几页，扫描我们必须打电话但不想打电话的人的名字和数字。

然后，一点声音在我的耳边小声说：“Dan, you have to make payments on your car.”是时候了商业ness.

那天上午9:15我开始打电话。在接下来的70分钟内，我留下了22个语音邮件。我一遍又一遍地背诵同样的机器人脚本后，我很无聊，试图保持清醒。

Finally, someone picked up. I was jolted back to the real world by the prospect of speaking to a real person.

“嗨，这是来自商业世界的Dan Tire，”我说。“我很想今天与您谈谈 -”

Click. They’d hung up on me.

Back to my list, and improbably, another person picked up. Two pickups in a row was unheard of. I recited the same shtick, and I got hung up on -- again.

At this point, I was feeling pretty low. Was I the biggest loser in the world? What was I even doing here? I know now that top 2% salespeople don’t cold call because it’s ineffective and awful, but back in 1985 I just felt like a blemish on humanity.

This is the stupidest thing ever, I thought.我在这里没有做任何积极的事情。我只是在浪费时间。

And then -- the cold call that blew my mind. I was still dialing down my list, when Wayne picked up. Here’s how the conversation went:

“Wayne, this is Dan Tyre from Businessland,” I said. “I’m calling to tell you about our new discount on PCs. I’m interested in talking about how you buy PCs, how many PCs you have, and why Businessland is the best way to purchase PCs.”

韦恩就坐在那里。他没有挂断电话或说什么 - 他只是坐在电话的另一端。

“Wayne, are you there?” I asked.

韦恩停了下来。然后……“我在这里，”他说。

哇靠！I thought.有人实际上在听我说。

Before I’d gathered my thoughts, Wayne spoke again.

“丹，你为什么打电话给我？”他问。

I didn’t miss a beat.

“因为我想让您知道Businessland在做什么！”我尽快回答。

“丹，你对我一无所知吗？”韦恩问。

I realized I wasn’t dealing with your average Joe. Wayne was listening to me, but he was also pushing back.

At this point, there were two things I could have said. I could have told him I did know who he was -- that he was the president of his company, which I knew because I’d gotten his name and number from a purchased list of financial services companies, or I could be honest. I opted to be honest.

“不，”我回答。

“Okay …”Wayne said slowly. It felt like he was torturing me. “Dan, is this really a good use of my time?”

“是的！”我脱口而出。“我想告诉你关于商业世界的信息！”

韦恩没有我的胡说八道。

“Stop,” he said. “Dan -- is this really a good use ofyour时间？”

我刚刚上学。显然，我的时间并不是我不知道的，我什么都不知道，我对我一无所知。

我与韦恩（Wayne）的电话是一个开创性的时刻，了解到甚至在我接电话之前，我就以错误的方式来接近销售，只是相信那是关于我和我所卖的东西。我应该花时间了解我所呼吁的公司和行业，从而使韦恩和我所有其他前景做到这一点。

1980年代是开始反映这种不断变化的心态的脚本的开始。示例脚本听起来不像我刚刚讲述的对话，更像是这样：

Hi Wayne, this is Dan Tyre from Businessland. I’m calling because you’re in the Boston area and I know your company is in financial services, and Businessland works with many businesses like yours.

A script like that still doesn’t provide much value to the prospect, but it was the beginning of understanding that we needed to give our prospects a human experience.

韦恩，如果您在那里阅读此书，谢谢。感谢您在打电话给潜在客户之前教我要使用我的大脑，并向我展示销售人员的工作并不总是关闭 - 这是always be helping.