Armand Farrokh and Nick Cegelski: Cold Calling Sucks (and That’s Why It Works)

cold calling even if you suck at it doubles your email reply rate because your cold calls draw attention to your emails and you're already researching the accounts folks you might as well spend one hour a day cold calling them you just don't like it hey everyone welcome back to make it happen mondays where we talk about sales business entrepreneurship personal growth mental health and everything in between with guests who i truly respect and i think make a positive impact on the world around us and today is all about cold calling with my good friends armand and nick from 30 minutes to president's club i've known both of these gentlemen for quite a while and they are just animals specifically when it comes to the phone and they're super tactical they actually just came up with a book too which i highly recommend you read if you are into cold calling it's called cold calling sucks and that's why it works and it is filled with a step-by-step guide and tactics and tools and templates and everything else so we dove into it right i mean a lot of people are you know questioning the value of cold calling right now and most reps actually don't even do it uh and if they do it they do it really poorly but when done right and added to uh a contact strategy cold calling is still an extremely valuable and effective way of engaging with people and i got my take on it as far as a marketing perspective and impressions but these guys are all in on this being a direct selling way of doing it and taking really cool and respectful ways of uh getting people's attention without being sleazy so if you are into cold calling and if you need to cold call for your job you're gonna want to listen to this one you gotta pick up the book as well so hope you enjoyed as much as i did let's make it happen nick and armand what's going on brothers welcome to the make it happen monday actually welcome back to the make it happen monday podcast it was a while it's been a while how's you guys doing you know i hear that my episode beat nick's episode in downloads and so nick came on to your show twice to try to beat me and i believe i think you were telling me before this i believe that if you add up the downloads from both nick's episodes they're still like half of mine and so yeah i'm so glad to be sharing this stage with my wonderful sidekick nick today so thank you for having us on the same stage absolutely what do you think about that nick you know what i i also know that you got hundreds of messages saying i don't know i was gonna give some witty jokes let's just let's talk about cold calling we're happy to be here it's good to see you john love it yeah and just for some context for everybody like i've known you guys for a while now you know came up strong especially you know when did you guys actually um 30 minutes of president's club when did you actually start that so we started it back in 2020 armand and i were both selling tech he was a vp of sales i was a uh an ae and we started 30 minutes of president's club because we were frustrated with a lot of the sales content out there where there was a lot of stuff around hey here's what to do you got to sell value you got to be a good listener you got to have a strong cold call opener but not necessarily how to do it and we wanted to talk to people who were top performers and actually steal the talk tracks routines structure of the way that we did things and that's how we started 30 mpc and we got to the point where it got big enough that we both are now full-time on it that's fantastic yeah i think that's you know when you see i have the same frustration right you see a lot of these people out on linkedin or whatever it is spiting that spouting this shit and it's like you kind of scratch your head you're like have you ever really freaking done that you know or said that and even quite frankly trainers like me most of us are totally full of shit because we talk about something that we might have done once or twice and it worked once or twice and so therefore created a whole program around oh this is super and it's different so it's unique and people are all right buy into that but then i'm like could could you walk could you actually do that live in front of me to see how that actually actually works and most of them can't and so uh i'm looking forward to getting super tactical with y'all here because i think both y'all are still practitioners i'm still a practitioner i don't believe right now if you can sell i don't believe you should teach people how to sell if you are if you're not doing it specifically right now because things are just so fucking different and and especially which is going to lead to our conversation as it relates to cold calling different game i i'm going to be straight up honest with you guys right now i embarrassed myself the other day i still cold call every once in a while but i'm not hitting the dials like every but you know in the structure that i use as a framework to test different things um but what's that product like humanetics that does the cold call role play thing have you seen that i've seen some of them there's a couple different ones yeah so there's like a contest that was going on oh you know whoever can get the highest score i'm like oh fuck this right so i'm sitting there chilling i just kind of i picked the hardest one like you know real strong object i clicked that thing and it fucking worked me like i was just like oh my god uh i'm like hey thanks for taking my call it's like who the hell is i'm like oh shit uh uh you know i'm like a value like i don't need that and i was oh my god you don't hung up on me my score was like mid 60s it was you know supposed to be in the 90s i'm like delete i don't need anybody to see but i just i still think it's important um let's talk about the book first though wait let's let's talk about why cold calling for both of you you still think is viable with all the noise out there saying it's bullshit nobody picks up connect dials and anything like that so nick talk to me about why you think cold call is still valid and then i want to hear your perspective on this well it was actually the first question that we had to answer when we were writing the 30 minutes to president's club book about cold calling because it wouldn't make sense to write a book teaching people how to cold call if you shouldn't need to be cold calling in the first place and no matter what i'll make posts on linkedin about cold calling we'll sometimes post things on our on our podcast or on youtube and every single time we post about cold calling you get someone out there who's saying oh this is great advice but cold calling doesn't work anymore it's dead um or you know it's not effective you're better off doing this this or this and more often than not pretty much all the time the people who are making those comments are either mediocre bottom middle performer reps or somebody selling some social selling email automation bs tool and the reality is cold calling is a bad use of your time if you are not good at it what we did when we wrote this book was we got with gong and we analyzed over 300 million cold calls they they actually did a lot of this data analysis and we looked at the different percentile um performance of different salespeople the average cold caller so right at the 50th percentile doesn't really do all that well what we looked at is if they made 800 dials over the course of a month which is generally an hour or so of calling a day that person i'll actually pull this data up um ends up booking something like two meetings out of all of those dials they end up making 800 dials they have 43 conversations which means of those 800 dials five and a half percent of the prospects they're trying to reach out to they actually connect with and of those 43 they book true meetings which means for like 20 ish hours of calling you have two meetings that's not a good use of your time no not at all as soon as you go from the 50th percentile to the 75th percentile the results are dramatically different and armand i know you have some data on this yeah so just for the top reps here's how those numbers change 800 cold calls 13.3 percent of those will connect so more than double than the average rep and the reason for that i was gonna say the top rep i've seen average rep style i've coached over 100 reps in my career every time i look at the average reps dials they're usually redialing bad numbers over and over again versus the top reps number one they prioritize their directed mobile lines number two once they call them if they're bad once they mark them as red if they're not sure they mark them as yellow and then they call them