#578 - Watch Me Cold Call For A Product I’ve Never Sold

In this envelope is a product I've never sold, but you know what? I'm gonna make cold calls for it. Here's how today is gonna work. I'm gonna get five minutes to build a script on the fly, and then I'm gonna get five connects to see if I can book a meeting. My name's Jason Bay. I run Outbound Squad. We train sales reps at companies like Shopify, Zoom, GONG, RIPPling, and more on Hadeland meetings through the phone. I'm gonna put our training to the test today, and we're gonna see if I can land a few meetings, and hopefully you get a few techniques that you can use to land meetings yourself through the phone. All right, it's time to open the envelope. Let's see what's inside. The Chinese side of me wants to see some money in here. J-Bay from Tight Next. Okay, cool. Let's go, dude. So, Tight Next, I'm actually fairly familiar with this company. Essentially, their value prop is you want your reps to make a lot of phone calls, and people rarely pick up the phone these days. They're gonna help us find people that have a 25, 30% plus pickup rate, which is like six or seven times the average. So, I give five minutes. The average cold call lasts only 80 seconds. So, what I'm thinking about is, how am I gonna make a good first impression in the first 30? I'm a really big fan of permission-based openers, and I really like this idea of a reverse pitch. So, this is the problems. I don't really know who I'm gonna be calling it, but I would assume it's gonna be a sales leader and probably someone fairly senior. So, what I wanna leverage in my PBO, there's gonna be a time ask, and there's gonna be a social proof ask. All right, social proof drop, rather. Okay, so, problems. Let's just kind of, I call this chunking, chunking up, rather. So, essentially what we wanna do is take the surface level problem of prospects, don't pick up the phone. That is not a problem that in executive cares about. That is a problem that a rep cares about. All right, so, prospect doesn't pick up the phone, can't land meetings, wasted shit ton of time, calling people. Okay, so, if we were to chunk this up, I'm gonna assume that I'm probably calling a director of VP, CRO, of sales, and then probably one of sales development, I would assume. To reverse engineer what I'm doing, I always think about priorities. So, when you sell a solution, one of the most common mistakes that you can make is not aligning to in existing priorities. So, this is something that's maybe part of an okay R for that executive. It could be something that they're thinking about on a quarterly basis that there's a project around and stuff related to pick up rates is gonna be related to pipeline and specifically, there's a couple of trends. So, AE self-sourcing. Sometimes they call it AE type gen. I don't know how much research I'm gonna do on the companies that I reach out to, but there's also a moving up market. There's also a shifting the outbound culture. So, it would be shifting from inbound to outbound. There's a whole narrative there that I could talk about. It's gonna be very similar for sales development, outside of self-sourcing. Okay, another thing that I know as well, you can tell I don't like to be super-scripted here. So, I just like to have some talking points. In terms of story, I think there's an efficiency play here where people think about this wrong. So, efficiency, oftentimes they think about reduction in head count or taking away things. What they don't think about is how to increase the individual rep efficiency. So, how to cut without cutting. All right, that's my five minutes. So, I'm ready to do the dial. Let's get the list, dude. So, basically what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna kinda wing the opener a bit, but to kinda share what's on my mind, I'm probably gonna do something like here in Mondays, Jason. We work with a lot of sales teams that really struggle to get prospects to pick up the phone like you did just now. I'd love to share more about how we're helping companies like Vanta and Docebo fix the cold calling problem. You got a minute to hear me. And then what I'm gonna do is go in with a reverse pitch. So, I'm gonna really dig into the problem statement. So, if it's a senior sales leader, I'm gonna say, we work with a ton of senior sales leaders that want their AEs to rely less on SDRs and marketing for pipeline and they need to sell source. And they're asking them to do prospecting days and pick up the phone and dial a ton and people just aren't doing that. I'm curious, how does that compare to what you guys are doing right now? What are you seeing? And then I'll probably weave in a customer story of some sort around how a lot of sales leaders are thinking about efficiency and AI and how we're helping a lot of them two to three X the output per individual rep without adding another tool to their tech stack. All right, we've got the list. Let's start the call counter and let's get dialing. I love this a (beep) Jason with tight necks. I was giving you a call to cold call. I was gonna talk to you about the cold calling problem that we're seeing across sales teams with folks like yourself not picking up the phone. You got 60 seconds to hear me out real quick. Cool, call we work with a ton of sales leaders. And I'm not sure if you're seeing this, but they want their team to pick up the phone and do exactly what I'm doing right now. But the pickup rates are often three, four, five percent and it's just really unproductive to use the phones and I'm curious that (beep) or are you having your reps do any kind of outbound at all? What do you see in? - We do to be told a lot by Mr. maybe maybe here this all the time. We don't like, I don't really have a conventional problem. We work in insurance. Most of our customers are just insurance agents who, like we know when we work with or know of us. So, conventional rates and call back rates are pretty good. Gotcha. I'm curious, are there any, 'cause sometimes we hear this, are there any more executive type folks or senior leaders that you want your reps to be calling? There