The 4 Reasons You’re Not Making Sales
In Part 1 of my Sales Series, we’ll be talking about cold-calling. I’ll teach you a 4-step process that helped me go from getting rejected to signing contracts.
Like you, hearing the the words “cold-calling” makes me feel something like this.
I think of sleazy salesmen calling me up to sell me double glazing or dodge payday loans.
Or both 😡
But cold-calling can be an extremely powerful tool for 3 reasons:
(1) If you’re trying to grow a business, particularly at the early stages, cold-calls are a crucial way of making your first sales.
(2) Cold calls give you a chance to meet your customers and collect real data.
(3) The principles of effective cold calls also underpin effective emailing, sales, negotiation, and general relationship-building (more on that in future articles) 😎
Cool. Let’s get into it.
Context
When I Co-founded UniRise, we built a tonne of free resources for disadvantaged students to help them get into their first choice university. Though we were getting mad traction, we didn’t want students — particularly disadvantaged ones — to pay for the online courses/mentorship our platform provides.
So our plan was to try to work directly with schools, who could purchase UniRise on behalf of their students.
Makes sense.
Great. I’ll just pick up the phone, call some headteachers (“school principals” if you’re from the US) and tell them about how awesome UniRise is. It went something like this. Please skim it for your own sanity.
Hi [name],
I’m Ollie. I used to be a teacher myself and I’ve recently started a social enterprise called UniRise. Given that students from state schools are 2.9x less likely to get into Russell Group Universities than their private-school counterparts despite having the same A-level predictions, I started UniRise to equalise the playing field.
We worked with over 20 admissions tutors from top universities and had them review over 300 personal statements. Based on that, we built a high-quality online course that shows students exactly how to write an exceptional personal statement. We then give students access to an interactive personal statement builder, where a mentor works with them to support them through their journey. All of this is aided by our WTF Should I Study At Uni Guide, which includes dozens of interviews with current students, day in the life videos, and honest insights into what it’s like to study at university.
We’ve had over 8,200 students take our online course and over 53,000 students use our WTF Should I Study At Uni Guide. 98% of students we’ve surveyed would “recommend us to a friend”.
Would you be interested in us delivering a workshop to you and your students taking them through what it takes to write an exceptional university application?
Sweet.
Mother.
Of.
Jesus.
This is so. Bloody. Bad.
But most people make the same mistakes as I did.
The person calling tries to convince the potential client/user how amazing their product is, leverage feedback/testimonials for social proof and credibility, and then see if they’re interested in working together.
But this approach is all wrong.
It all changed for me when I was on Clubhouse (gee I’m just such a #thoughtleader 😝), and stumbled into a room hosted by Josh Braun, the global sales call guru.
Hundreds of people were listening in, and Josh then said, “who wants to jump on stage so I can give feedback on your pitch?”
I was terrified.
Not only because Josh is literally the cold-call GOAT but also because everyone else in the call seemed to be a seasoned sales development rep and here I was, a first-time founder in his mid-twenties, totally new to the world of cold-calls.
But I raised my hand anyway, and to my terror, Josh invited me on stage.
Here’s what Josh taught me
(1) Detach yourself from the outcome
I started to define my self-worth based on the % of no’s/yes’s I received. When I got a rejection, I’d blame myself.
How could they not want this?
I’ve put my blood, sweat and tears into building this and I know how much frikin’ value we add. Why can’t they see that!?🤬
But you can’t control how someone reacts to your message, and as soon as you detach yourself from the outcome of the call, that manifests in your energy on the call: you become calmer, less needy, and more humbly confident.
Be indifferent to the outcome.
(2) Don’t pitch: illuminate the cost of inaction
Your TV is broken. So what?
Your company is losing money from ongoing SaaS subscriptions. So what?
Your school isn’t able to get students into their #1 choice university because the system is broken. So what?
Problems aren’t enough to enact change. That’s because as humans, we don’t really like change. There are psychological, logistical, emotional and potentially credibility costs associated with switching.
So don’t ask about a problem, but shine a light on it.
HEY.com does this brilliantly.
They charge $99/year for email, but rather than telling you why you have to switch from Gmail (free) to HEY, they illuminate how Gmail isn’t free — the cost of “free” email is your privacy and personal information, which Google sells to advertisers.
A lot of folks are willing to pay $99/year for their privacy.
Your solution means nothing to them if they don’t feel like the problem matters to them.
The best way to frame your “pitch” is to illuminate what you know but they don’t. This will pique their interest and they’ll want to know more about what you without you forcing it in.
Here’s an example I’ve taken from Josh.