again and then they mark them red for example if it's like two rings direct to a buzzer so you can get a much higher connect rate and this is in line with what i've seen with the reps that i've coached on my teams that leads you from 800 dials to 106 conversations huge wild from there this is where it gets extra scary this isn't the top 10 this is the top quartile to be a top 25 rep means of those 106 conversations 16.7 percent of them will turn into meetings that means you book 18 meetings on those 800 dials what does it take to do 800 dials it's one hour of cold calling five days a week that's 200 a week that's 800 in a month across four weeks you're telling me that you can find a way in one hour of work every single week or every single day rather you can find another way to book 18 meetings in a month for one hour of work per day there is no other way to do that unless you're doing mass scale automated outreach using ai and things of that sort but the reality is you have a finite territory but wait there's more on top of that cold calling even if you suck at it doubles your email reply rate so if the average email reply rate is 1.81 percent it jumps to 3.44 because your cold calls draw attention to your emails and you're already researching the accounts folks you might as well spend one hour a day cold calling them you just don't like it hey i hope you're enjoying the conversation so far i want to take a quick minute to share with you what i'm working on these days with my new jb sales membership it includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses which are filling the funnel and driving a close that cover all aspects of the sales process it also includes monthly workshops that'll be running on specific sales skills and different tech skills like chat gvt and how to leverage ai throughout the entire sales process finally the membership gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip i've ever done and as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners if you go to jbarrows.com click on the individual membership link and use coupon code podcast at checkout you'll get 25 off now let's get back to the conversation so so this is an important point because the top performers obviously they're probably better on the phone once they talk to somebody but not more not like exponentially better but what you just talked about there is they clean up their data which any idiot can do and and they and they put it as part of a sequence not a singular event and that's what i'm telling reps right now it's like the justification if you think that cold calling here's an example if you think cold calling by itself is a viable option you're out of your fucking mind right because if you genuinely think that a you're going to get the right number hard to do b you're going to talk to anybody other than an audit system good for you c you're finally going to get to talk to somebody who actually you want to talk to other than a gatekeeper like you got to go through that gauntlet first before you get to even have the conversation and then you think that i'm going to take a call out of the blue from some rando and be like oh you know what all those priorities and things that i've been mapping out my strategy and all that stuff that i was dealing with you know what i'm going to dump all that and let's jump into a sales cycle with you because that makes a ton of fucking sense like there's no fucking way but i do tests with my clients of sequences right well we'll do a persona driven sequence and it's you know call it cio's health care whatever map out call it 10 touches in a sequence then we we split test it so we have one group you know 20 accounts or five five reps 20 accounts per rep 100 accounts go through sequence one and it's just email just email no phone nothing and then we do the same exact sequence to the same exact personas and add phone is touch two five and eight we get a 10 bump in the overall conversion ratio so i keep telling reps it's almost like it's a marketing function now if you think it is as a direct sales function for most i think you're going to be sorely disappointed most of the time but if you look at it as a marketing function in some ways where that impression might let somebody go you know that voicemail that they read on their phone might have them go look at their you know linkedin profile that then might like to go to the website and then come inbound to you now i can justify yep and voicemails are another really controversial topic where a lot of people say oh never leave voicemails yada yada it's a similar flavor of the cold calling is dead but what you'll find is that if the average cold call doubles your email reply you can increase that reply rate even more so cold calling without voicemails versus with voicemails has a 2x additional difference on your email reply rate so if you leave voicemails and look i'm not asking for a callback no one calls back on a voicemail i think i've gotten three of them and i'm literally like walking down the hall someone calls me on my phone i actually don't want the callback i'm like they're like hey you called me who's this and i'm like it's armand who's this they're equally as confused as me yeah but what i'll usually say is i'll be like hey john it's armand i work with a few other partners in the scadden la office no need to call me back i'm gonna send you an email it's gonna come from armand at northwestern would you mind giving me a thumbs up or thumbs down on that it's purely just here's how i know other people like you no pitch the pitch is in the email go look there and you're probably not even gonna listen to that voicemail but you're gonna look you're gonna see the missed call you're gonna read the voicemail and you're gonna go check your inbox on top of that if i'm doing multi-channel on linkedin my email replies are gonna be two or three to one relative to just the email blasting rep which is something that everyone else can do today yeah i think the email stuff is uh ai you know i thought predictable revenue kind of ruined email in a lot of ways because it started like you know it started really littering the c-suite with just spam but and then the cadence tools came out and i was like oh jesus now ai it's it's undeniable that the quality game is over because ai can do it then better than most sdrs who are using the cadence tools okay not saying the best sdrs the best sdrs are are absolute assassins i would pay double for them if they're that good but the average man ai is already doing it better i still don't like the spam that ai is putting out there but it's better than the spam that the freaking reps are putting out there so so i guess you know for for with the going let's talk about again top performers right because those stats are real but again what i heard was it's not necessarily about the quality of the conversation it's about what you do to prep and get that convert and just get the conversation because that's more than half the battle at this point so with that aside how do you have a system for for the flagging you know outside of a dead dial or whatever it is do you have a system for if they pick up live if it talk you know talk to somebody in person if a secretary picks up or if it's an audit system so that you can get closer and closer to who would pick up yeah so the philosophy that we we have related to this is called marking your tracks and the the way that this works is the first time that you dial through a list of prospects and you dial their numbers that should be your most inefficient rip through that list of calls because you are going to gain a lot of information about those numbers and what's on the other side of them when you're making your calls you're going to have some numbers that go right to your prospect you know john picks up and you know what i call this number i gotta be ready for that one you're going to have others where it's like okay this number there's a gatekeeper on the other side and you don't want to be caught flat footed you need to be ready for when that gatekeeper answers and says hey this is john barrow's office to get through that person and get to john you're going to have other numbers that are dial trees where you have to hit one three then i have to spell barrows on my keypad and i want to know what those inputs are so that the next time i call that i can just punch him in right away and not have to listen to that tree there's lots of information there and what armand was referencing earlier is the best reps when they're going through that list they're scrubbing that information so that their dials become more and more and more efficient it is a really bad use of your time and also extremely painful to be calling