are a little bit tougher that, you know, hey, if you could get in contact with them, maybe a third of the time, that your reps call that that might be worth, like looking into you. - I honestly, I handle most of those. - Yeah. - And my flow is pretty creative. I have good conventional rate on those two. - Well, Clay Magic gets you in there pretty quick. (laughing) - Love Clay. - There's a good cold call that I was about to hang out when I was a girl. This is like your, this is a good cold call. So, for sales karma, I don't hang up on these. (laughing) - I appreciate that, dude. I am curious, like what's the connect rate on your cold calls? - Yeah, I mean, dude, even like my offshore team has like a 32% connection rate. - Holy shit. - I'm about to found a top of funnel. - Okay. You really don't have a cold call problem. - Like we wholesale restaurant insurance, insurance agents. So we hit them with a couple of drips. My tech guys said something up, we're like, I don't know. Like if I have them call calling an agent in St. Louis where I live. Like it automatically like scrubs some cool local restaurants, find like a popular dish at one and be like, "Hey, I like wasn't your area and I ate at this place "and had this and it was really good." And then they like call them the next day and the people like, "You've been to St. Louis before." (laughing) - So I feel like we get creative about it. Also don't think like if we weren't so itchy and targeted, we probably wouldn't have the connection rates we do. - Yeah, if every sales team could have a 32% connection rate, like we wouldn't have a business. (laughing) You know what I mean? Like that's awesome, dude. - If you're selling what you're doing, I'm sure you're doing well. - Yeah, no, totally. So I appreciate the time. (beep) Sounds like you guys are crushing it over there. - Yeah, dude, we'll listen to it and definitely I'll make it okay. - Cool, yep, see ya. - Cheers, bye. - Got the jitters out of the way on that one. I was super receptive. I kind of winged the intro a little bit there. From that call, what I want to do is really lean into the fact that I am a salesperson selling a product to salespeople. So I think I really want to lean into, you know, hey, it's Jason with Titanx. I'm talking to a lot of sales leaders that have reps, making tons of calls exactly like this one, but no one picks up. You did, obviously, I'd like to tell you a little bit more about how we're helping them. You got 60 seconds for me to talk about cold calling. You know, something like that. I thought that went really well. So he said I don't have a connect rate problem. And I pivoted the conversation in a couple of ways. One, I wanted to know what the connect rate actually was. And two, I wanted to know if they were trying to get a hold of executives. 'Cause typically the more senior the buyer, the larger the company, the harder they are to get a hold of. And these are the people that we want our reps engaging with. So I really wanted to see, hey, when someone says they don't have a problem, that doesn't mean that they don't necessarily have a problem. This guy's got 30 seconds of context into what we do. So I really wanted to pivot and see if there was a gap there that we could possibly attach a reason for a meeting too. Okay, so I'm going to make a couple quick adjustments to my script real quick. Here's what I'm going to lean into on this next call. I think I'm going to open with something like, hey, it's Jason with Titanx. I'm giving you a call because a lot of sales leaders that we speak with want their reps to make more cold calls exactly like this one, but no one picks up like you just did. We have some really unique ways that we're solving this problem for some of the fastest growing sales teams out there. Do you got a minute to hear more? I'm going to roll with something like that. I think that in the first initial 30 seconds, what I want to convey is that you are experiencing the product right now. I also want to let them know that we're solving this in a unique way. And that'll be my kind of permission based open for the next couple of minutes. I'm going to do a couple quick adjustments to my script and then I'm going to do a couple quick adjustments to my script. I'm going to do a couple quick adjustments to my script and then I'm going to do a couple quick adjustments to my script one meeting. That would be a 20% conversion rate. [Sounds of a bell] Oh, it's [bleep] It's Jason. I noticed you're running a sales team over there at [bleep] that I'm assuming is making calls exactly like this one to land meetings with dev teams. Yes, sir. Awesome. So the reason I was given you a call, again my name's Jason, from TightNex. We work with a lot of sales leaders like yourself that want their reps making more cold calls with this, but no one picks up the phone like you did just now. We have a pretty unique way that we're solving that problem. Do you got maybe 60 seconds? I could tell you more about it? Yeah, definitely. Perfect. By the way, totally random question. Do you live in Hawaii? I saw that you have a Hawaii number. Long, long time ago. So you had a cell phone where I was over there. So I still have the number. Love it. Love it. I was just in a Wahoo. So great, great place. So yeah, I was curious. It's a little tough to tell on LinkedIn. I was looking at your profile, doing some research on [bleep] Do you have like account executives that are doing any type of self-sourcing? We see that quite a bit with, you know, hey, reducing reliance on SDRs, marketing, etc. Like what kind of outbounder you requiring your AES? I'm an SDR team that supports us, but also the AES are doing self-sourcing. Got it. And a lot of the sales teams that I'm working with, I noticed, you know, they're being asked to do like cold call blocks, prospecting power hours. Like are you guys doing anything like that? And what kind of successor you guys seeing over the phone? Are you seeing connect rate challenges as well? Some of that, but we're probably not as, we're kind of trying to revamp it right now. I think the thing that we would, we would have