How to Succeed with Cold Calls

Why Read: Learn actionable tactics for implementing and optimizing an effective cold calling strategy as part of their sales process.

Featuring: Scott Barker(@scottbGTM), Partner & Co-founder at GTMfund

Link to Article: “The Cold Calling Code“

Key Concepts and Tactics:

• Understanding the Importance of Cold Calling:

  • Point: Recognize that cold calling remains a crucial strategy for companies of all sizes.

  • "According to Salesforce's State of Sales report, over 50% of high-performing sales teams continue to rely on outbound strategies, including cold calling, as a key part of their approach. This trend is consistent across both small businesses and large enterprises."

• Setting Clear Expectations for Sales Teams:

  • Point: Establish minimum viable activity metrics for cold calling.

  • "Set clear expectations. Establish minimum viable activity metrics, such as 150-200 cold calls per week, to ensure consistent engagement without overwhelming your reps. The magic formula is finding the activity metrics that balances both quality with quantity."

• Creating a Supportive Cold Calling Culture:

  • Point: Normalize rejection and lead by example.

  • "Cultivate a cold calling culture and lead by example. Normalize rejection as a step toward success. Rejection is a data point that provides feedback so you can iterate. Lead by example – when leaders actively engage in cold calling, it reinforces its importance to the team."

• Equipping Sales Teams for Success:

  • Point: Invest in the right tools and training for cold calling.

  • "Equip your team with the right tools (and training!). Invest in platforms and tools that streamline cold calling efforts. For example, consolidating standalone tools into one platform and parallel dialers."

• Maximizing Cold Calling Effectiveness for Sales Reps:

  • Point: Start cold calling early in the day and perfect your opening.

  • "Tackle cold calling first thing in the morning. Make cold calling your first task of the day when connect rates are highest. Use tactics like the '10 dials, no pee' rule to overcome reluctance and build momentum."

  • "Perfect your opener. Avoid generic openers. Instead, lead with a context-specific statement that shows you've done your research."

• Handling Objections Effectively:

  • Point: Use agreement and strategic questioning to address objections.

  • "Handle objections by agreeing then asking a trap question. When faced with objections, agree with the prospect first to lower their defenses. Then, ask a 'trap question' that subtly highlights a gap in their current solution."

• Integrating Cold Calling with Other Outreach Methods:

  • Point: Use a multi-channel approach to maximize engagement.

  • "Integrate cold calling with email outreach. Use a multi-touch approach by following up cold calls with personalized emails."

Advice from Uber’s CEO

Why Read: Insights into leadership, strategy, and focus directly from the former Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

Featuring: Logan Bartlett (@loganbartlett), Managing Director at Redpoint interviews interviews Dara Khosrowshahi (@dkhos), CEO at Uber

Link:“Ep 113: Dara Khosrowshahi Uber CEO Lays Out the Path to Autonomous Vehicles“

Key Concepts and Tactics:

• Focus on building a strong technical foundation: 

  • "If you build that technical stack in the right way, if you hire really good, engineers, product managers, etc, it makes everything else in the business a lot more easy. So I just spent a lot more time at that part of the business than I used to."

• Prioritize transparency in leadership:

  • "I really believe in transparency. I'm a very open leader. I will tell the company, exactly what's going on. And […] there've been people who follow me on it, ‘well, what if there's a leak?’ And for me, I will take the risk of there being a leak in order for me to be truthful to my team. Because I think people are better at sensing bullshit than you think they are."

• Be cautious about over-relying on capital instead of building efficient systems: 

  • "The discipline of not throwing a bunch of bodies at a problem actually helps you do better work. So it's very, very tempting to go and chase big targets, big numbers, etc. And sometimes it is appropriate to throw a bunch of capital at an opportunity. But you've got to be very careful when the abundance of capital actually takes away from the hard work to build a really, really great service."

• Be open to learning from different markets and adapting your product: 

  • "There are all these really cool learnings that we learned from one market to the other. One area that I'm very excited about is actually high capacity vehicles, call it Uber bus. We launched it in Egypt originally, actually pre COVID, closed it down with COVID, but the idea of getting 15, 20 people into a vehicle to help out with congestion, really lowering the cost of our service is also super, super interesting to me."

• Don't over-plan your career, be open to opportunities: 

  • "One of the pieces of advice I give to young people now that I'm an old person is like, don't over plan your career. I see people making mistakes all the time when they're like, I need to make this much money, or I need to be this title by, by X time. And if, and, and humans are always looking for signal that agrees with it. The bias, the kind of the established path that they have and they ignore signal that doesn't agree with it."

• Empower teams but measure their performance: 

  • "I'm a big believer in empowerment. So, I empower teams […] and I insist on teams to measure themselves based on KPIs, etc. You don't want KPIs to get in the way of common sense. But as long as you're hitting your KPIs, uh, and, and as long as you're thinking not just about optimizing your own part of the business, But you're able to under optimize your own part of the business to optimize the full business."

• Focus fully on the task at hand: 

  • "One thing that I'm good at is focus. When I'm working, I'm all in on work. I don't get distracted when I'm at home with the kids. I'm not constantly checking my phones, etc. So the thing that I believe in is: if you're going to do something go all in, don't have facet."