fax machines over and over and over again and so there's the scrubbing of the list that you do um and also lots of work that you can do off of the phones so that the work you do when you are on the phones is more efficient and effective where i think a lot of reps get this wrong so you talked about the idea of incorporating cold calling into a sequence the key the key here is you need to have a system around this it's a really bad use of your time as a salesperson to make six cold calls at nine in the morning make 13 at noon make a couple more at two o'clock um because the reality is cold calling is going to put you as a salesperson in kind of this like anxious fight or flight state it doesn't matter how good you get it's it's really uncomfortable and painful to cold call executives and try to get them to take a meeting with you and so what we recommend is you have a system where you're doing all your calls first thing in the morning because that's when you're going to get it done there's also a slight increase in answer rates in the morning versus later in the day but that doesn't really matter consistency of effort with your calls is far more important but what you do is mornings you're doing your calls late afternoons that's when you're doing all of your call prep so you're getting the list ready you're getting your research ready so that when you show up first thing in the morning you make your 40 dials you do your hour of calls and then it's off your plate and you don't have to dwell or linger in that really uncomfortable place all day which is what burns a lot of sales people out totally and then the lack is and and one of the things you're talking about there too is the the secondary goal of cold calling in my opinion here is to gather additional information so i can better profile them moving forward so i can be more specific when i outreach next time so this is why you you got to really think through your icp right what are all the nuanced things about your icp not just in you know industry size number of employees but you know what kind of technologies do they use right so for me if you're using sales loft outreach apollo any of those tools that's awesome for me right because plug right into that stuff know how to use it salesforce is another example 95 of my clients use salesforce you'll 5 probably use microsoft dynamics so if i find you're you're in a better spot like if you're a salesforce user i have my value proposition can be different than it is to a microsoft dynamics user right because i know how to work those systems so it's it's it goes back to giving the reps something else to feel good about if they don't get the meeting but if you can enrich all this stuff while you're going you're you're getting better and you're actually helping the company out which which brings me to my next question which is how do you track this shit right because i love the idea of oh like almost in my crm but i control my crm i'm the admin of our crm so i can put in a field that says uh went to a voicemail went to a whatever it was right what if you're one of those reps that a you can't touch salesforce because you know you'll get your head chopped off and um and you want to collect all this nuanced information but you just don't know where to put it so you can run a report on it what would be your suggestion there so that they can themselves proactively gather that information so that they can be better suited moving forward to make those calls i mean john i spent most of my career selling like sort of old school legal tech software to law firms we didn't have any sales engagement platform like i was calling right out of to your point a very static salesforce environment but like the reality is like you can track it even in your tasks like i would literally have my call task and i would just change that to be the note while the phone was ringing for the next call so there's a way you can track this stuff i've seen reps put it in an excel sheet before um so no i don't think the tech or the staticness of your crm should be the limiting factor here um i mean i literally even in the the number field in salesforce it would say you know 585-957-8763 and then i would change it and write x1 x7 when i'm like documenting the path or i would write i think it's a bad number or i would put the red or green or yellow emoji so there's ways that you can circumvent that system um the tech shouldn't be a limiting factor for the folks who do have tech i think there are three layers of how you can track things and make it so that if you have to come back to this account which you will if you have a finite territory you're not starting from zero so the first layer that almost all sales engagement platforms have whether you're on apollo an outreach a sales loft whatever you're on is you have the ability to tag numbers red yellow or green and so red is it's bad yellow is you're not sure so maybe it went two rings and then it went to busy or two rings and then went to voicemail green is verified good blank is you're not sure yet so you need to call them so that's the first level the second level is you can typically leave notes on the person or notes on the number and so i will leave notes on the number when i'm trying to document phone trees or things like that i will leave notes on the person if there are specific things that i've learned from that conversation with them or i will leave notes on the account if there's something that one person told me about the account that i want to know when i'm calling these other people the third layer is one that's actually less talked about it's dispositions so for example you can say my call was connected negative and they were on this competitor or it was connected positive call back in three months and if you can change these yourself or work with your admin a couple ones you should really have always have the call back in x months one because every single month at the beginning of the month once you finished out your month pull a report of everyone who said call me back in a few months call those people again if you get a new product release that helps you beat this competitor pull every single cold call that you disposed as cold call loss due to this competitor on this competitor call all those people again so track the outcomes of your dials so that you don't run into the exact same objections over and over again but also so you can cherry pick the ones that you think you have a good second try with love it and i think this is a lot of this comes down to data collection you know being proactive and then testing and trying different approaches right because there's not one approach that's better for all of us right there's there's stuff that works for you compared to me so talk to me a little bit about how you test different approaches because i'm a huge split test right so we gather the information we find a way to get it into the database so that we can run reports on it be more specific but now we're running a call blitz and i'm on board with you guys same thing i do not recommend sprinkling phone calls throughout the day i think it's a drastic waste of time you do power hours but the problem with power hours is you know typically people just bring their list right so they're like okay and i just and i don't know about y'all i am not bright enough to have a relevant personalized conversation with a vp of sales in the sas industry a director of it and the manufacturing is cmo and the hell so i have to be generic with that whereas if i pick a lane and i'm like this persona you know what's my message what's my questions what's my story i can go to work right call 20 and 30 at a time and then potentially compare it to another approach to that same persona so with you guys and all the the because i want to get into some of these breakdowns of like intros and reasons for your calls and calls to action and those type of things how do you test are you using the tools to test that stuff right now and how i think specific you are you with what you're testing yeah so old school way when i was first cold calling i was literally cold calling out of a shoebox and so i would have 40 cards of people that i had written down who i wanted to dial and my goal was to dial one building top to bottom in a day so i'm calling all the law firms at dla piper all the law firm partners at scadden for example and so in any good test you have control variables that's the control variable you usually want to control for persona the other control variable is you can control for talk track and change the persona to see which one you have more success with or can you use the same talk track on different personas i prefer to keep the persona the same and then vary one