Imagine you’re a triathlon coach cold-calling a triathlon runner. Instead of saying something like
85% of triathlon runners report that they feel fatigue during training
Say something like
I often hear athletes spend 20+ hours/week training. How are you balancing family/work with training? Are you getting up at 3 am, training after dinner, or are you too tired to answer this question?
See how much better that is? I’m illuminating a problem that the other person will have to think quite deeply to answer. I’ve also used a bit of humour, too.
Humour builds trust 🤝
(3) Start the call the right way
Don’t start with “Hi, I’m [name], from [company ], do you have 2 minutes?”
Read Chris Voss’s Never Split The Difference and start instead with:
Hi, I’m Ollie — is now a bad time?
You’d be shocked at how many people who don’t have “2 minutes” but would say “no” to now being a bad time. Saying “yes” often implies commitment, so people feel much more in control when they say “no” to something.
Better still, put the elephant on the table. They know you’re calling probably to sell them a product/service. They also don’t know who you are.
So own it:
Hi Josh, you’re probably going to hate me because this is a cold call. Would you like to hang up or do you want to roll the dice?
This is great because you’re using an accusational audit, which is when you explicitly label any negative assumptions someone might have about you.
This builds trust 🤝
Hi Josh, we’ve never met. I was hoping you could help me out for a moment?
Humans are reciprocal animals. We’ve evolved to be that way. People are generally good, and will want to help you out.
Notice also that I’m asking for permission to chat. Respect people’s time and they’ll respect you.
(4) Have a low friction call to action: don’t be pushy
Don’t be that pushy person trying to push for a meeting. That smells of sales.
Instead, use a low-friction call to action.
We’ll see this in action below.
Let’s put this all together. Let’s say I’m calling Josh, Head of 6th form at School X.
Ready? 😧
Get set 👀
GO 🚀
Hi Josh, you’re probably going to hate me because this is a cold call. Would you like to hang up or can I ask you a quick question?
Good start.
Accusational audit ✅
Labelling to diffuse negative vibes ✅
If they say yes:
Thanks, Josh.
I know this is a random question, but how are you ensuring that as many of your students as possible get into their first choice universities?
Are you having form teachers mark them all and then you review them at the end, or have you figured out a way to take the personal statements off their plate?
First, I’ve thanked Josh for agreeing to chat to a random stranger on the phone.
Second, notice how I’m not pitching. Instead, I’ve asked how he’s ensuring his students get into top universities. Unfortunately, the top 8 private schools get more students into Oxford and Cambridge than the bottom 3,000 schools in the UK, so I’m aware that there is probably some work to be done there.
Third, I know that most schools have their teachers painstakingly go through all their students’ personal statements and most of them hate doing it, so I’m mentioning that as an option.
Fourth, I’ve piqued his curiosity at the end by saying “or have you figured out a way to take that off their plate?”. Take that off their plate? 🧐 That sounds interesting — it’ll mean that teachers can actually focus on teaching! Notice again how I haven’t even mentioned UniRise. This call doesn’t smell of sales.
We don’t have time in this article to discuss how to deal with the middle chunk of the call, (that’s what Part 2 and Part 3 of this series are about — but for now, generally speaking just remember to shut the hell up & ask good questions), but at some point, Josh is likely to say
Sorry, Ollie, just a sec — what do you do?
Josh is now more invested into finding out what we do.
Based on what you’ve told me, Josh, you might find this interesting.
I run a social enterprise called UniRise where we helped disadvantaged students get into their #1 choice university. I’m actually running a webinar next week showing school leaders a different approach to help their students write high-quality applications but without teachers spending ages reviewing their statements.
Does that sound like something you’d be open to learning about?
Again, I’m not pitching how amazing I think UniRise is and why I think it’s going to be the most impactful social mobility endeavour in the UK. If he asks for some stats/social proof, I’ll happily give it to him.
Neither am I telling him buy anything, nor am I trying to explicitly book another meeting in his calendar.
Notice my choice of words. He might find this interesting. Does this sound like something you’d be open to learning about? Very low-friction. Other options might be
Does this sound interesting?
Are you against learning more?
Since my Clubhouse event with Josh, almost every school leader I’ve been on a call with has wanted to find out more. They also end up Googling what we do anyway, and find it a lot more compelling to see our impact without me shoving it down their throat.
But Ollie, I don’t really do cold calls.
Fair enough. I rarely do them too, if I’m honest.
But the principles of successful cold calling are similar to how to write powerful emails that convert, how to negotiate your salary, how to handle objections, and how to build relationships.
We’ll look at these in more detail in the next segments of my Sales Series, so if you’re open to learning more, you might find my newsletter interesting (see what I did there? 😉)
If not, that’s also totally fine.
I hope you’ve found these strategies useful 👌
Peace and love ❤️
Ollie