dedicated, packed in Wednesdays, different things like this. Yeah. We would struggle in with, I think the actual call blocks, some reps are better at it. But I think we're going to start to try and do a little bit more power hour type thing. It's starting to make sense. I love that. It's, I'm all about group workout classes, you know, and like you got to do the group workout class, you know, for the reps. One thing that we could talk about because I know with those, you know, dedicated pipe chin, power hours, you know, it can be, you know, kind of demoralizing when a rep maybe makes contact with one prospect, you know, in an hour. The way Titan X works is it's super simple. It's a technology that reps don't even have to interact with. It just helps prioritize. I'm assuming it's, is it dev leaders primarily like CIOs, like those types of folks that you're trying to get a hold of for? Yeah, I mean different personas, directors of DevOps, VP of engineering. Yeah. You know, some, there's some new emerging kind of AI personas that we're trying to talk to. Yeah. Like literally in my experience, the hardest buyers, you know, to get a hold of especially over the phone. I know I'm catching the millier day here. If I could show you how we're helping, you know, sales teams with very technical buyers like yourself, get a hold of, you know, senior prospects with a, you know, 25%, 30% connect rate over the phone. Would that be, you know, worth 15, 20 minutes at your time? Yeah, possibly. Can you send me a breakdown of exactly what you guys do? Have you been reshuckin' [bleep] No, I haven't. Who's [bleep] He's our head of SDR team. So all this kind of tackle, go through them first. Can you send me a breakdown of what you do with me and him copy this [bleep] Let me sync with him for a minute. And if he sees value in a two, you probably get some time with both of us. Awesome. Cool. So totally happy to send that email. Could we do this? Why not get a schedule with me and you with me right now until we release, go through that first pass, because he's got a couple other things to fly to. Yeah. But if you're willing to do that, I'm not going to employ you off on this one. Yeah, totally. So I'll send that email over if I put a hold maybe on the calendar for next Tuesday, let's say, sometime in the afternoon, maybe around this, like, same time. And you just cancel it if you guys don't like what you see at least that way we have you on the calendar. That'd be cool. Sure that works. I'll get the email over to you. I appreciate this time. Thank you. Yeah, talk to you soon. Cool. Let's go! Got it. I don't feel super great about how that ended. I would have loved to get, like, a little bit more of a commitment on the time. But I did not want to leave that call with without telling him that I'm going to send over a hold. So, okay, so just a quick debrief on that one. I'm loving this opener with, you know, "Hey, so-and-so, it's Jason." It looks like you're running a sales team over there at. I'm inserting the company name. I'm doing something that's actually very easy for me to do at scale. But I'm also showing them within the first 20 seconds that I'm reaching out to them on purpose. So it looks like you're running a team over there at company. And I'm assuming they're being asked to make calls exactly like this one into their buyer persona. I pause, get a yes. Within the first 20 seconds, I give the short pitch, got a minute to hear more. And then really where I went in, and you guys, I sell to this buyer like every day. So I knew that they were probably running some sort of prospecting block or power hour. I asked him about that. He said, "Yeah, you know, we do dedicated pipe-gen Wednesdays. It's not really going that well. It doesn't have a lot of momentum." And it's like, "Hey, imagine, this is what I should have said. If every rep could connect with 5, 6, 7 of your senior buyers in those calls, how productive would those pipe-gen Wednesdays look?" Cool. Boom. If I can show you how other teams are solving this, would that be worth your time? 4Knex, 1 meeting. Let's see if we can get one more meeting. Hi. If you record your name and reason for calling, I'll see if this person is available. Jason, enablement. Add a *******. Hey, it's Jason. I noticed that you're leading enablement over there at ***. Is it safe for me to assume that you have reps making calls exactly like this one into facilities and maintenance managers and that sort of thing? I'm not interested in buying anything. See if I can show you. Okay. You know what's really funny is I need to come up with a much wittier response when people sales leaders especially. She has a post on LinkedIn that says, "I love sales. I love the energy, the pressure, the scoreboard, the accountability, but you know what I love most working with sellers? From brand new BDRs, learning how to open their first cold call. Blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like such like bad karma, I think, to like to not be open to like listening to like the first 30 seconds of a call. When someone is doing exactly what your reps are asking for, so she wasn't about it. So we ended one for five, 20% conversion rate. That meeting that we booked is with a really, really solid buyer. The ICP fit is great. Again, I wish I would have secured that meeting just a little tighter at the end. But we got one meeting on the books. All right. I want to give a quick shout out to TitanX. I was able to connect with one out of five that's a 20% connection rate because of their tool. It's absolutely badass. They're doing a special right now where if you buy 5,000 credits, you get 5,000 for free. So make sure to check that out in the description below. Make sure to check out the 30 NPC Outbound Bundle. There's a cold calling course that's really badass that you can check out. And there's a cold email course. We partnered together with 30 NPC to analyze 85 million cold emails. What's working right now? What's not working, etc. Go check that out. And if you liked this video, I think you'll really dig my prospecting masterclass, which you can check out here.