thing in the talk track so for example if you change your opener keep your value prop the same if you change your opener talk through your objections the same way practice one part of the cold call at the time the easiest thing to a b test is the opener and so for example i would oftentimes play around with different contexts that i would lead with so the opener that i used to use was an opener called the heard the name tossed around opener where i would just say like hey john we work with a few other partners in the scadden office in downtown la it's arman from northwestern have you heard her name tossed around and so i would play around with that opener in a number of different ways i might try different forms of context so for example i use that same opener when i was at pave i would try one call saying hey we work with a few other sequoia portfolio companies it's arman at pave have you heard her name tossed around or for another person i might say hey i work with a few other cheap people officers in the chicago area it's arman from pave have you heard my name tossed around and so i would test different forms of context the last kicker that i'll give you is as you get later in the call it gets harder to test things yeah and that means you should start testing those things in role plays and practice sessions instead of in the live game so for example if i want to test my approach to this competitor you realize how many cold calls i have to make to get that competitor twice versus i can role play 50 cold calls in an hour with nick on that one competitor and then i just need to trust that nick is willing to give me real checks as a tough role play partner well i actually think that that goes to the point earlier about how many at-bats are actually going to have arm on because when we looked at the data average rep 800 dials they talked to 43 people you're telling me for an entire month of cold calling you're gonna a b test off of 43 conversations like you're gonna get your opener out 43 times in a month that's not even enough time to get good at the opener this is another area that a lot of sales people screw up in all of sales but cold calling specifically because you have so few at-bats which is the idea of mailing your talk track when you make a cold call it puts you in that really uncomfortable place and it's really really hard to make sure you say the right thing and actually more importantly sound the way that you need to sound not like a telemarketer uber chipper really timid anxious etc you need to have that calm quiet confidence and know where you are going and where a lot of sellers get this wrong is um this is something frankly like the kb taught me kevin dorsey is like you shouldn't be practicing in the game if you are only practicing your openers and your a b testing it off of those 43 conversations you're going to be terrible at both of those openers and nothing is going to go well and i'm all for taking that data approach and i hear you on that john i actually think sometimes sales people just need to take a standard good opener and get really really really good at it it's sort of like the bruce lee thing which is like i don't fear the guy that knows every single move in the world but it's the guy who's practiced one kick 10 000 times and that's where i think sometimes sales people use the the data analysis as as an excuse to just actually do the hard work and frankly that's why we named the book what it is which is cold calling sucks and that's why it works because the reality is you can have the best opener in the world armand is a phenomenal opener there he's a very very good cold caller he still loses more than he wins when he makes a cold call same with me same with anyone that cold calls the reality is no matter how good you get you are going to deal with rude prospects and stonewalling gatekeepers and endless voicemails bad sales people let that stuff discourage them they make a couple calls they get defeated and they say hey this isn't worth it it's better off for me to focus on uber personalized emails and social selling and i you know i've got some deals let me go follow up with them and they give themselves any excuse to not do that hard work the great sales people the great callers deal with the exact same adversity they deal with the exact same rude prospects and challenging monotonous dial blitzes but they know that when things get hard that's when the average sales people give up and that's when the field actually starts to clear out and that's why you're talking about over time you gather information on those prospects and you actually become more and more effective and so the only difference between the top quartile who are booking those 18 plus a month also an hour and a day and that sales people is the great ones say hey i'm not gonna let this adversity stop me they are going to keep going and know that the suck is actually their advantage because it's what makes everybody else quit and it's you bring that up because this is why i also think my justification for cold calling is especially in your first two years as a sales rep and quite frankly it has nothing to do with getting results it has everything to do with grit to see if you can make it through this shit and still be willing to stay in the world of sales because when you get out of college and you haven't been experienced to call you know exposed to cold calling or whatever it is and that's one of your first jobs like a vast majority of reps last about a month and they're like oh fuck this and i do think that it's it's actually necessary these days for reps getting out of college to just to be in a bullpen by the way be in the office so that you can pick up through osmosis and everything like that sorry kids like first two three years the amount of learning that i did in those first two three years because i was in the office i never got good training you know what i mean like the most training was terrible so but i was able to pick up on the kid next to me who was making that call and i love the way you did the intro you know the vp of sales would pop in the cube next to me and start talking about a deal and i'd kind of learn just by being there and i think that's what what i'm worried about right now is with the lack of of of grit but also this remote world that is getting them into this uh you know and the automation with all the ai shit that is getting him away from what sales is really all about and and how it is hard but it's insanely rewarding and if you have that skill you can transfer that for the rest of your life so are you seeing a a reluctance to cold call from from a generational standpoint um or do you think it's just in general things are down and everybody's down on cold calling it's increasingly become a less common activity to cold call across the sales floor and i think this was exacerbated by the the zerp era of everyone could hit quota off of inbound and everyone was making 300k otes and 400k paydays off of inbound deals and you could sneeze 17 times turn your zoom off and say i need to go to the bathroom in the middle of a sales call and you would still close some deals and what's really really fascinating is this thing is coming full circle where to your point because it's so easy to do mass scale email automation there's oftentimes there are oftentimes these new age sales teams they're actually automating all of the email marketing for their sales teams and you know what they have their sdrs doing they're having them rip the phones all day because that's the thing that the human can still do yeah and so it's actually becoming a non-differentiator differentiator anymore to be able to send emails and it's not becoming easy to hit quota anymore and so it's actually starting to force some people back to the phones because in order to hit quota you have to beat the average and fundamentally if every other average rep is sending the same emails you can't beat quota because you can't beat the average and so you're seeing this re-emergence of people going back to the phones because prospects inboxes are flooded with 10 000 emails a day and it's one of the few things that you can do to stand back out yeah it's it's getting wild the fcc banned here in the states the ai uh cold calls right i think they did it like a couple of weeks ago where they banned a they banned ai from making pure cold calls or calling out to people without without their notice i think um richard harris is the one who shared which which i'm happy about because i'll be honest i was i was on that same track i went i was like oh you know cold calls coming back right because it's the one thing and then i saw air.ai and you know and that and i was like oh my god i'm like come on man