3 Cold Call Opening Lines To Avoid The Hang Up
The hardest part of a cold call is the first 10 seconds. This is the approximate amount of time it will take for the prospect to decide whether they want to hang up on you or keep listening. To keep the prospect on the phone, you need to nail your cold call opening lines.
Try out these three cold call opening lines on your next call:
- “Hi, is this Bob?”
- “Hey Bob! This is <your name> from ABC Company. How’ve you been?”
- “The reason for my call today is …”
1. “Hi, is this Bob?”
The trick with this first cold call opening line is to imagine you’re calling your best friend at their home.
You wouldn’t ask to speak to them. You’d just assume you’re talking to the right person. You’d probably recognize them just by the tone of their voice.
To make it even more casual, you can cut out the middle words, and just say,
“Hey, Bob?”
Just the prospect’s first name with an inflected tone at the end to make their name sound like a question.
The tone of your voice is everything here. The knee-jerk reaction to hearing your name asked like a question is to say,
“Uh, yea, who’s this?”
If you don’t have the first name of the business owner or decision maker, no worries!
Just use the name of the business instead.
It should sound like this:
“Hi, is this Bob’s Auto Shop?”
And then pause. Don’t talk again until your prospect responds.
Now, consider the alternative that most salespeople use:
“Hi, this is <your name> from ABC Company, I’m reaching out today because …”
And you’re already dead in the water.
Too wordy, and you play all your cards at once.
In other words, the prospect knows exactly who you are and they have the power to hang up on you if they don’t want to hear from the ABC Company.
Whereas, if you start just by asking you’re talking to, there are a few advantages:
- Confirm that you’re talking to the Decision Maker.
- Maintain a sense of importance, in case it’s a Non-Decision Maker.
- Wait to see how they respond before you introduce yourself.
Especially if it’s an NDM, you don’t want them to know you’re a salesperson, because they’ve likely been trained by their boss to hang up on salespeople.
If it’s the DM, they’re likely going to start the conversation for you, by asking,
“Who’s this?”
It may seem subtle, but it actually makes a HUGE difference to get the DM to ask you to introduce yourself, rather than just introducing yourself without being asked.
It starts the question-and-answer flow of a natural conversation.
Again, tone is everything in the first few seconds of a cold call.
Your tone can’t be too excited right off the bat or you’ll be immediately recognized as a salesperson.
You also can’t talk too fast or you’ll seem as if you’re expecting to get hung up on.
Click here to read more about tone.
2. “Hey Bob! This is <your name> from ABC Company. How have you been?”
Notice the exclamation point.
Now you can express a little excitement because you’ve confirmed that you’re talking to the DM.
But not too much excitement, just enough to let the prospect know that you’re happy to be on the phone with them. A positive attitude can go a long way on a phone call.
Then introduce yourself casually and succinctly.
And always end with a genuine “How have you been?”
The key here is to “mask” your statement with a question.
If you end with the words “ABC Company” and Bob doesn’t want to hear from the ABC Company, then this creates another opportunity for Bob to hang up the phone.
Instead, end with the question,
“How have you been?”
There’s some debate on the exact wording of this question.
According to research from Gong, in which they analyzed a dataset of 90,380 first-interaction cold calls, this question correlated with the highest success rate of 10.0% …
“How have you been?”
Here are the results from the other questions included in the research:
|
Question
|
Success Rate
|
|
Baseline
|
1.5%
|
|
Did I catch you at a bad time?
|
0.9%
|
|
How are you?
|
5.2%
|
|
How have you been?
|
10.0%
|
As long as you end with some form of the question, the exact wording might depend on your unique selling style.
Then the knee-jerk reaction from the prospect is to answer.
So the prospect is going to say something like:
“Fine, how are you?”
Or, if the prospect is a little more blunt, they might say:
“Fine, why are you calling me?”
3. “The reason for my call today is …”
If you have an opportunity, try to build just a little bit of rapport before you get to the point of the call.
This will depend on how the prospect responds to your question, “How have you been?”
Their response will likely fall into one of two categories:
- Conversational
- Blunt
If the prospect’s response is conversational, and they ask how you’re doing in return, you might try saying something like:
“Oh, I’m alright, a little rainy outside. How’s the weather in <their city>?”
It sounds cliché but weather is the safest topic imaginable—everyone can talk about it.
Click here to read more about how to build rapport.
If the prospect’s response is blunt, it’s time to give your elevator pitch.
Start your elevator pitch by saying …
“So Bob, the reason for my call today is …”
This is actually the favorite cold call opening line of legendary sales trainer, John Barrows.
In this post on his blog, Barrows writes:
“My favorite introduction is: ‘The reason for my call is…’ because if you cannot finish that sentence then you should not be making the phone call.”
Click here to read the full post by John Barrows.
Here are the cold call opening lines in a script:
Ring ring …
Prospect:
“Hello?”
Salesperson:
“Hi, is this Bob?”
Prospect:
“Uh, yea, who’s calling?”
Salesperson:
“Hey Bob! This is <your name> from ABC Company. How’ve you been?”
Prospect:
“I’m fine, why are you calling?”
Salesperson:
“So Bob, the reason for my call today is …”
And those are the cold call opening lines.
If you get this far, now it’s about starting your elevator pitch and giving the prospect a reason to stay on the phone.