like fuck like it sounded so good and then you know hopefully i think the fcc put a put a guy like yeah i'm looking at it right now sebruary they banned um ai generated voices yeah so thankfully right now because to me i ai i love ai but as long as i don't feel like i'm being duped by it right if you're pretending to be human and i find out you're ai i don't give a how valuable this conversation is it's over but if you raise your hand and like hey this is ai and i'm gonna have a conversation with you and we'll see how far this can go like oh this is fun um so let's talk tactically here um if we break down the intros uh right that intro to me is critical right i say with cold calling you are not selling your product or your service you're selling time so that first the literally the way you introduce yourself dictates the next 10 to 20 seconds of that conversation and in that then that dictates the next two minutes of the conversation that that earns you a discovery call so armand you had had a really good one what are some other ones that you guys are testing that that you're seeing success with these days my go-to just to give you a sense armand of getting really good at one of them is the whole hey can i get 30 seconds tell you why i'm calling before you hang up on me period right it's it's all i want is is give me 30 seconds and i know you want to hang up on me so it's a preemptive strike on that and yeah it's putting me subservient to the person whatever but i called them out of the blue so that you know i am asking for their time um and there's a few more but what are the ones you're seeing out there that actually really like get that person to pause for a second that aren't a bait and switch because one more point i forgot to make on yours armand was when you say hey i've been working with a few of blah blah blah and as as my name popped up or something like that you better be working with those fucking people to make that call don't do the lying bullshit stuff just to get somebody to agree to you right even as small as hey i sent you something in the mail and i was just wondering if you got it if you didn't send something in the mail don't say that right so what are some tips and tactical ones that are not tricks that you guys are seeing and working out right now well so what you just described john is sales is really hard and a lot of sales people to overcome that difficulty feel like they have to resort to dishonesty and actually it happens more often than you think and you can actually cut through and give yourself an advantage by being brutally transparently honest which is what you're actually doing in that you're using a permission-based opener where you basically say hey i'm making a cold call can i get 30 seconds and then you can tell me whether or not it makes sense for us to speak that is the opener that i used for a very very long time a permission-based opener what we are starting to see and what the problem with the permission-based opener is is anybody can use that opener and the prospect has no idea when you use an untailored permission-based opener whether or not you're selling uh used car warranties whether or not you're selling compensation software or whether or not you're selling sales training they don't really know and also as that opener starts to get more popular because it is it's a canned opener more folks use it and the prospects start hearing it more and start saying wait that's a telemarketer opener and you start getting put in that telemarketer camp your goal in your opener of the cold call is to get away from that telemarketer stigma as fast as you can which is why armand uses that heard the name tossed around opener hey we're working with tiers we're working with people like you it's almost like this expectation have you heard the name tossed around i always for a long time use that permission based opener but i started to run into those two problems that i just ran into and so what i started to do was i was already doing research on my prospects i started to incorporate that research into the opener and i use what is called a tailored permission opener and all you're going to do is you're going to front load that same permission based opener that you use with the thing that made you call them so it might sound like john i sold billing software for a long time and oftentimes i would call folks if they were expanding adding locations adding practice groups and so a common trigger would be if i saw they had opened a new office or location that would make me say hey this is a good prospect so when they answer the phone i'm going to go john i just finished reading about the new office that you all are opening in tacoma this is nick segelsky and i'm going to be honest this is a cold call do you mind if i take half a minute to share why that office opening prompted me to call you specifically and then you can tell me whether or not it makes sense for us to speak what i'm doing here is i'm taking that trigger and it's the first thing out of my mouth and so now that canned opener is personalized to them the key here i've got to be able to relate that context up front to what i sell so i shouldn't be like hey john i just saw that you went to you know boston university i'm calling you out of blue you've got to be able to relate that trigger to your pitch that will come later but i'm seeing a lot more success with that and um we saw that both of those openers the permission-based the tailored permission-based as well as i heard the name did far better than your typical how's your day going or did i catch you at a bedtime and it doesn't take that long to figure that stuff out right i mean i think the problem with reps you know smile and dial type of thing let me get through this but you're talking with what you just said there you're talking maybe what 30 seconds to a minute worth of research on them to just find that nugget and have that reason well the key here is you want to start to systematize this stuff so when armand's using that heard your name heard the name tossed around opener he's looking for stuff like okay common investors he's calling all of one portfolio all all the sequoia portfolio companies or hey same co-workers we work with other partners in the downtown la office so he's finding common things he can lean on when i'm doing my tailored permission opener i'm just thinking okay what are common things i could find about the law firm that i could relate to what i sell so i share the new office opening one lots of times these law firms are opening new offices but other examples would be um hey i just finished reading about the big case that you want which would mean they'd be collecting money which i could relate to the billing software that i sold or i might say something like hey i was reading up on your your litigation practice i know that law firms with litigation practices often have very complex billing requirements and i can relate that to my pitch so the key here is you shouldn't be starting from scratch with every prospect the key is find those five or six common triggers that you can find about the prospect really easily and reference that in your opener yeah i think that and that's that that line between personalization and scale and do it again i guess it doesn't take that much effort you just got to train yourself of what to look for and i say the same thing do a starter pack like pick five things that that you can make a connection to that are either on their website or on their linkedin profile and and when you do that you can craft messaging that you can repurpose for those things and then you can implement them from a proactive standpoint the question i had on that approach though is do you jump right into that right so if i was like hey this is john you're like hey john it's nick and you know and you and you go right there or is there a pause and inflection point where you kind of trade back and forth before you get into that no first thing out of my mouth is context you answer the phone you go hey this is john and i go john i just finished reading about that new office you all are opening in tacoma this is nick segelsky and i'm gonna be honest this is a cold call but it is a well-researched call and i'm wondering if i can get half a minute to share why that office opening prompted me to call you one of the keys here you made that point about like the subservience piece john you're gonna be subservient if you you're gonna be perceived as like lesser if you sound like timid or scared or frankly bored i see a lot of sales people sound like bored on their calls have some personality in it like i'm like look i'm gonna be honest this is a cold call but is a well-researched one when you have some some like energy in your voice and you show like i'm having some fun here it's a cold call you're no longer this like you know bottom feeder well let's go back to also just you know what i can get excited for in the sense that you know i walk into organizations that have cold called days and i'm like good lord i'm like are you kidding me a cold called day there's not enough red bull out there for me to get hyped up for a day's worth of cold calling right i yeah i my joke is you know how much water i would drink if i was forced to do a day a days of cold a day blitz call i would drink eight gallons of water because i would go pee 75 times to get to get away from it um and and again it's it's it's not you're not learning anything you're just going through the motions but if you do the power hour hyper focused on a certain persona look do a little bit of homework on each one of them beforehand so you have a quick little talking point and then have your framework there then you can go to work and be so much more efficient right um so what are some of the other what are some of the other kind of takeaways from the book that people can learn from here uh obviously we want to have people go to because this is the book is super tactical right it's like a workbook here that you're giving framework structures tips techniques and all that stuff so what are some of the other favorite ones that you have in there so we can give people a little tease yeah so the other thing that we go really deep on we have an entire section on it is objections and so there's a lot around that i'm happy to give a couple examples or take it anywhere you want yeah yeah no let's go with that because there's there's all there they because we all that's one thing about objection you know reps act like it's the first time they've ever gotten that objection like we all know there's the objections that you're going to get write them down first of all and then start practicing like techniques on how to address each one of them but it's you know send me information is you know i don't have time for this it's not a priority for me we're all set uh those they're all the same yeah so the one that i think probably people are most interested about is either send me information right yeah all right you know they let you get through the whole thing and it's a nice little bluff all right why don't you send me information and then um we're all set when they have no real idea what you do so that like the context behind that answer we're all set is just a knee-jerk reaction to i don't want to take a cold call it has nothing to do with what the value that i can bring so let's talk about those two and see if we can get some uh ideas around that yeah and just to double down on your point top five objections account for almost 75 of all objections and it's the ones you'd imagine it's not interested it's a lot of no budget today the call me is six months in the world etc so let's start with all set and the reason for that is that is what we call a dismissive objection and a dismissive objection 50 of objections are going to be dismissive objections which aren't real objections they're swats they're just reactions to the objection they're reactions to the interruption of the cold call and so what you need to do is when someone says we're all set they're basically saying i don't want to listen to a cold call and so what you need to do is you need to pattern break in a way that gets them to listen and buys yourself another 20 to 30 seconds on the cold call to get the real objection so we have a three-step method it's called mr miyagi method to handle any objections and whenever mr miyagi from the karate kid gets punched he doesn't go and immediately counter with a punch he waxes the punch off and then he waxes it on or waxes on and waxes off so there are three steps to doing that with objections the same way first time someone gives you an objection you're going to agree with it as a pattern break and so if someone says we're all set or i'm not interested i'm going to agree i'm going to say hey john totally get that i should have assumed you'd have something in place or i should have assumed that you would have called me if you were pause they're going to sit up they're gonna be like he didn't even try to pitch me like i was expecting i was ready to hang up and i'm almost like surprised that this guy didn't try to pitch me that's step number one agree step number two incentivize conversation i need to give you a carrot to give me some more information i can't just ask you why aren't you interested one that creates a converse a confrontation and then two you have no reason to answer that so i'm going to add an incentive i'm going to say hey john just so no one from my team calls you again would you mind letting me know is it because you've got something in place because we're not hitting on a problem that you care about or is it that you just hate getting cold calls and it's it's totally okay if it's number three event so now what i'm doing is i'm splitting the objection so number one i said hey just so no one cold calls you again which is what you want can you share a little bit more with me and i'm seeking to understand and then two i'm demonstrating industry expertise by saying is it this this or this i know the three potential situations that you could be in and that's going to make it easier for you to answer let's say for example you then say look we're working with this type of vendor or we're working with this person now i have the real objection and because i've gotten them talking a little bit more now i can handle that one i think that's it it's like getting them to slow down that pattern interrupt right it's the same thing when somebody asks you know you know is this a cold call or whatever it is or or i love this one where'd you get my number so my approach to to that is very similar to yours i say look uh you know i got your number through we have used various list services i don't exactly know which one if you want me to send an email to that provider to take your name off that list happy to do that in the meantime would you at least be open for another minute or so so i could tell you why i'm calling it right so i'm giving them something as a benefit and then i'm just saying hey but you know since we're here would you be open to so it immediately you know because it's not really my fault that i have your phone number okay my company bought it from a list service whether they get it ethically or not i don't know right they all say they do but somewhere your information is out on the internet and that's how i found it and so look i'm happy to send an email now i i will send that email right i'm not gonna just say that just a lie i mean obviously the company's probably zoom info is probably not gonna take you off your list if i do that but they'll they'll be open you you know what i mean they might be and then it leaves me to a little bit of breathing room so it gives me a chance there but i think it's it's just breaking through that initial like fuck you this is a cold call i want nothing to do with this um go ahead sorry the key here is you're you're showing the human being behind the phone it's really really easy to brutally reject someone who you can't see in the eyes of the prospect you're a telemarketer until you show them hey this is a person here that's why armand agrees because it's true they would have called him if they were interested and so when you actually like you're disarmingly blunt you're disarmingly truthful this goes back to again sales people think they need to rely on trickery or dishonesty or really snappy responses to overcome the objection when actually when you ease off the sales pressure and admit yeah you know what i i totally get it you probably don't like getting these calls and frankly i don't really like having to make them either i guess i must have really screwed this one up do you mind if i get to do over on my pitch when you say stuff like that and show that you're a person the prospect is like oh wait this is a this is a human being over here and that's actually the biggest lesson i think we learned which is showing the human behind the phone yeah and again go back to ai that's what ai can't replicate you know i i tell reps all the time screw up because guess what ai is perfect and guess what we aren't perfect and that's our superpower as humans so we're not perfect i get more callbacks when i screw up a voicemail than when i nail the perfect one every time yep you know what i mean like i'll do a voicemail and i always go through my cold call pitch when i was at thrive networks but i you know i have this long beautiful cold call right hey it's john barrels of thrive networks we do outsourced it support small mid-sized companies in the boston area we take a really unique approach to manage your it infrastructure by combining the best of people technology have to offer we tie our network operations center you know and i get and i go through this whole thing and i could say it still say it in my sleep and i would never get but then i tried a new way like hey this is john barrels of thrive networks we do outsource it's a put oh shit uh sorry i'm i was i was trying a new pitch there that was a disaster look we fix computers you got problems with your computers call me back at six i got more callbacks to that approach because it's the human factor it's like well it's the same thing with video when i do video one cut video if i fuck up in the video i own it it's like ah sorry i'm a little nervous here i usually don't send a lot of these my bad you know that type of thing and that human factor is what i think so many reps miss because there's they're trying to be so perfect with their scripts or what they say and then they're thinking too hard about it when really all you need to do is tuck through the bullshit so you can have a normal conversation with somebody if there's one thing that you can practice with objections practice agreeing with objections and being disarmingly blunt the more outrageous the reaction the more you need to introduce humor that just calls out how ridiculous of a confrontation you're in front of so for example if someone's like where'd you get my phone number or is this a cold call i'll be like yes it's going so so badly look i i know my pitch totally sucked and then you go into your permission-based opener it is 100 okay in fact it's encouraged the more ridiculous their reaction the more ridiculous your counter reaction needs to be to show that you're a human and you're not just a robot going off of a script yeah that one though i have very nuanced things on is this a cold call versus this is a sales call when somebody's like you know they talk about pattern interrupts sometimes people get pissed off on me so be careful if people want to use this but those is this a cold call i'm like well i guess it depends on what you mean by cold and they're like excuse me i'm like look if you think this is you're just on a random list of names that i'm hammering through trying to trip over an opportunity if that's the case then no it's not if you think that i did some homework you fit a profile of some clients that we do some really good work with and therefore there's a reason i'm calling you i don't really consider that a cold call because you really do fit the profile so if you consider both of those a cold call then yes but currently i don't right and then i'll kind of get and then sometimes i'll go okay all right i hear you the same thing with is this a sales call that's a different one if there's a sales call i'll say actually i don't know yet and they're like what and i'm like i don't know yet i don't even know if you need what i have here to sell but you fit a similar profile to some other clients we've worked with and really what i'm trying to do here is just get a few minutes on your calendar so i could ask you a few quick questions to see if it makes sense to take that next step and yeah then it becomes a sales call but as of right now i'm just really trying to see if you fit the mold that i it looks like you do again last one gatekeepers it taught you mentioned tricks armand i can't stand it when people talk about tips and tricks fuck your tricks okay gatekeepers have all heard it before right and i mean gatekeepers in every sense of the word right but a live one what is your favorite way of getting through or your best most appropriate way of getting through a gatekeeper to the next side so there's there's three mistakes that sales people can make with gatekeepers mistake number one is the one that you called out which is lying dishonesty always going to come back to bite you always going to just it's not it's not what we advocate for you should never lie to the gatekeeper the other mistakes sales people make is they think they need to befriend the gatekeeper and become buddies with that person the reality is gatekeeper is not your friend and even if you get sort of a relationship with them most of them are not going to put their job at risk to connect you to their boss just because you were being nice and friendly that day so you shouldn't be trying to befriend them the other thing you shouldn't be trying to do is pitch the gatekeeper and sell the gatekeeper now there are some you know edge cases where you've got somebody's ea who's really close with them it's a super enterprise sale that's a different story that's not the type of gatekeeper i'm talking about here the general gatekeeper their goal is to detect and reject pitches and so when you are making a cold call and you get a gatekeeper the way you get through to the prospect you want to talk to is you need to just ask for that person you don't need to share um extraneous superfluous information i don't need to say to armad hey this is nick segelsky with 30 mpc um could you please connect me with john i'm calling about billing software when i start to share all of that they start to detect the pitch my goal here ask for the person so armad answers i go hey could you get me over to john it's nick that's it minimum viable information and i want to say it in a way where it's just like sounds like i'm trying to know john i'm not lying here i am confident could you get me over to john that's going to work some of the times it won't always sometimes you'll get hit with a gatekeeper who's like what's this regarding this is the most common area sales people screw up they think they need to then show them under the hood show this is a sales call mention oh it's about billing software mention oh we help with this all of those things scream pitch gatekeeper is going to reject you and so instead i want to go back to that context that familiar context that armad mentioned earlier so they might say what's this regarding i might say yeah i work with a couple other scadden partners in the la office would you let them know it's nick segelsky what i'm doing here is i'm saying context is what it's regarding and that's what i'm going to open with in the opener and again i'm going back to would you let them know it's nick segelsky no lies there but i am trying to make it seem like this is not a oh let you scrutinize me with questions i'm also controlling the conversation by ending with a question the person asking the questions the person controlling the conversation you can do the same thing with the gatekeeper now that might not work they might say something like i gotta see if he's available what company are you with i'm gonna show him a little bit more here i might say something like yeah you know we help a couple other partners in the office but they're tax planning it's northwestern mutual i sent armad a note the other day would you would you mind letting him know it's nick this again i need to have sent him a note i need to have sent an email but i'm trying to share trickle by trickle bit by bit i'm not open in the hood and going this is a sales call right away now there's going to be gatekeepers that still shut you down there the reality is the gong data showed gatekeepers really tank your success rate and so um someone that's still not going to work and you're better off finding a direct number calling off hours using a different prospecting channel etc yeah i find the you know gatekeepers it's funny because i asked reps is it their job to keep us out a hundred percent most reps like yeah absolutely it's their job no it's not i go no it's not they'd be called wall keepers if that was the case gates are meant to be open so if there is i mean and if you really think about it if there's somebody on the other end of the line say for you and i right say their reps are just drowning and they just can't figure out cold calling or anything there's a vp of sales on there whose numbers are killed and their cro is getting reamed out and and their board is yelling at them is that keep gatekeeper doing their job by not letting us through absolutely not as a matter of fact now that on the other hand we're not doing our job either because we didn't give them a good enough reason to let us through and so i'm a little bit with my i'd love to your thoughts on this it works for me and again i think works for some people and not others but is to have that reason for the call so going back to your context i almost sometimes sometimes i'll go straight hey bill there try to be super confident other times they'll be like hi is sarah there i don't know who's calling well this is john with jb sales and actually you know what maybe you can help me do you have a moment right and the word help is a trigger for assistance because they like to help well sure what can i help you with well the reason i'm calling sarah is because and i either have done a little bit of research on saw something and and then i end with that question like you said so the reason i'm calling is because i actually just saw you guys launched a couple of new products recently and you know our sales training really helps companies get the message out about their new product launches i was just curious what's the best way to get some time on sarah's calendar so i'm not saying is she the best or you know yes no but what's the best way to get some time on her calendar and it's always almost like the reason because everybody needs to know the reason why you're calling what the fuck is this about but then i i skip right through it too and i was just wondering right what's the best way to get some time on their calendar right or if they are even the right person to talk to about this and is there somebody else what do you guys thought about that as far as like the doing a little bit of homework having a reason for talking and then giving it to that gatekeeper at a certain point yeah so the the goal is that ideally we reveal the minimum amount of information needed for the gatekeeper to pass us through and then every time we get pushed for a little bit more to your point you reveal a little bit more when we're revealing the reason for the call part of the reason we reveal with context is they're trained to detect the pitch and so i'm trying to delay the pitch as long as humanly possible until i absolutely have to and so you start with nothing and to your point the tone is really important where i'll be like hey could you get me over to john it's armand it's we're buddies and a lot of people just because a lot of other cold callers are going to be hey could you get me to john barrows please it's armand farroque from northwestern mutual just by doing it with that tone you might get bought past the first third of them and you need that and you wouldn't get past the first third if you revealed the reason too early so you're that's a free pass that you get the second pass is exactly what you mentioned just only the context part which is hey i noticed you guys opened up the office i sent him a note could you let him know it's john but then if they're like no no what why are you calling like what's the reason that you're calling you can't just keep dodging this thing forever and at that point you attach the reason to the context you attach what you do in context of well look i work with a few other partners on this and that's where you give them the full court press just as you described yeah man let's take some practice and let's take some time and i wish more people actually you know looked at this as both the science and the art that you guys do right because it is science right you break this down into a very scientific structure and approach and techniques and that type of stuff but then the art is how you layer on top of it the tone of voice how you you know engage with people and sound genuine and do it in an authentic way and i think if we can get there where just practice repetition repetition repetition repetition practice with your boss those type of things actually one of the areas i say practice is i don't mind practicing on live clients to kd's point like he hates that but i do it on my shitty ones so i tear up my accounts tier ones tier twos tier threes my tier threes are always the one that i don't i just fucking throw up all over myself i don't give a shit right so if i'm doing a call blitz of 30 30 accounts my first five are not going to be good ones you know what i mean they're going to be average shitty 10 you know the first 10 are going to be the tier threes just so i can kind of get that motion going practice a little bit and then kick into high gear when it comes to my tier twos and tier tier ones so awesome guys well it doesn't look like i don't think i i'm on your page here i mean you and i we all take a similar approach but i'm i'm right there with you as far as cold calling is not dead and i don't think it will be for a very long time it but it it is in the construct of what people used to consider what cold calling was if you're if you're do your homework if you have some research if you take a really thoughtful approach cold calling is still an extremely viable and you guys got the proof in the pudding for those details so talk to me a little bit about we got to wrap things up here talk to me about where people can find the book where people can find more information about 30 minutes to president's club and all the other wonderful shit that you guys do and all the stuff that you post out there is awesome so tell them where they can find folks number one thing right now is the book on cold calling which is called cold calling sucks and that's why it works is about to release and you can actually pre-order it today at 30mpc.com backslash books so a couple things that you could look forward to inside of it number one if you want every single step of the cold call laid out step by step from openers to value props to objections to voicemails to gatekeepers to how you plan your day everything is laid out step by step and there are talk tracks literally for every single opener every single objection every voicemail there are email templates that you can use as follow-ups after the voicemails so literally every single part of the cold call is broken down step by step but a cold call is not just the words you say it is how you say them and so throughout the book you'll also be able to scan qr code so you can hear the tone so the goal is to make the most actionable cold calling book of all time you can read chapter one and the introduction for free to get a taste of that so when you go to 30mpc.com backslash book not only can you pre-order you can do a pre free preview skim yourself and the book officially drops on august 14th so if you're listening to this after the fact then you might even be able to buy it right now on amazon or wherever you get your books well that's awesome anything to add there nick armand was succinct he's far more succinct than me how about we do this uh would you guys mind coming on and doing a workshop with me for my members so we go through it and then i'll buy a book for everybody who shows up oh yeah let's do it like one hour workshop like get your hands fucking dirty like give you know give people some tools because we do workshops with the membership where it's not like webinar stuff it's like okay no here's your template do this here practice that that type of thing usually about you know 50 or 60 people sign up 20 30 people show up um cold calling is always one of those things that blows the roof off of it as far as numbers are concerned so if you guys would be up for it i think we could have some fun where we dive really tactical and then like i said i'll buy a book for everybody who shows let's do it we love getting a jam with you john we really do awesome guys appreciate it all right i'll send you over an email to get that set up but everybody else hope you look as i always say here you know we go tactical you know whatever strategy wise it doesn't matter just level up and cold calling is a way that everybody needs to level up there's nobody who's fucking perfect at cold calling and so if there's a technique that you heard in here that piqued your interest and you're still trying to figure out how to get out of your own way when it comes to the phone pick up this book go check out what they're doing at 30 minutes president's club because it's some real so as i always say at the end all these podcasts go out there make somebody smile today because no matter how bad your day went or you think it's going you make somebody smile you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now so thank you all very much and i will see you on the other side hey everyone i hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as i did with your support and our incredible guests we're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now and i can't thank you enough now to keep the momentum going it would mean the world to me if you could go and leave a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform and share some of your favorite episodes with your network also i am super excited to be launching my new newsletter where i'll be sharing everything i know and everything i'm learning along the way while i'm out there selling every day just like you go to jbarrows.com newsletter to sign up today let's all level up and make this happen together