How to Scale Your Phone Prospecting Success Rate Through Psychology, Expert-led Principles & Data.

When it comes to phone prospecting, there's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all strategy. To be successful, you need to find a way to connect with your prospects on a personal level, guide the conversation towards areas of value and understand what motivates them.

Through the use of psychology, expert-led principles and data-backed insights, you can scale your prospecting success and close more deals. In this article, we'll explore how you can use these three elements to create a winning phone prospecting strategy. Read on to learn more!

Phone prospecting is here to stay

Phone prospecting is an essential component for business growth and sustainability.

Great products or services may drive inbound requests from customers, yet as organisations plan to scale to reach larger sizes,?they can’t afford to just react - waiting for the phone to ring, for online enquiries to stream in, for referrals to come in from existing customers. Generally speaking, companies that have fully acquired the market of early adopters, will likely require a more proactive approach to reach prospects that are part of the more mainstream market.

In the current landscape, phone prospecting remains one of the most efficient and effective ways to identify and connect with potential customers. Done correctly, it can drive the development of key relationships with decision-makers that couldn’t have been reached by other means.

Customers quit buying from businesses for all sorts of reasons and, therefore, it’s key that companies generate business to replace lost ones and drive growth on top of that. The phone is a great tool to support all of that.?

Now, from a salesperson's standpoint, phone prospecting can feel hard and painstaking. Low pick up rates and the common prospects’ unwillingness to talk can easily deter people from sticking to the process and reaping the benefits of consistent phone activity.

It is for this very same reason that each call counts and it’s about removing the mystery out of phone prospecting and proposing principles and frameworks that are psychology-based and backed by data when possible.

In this article, we will be exploring some key principles and best practices on how to introduce yourself with parity and credibility within the first 15-20 seconds of the call and how to navigate the likely resistance you are going to be experiencing on the phone.

Before we delve into the topic though, I must highlight that this article will assume you have done the necessary research before approaching the prospect and that they have been pre-qualified as being the potential decision-maker for your service or product. If you are speaking to the wrong person, surely, everything else doesn’t matter.

That’s the first step to get right and we will assume you got it right.

Don’t focus on the outcome of phone prospecting, focus on the process.

The ultimate outcome we are after in a phone prospecting call is to get set an appointment with the prospect. In other words, we are aiming at “moving” the prospect into the next stage of the sales process.

However, we know this is not possible at all times; in fact, in most cases, we are not going to achieve this primary objective and that’s okay.

What’s essential to recognise is that for the ultimate outcome to be achieved more often, the focus needs to be on the process and making sure that such a process is engineered in a way that maximises the chances of achieving that primary objective.?

Internationally renowned cycling coach, David John Brailsford argues that thinking about the result of your performance reduces your chances of success in that performance. Focusing and attaching yourself too much to the outcome causes unnecessary worry and stress that takes energy away from the actual process, which is the very same thing you need to execute well to succeed.

Attachment to the outcome is likely to trigger emotional responses throughout the process that can often hijack our brain and impact the quality of our thinking and behaviour. Basing your behaviour on emotion is not a good place to be in as emotions are unreliable and inconsistent [1].

Worrying about what happens if you fail or what happens if you succeed in your phone prospecting efforts is counterproductive. Your job is to recognise this type of outcome-based, hypothetical thinking and any emotion associated with it. Once you become aware of it, then you can learn to park those to one side. Referring to a good exercise that Brailsford has successfully used with his cycling team, you can separate your phone prospecting activity into two parts:

-???????Your dream: this is the ideal outcome you would like to achieve.

-???????Your abilities: this is everything that is required from a skill and behavioural perspective to achieve the dream.

If you excessively focus on your “dream”, you are going to agitate non-stop as that is going to be outside of your control. So, once your dream is defined, park it to one side and focus most of your attention, energy and time on your abilities. Break those down into targets that are fully in your control and consistently execute.

As sales trainer, Benjamin Dennehy stated in one of his LinkedIn posts, “A true sales professional focuses on what they have to do in order to get somewhere, not whether they get there. Do that well, consistently, and you will have predictable outcomes.”

The psychological principles behind successful phone prospecting

Let’s start with a question.

What do you think is the biggest hurdle to overcome on a first-time phone prospecting approach with a prospect?

Most people I’ve posed this question to have responded with something along the lines of skepticism, resistance, unwillingness to talk, dismissiveness or the like.

It is a fact that an unexpected call from an unknown caller is going to trigger resistance, it’s human nature to not trust an unknown caller. In addition, since we are coming through unannounced, you may have caught the prospect at a bad time, they may have been called so many times by other sellers, they may have had a stressful day, they may be under pressure etc. All of those stressors can cause the prospect to project their frustration onto the unknown caller and it’s important to remember this.

So, assuming that there is going to be a certain level of resistance in most of our calls, our aim is to minimise that resistance and move the prospect into a more positive, receptive state of mind to participate in the conversation.?

In this regard, it’s key to recognise that we can’t cut people’s feelings out of a sales process. We are interacting with humans and, as a result, we can’t just ignore the feelings that phone prospecting is going to generate within them and any other feeling that may be experiencing for other reasons. Rather, we should work with those feelings in the best way possible and, in particular, as also Chris Voss discusses in his book Never Split The Difference [2], we should aim for two things:

-???????Deactivate negative feelings. Negative feelings are distrust, suspicion, anger, frustration, scepticism and so forth. From a neurological standpoint, this means trying to defuse the activity in the amygdala, the part of the brain that houses these feelings.

-???????Reinforce positive feelings. Positive feelings are happiness, excitement, optimism, calmness and so forth. When you perceive those from the other side, you want to acknowledge them in a way that enhances them.

The more positive the state in which we find or move the prospect into, the higher the chances to have an adult to adult, constructive conversation. If the prospect is in a negative state instead, no matter how good and relevant is our value proposition, they are never going to listen.

Our voice tone, inflexion, pace and language all contribute to the way we are perceived on the other side. Those elements can increase the underlying level of resistance or decrease it. As sellers, it’s our job to master the key communication components that can deactivate negative feelings and lower the level of resistance.

For the purpose of this article, we will only focus on some of those components that revolve around the idea of deactivating negative feelings. The reinforcing positive feelings concept will be explored in future articles.

Basics of voice tone, inflexion, pace and language.

In a phone conversation, body language can’t play a part in how the other side perceives us. All we have is the way we express our thoughts in the moment. Language and choice of words are important, yet how we say things does have a significant impact on perception as well. You can use the same words but with a different tonality and the meaning can completely change.

In this regard, here is a useful table - adapted from the book Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount [3] -?which illustrates the difference between a relaxed and confident demeanour and a way of communicating that demonstrates lack of confidence, insecurity and fear.?

Such a table could be seen as a checklist to help evaluate one’s calls: Are you more on the left or right side? Which areas require more attention? The table provides a more specific language to makes sense of intangible qualities like voice tone and identify specific areas for improvement.?

When it comes to language instead, again Jeb Blount offers a great perspective on the use of assumptive words and phrases to convey more credibility and maintain control [3].

Assumptive language implies that you are assuming you are going to get what you want. It all starts from your mental state and belief system as you talk.

Here is an additional table that illustrates a few examples of the use of assumptive language Vs weak or passive language:?

Finally, it’s also important to highlight some examples of words and expressions that may convey weakness, insecurity and indecisiveness in our first seconds or minutes of interaction with prospects:

“Just” (it diminishes what you say)

“Maybe” “Perhaps”(shows indecision)

“I’m sorry” (puts you at a lower level)

“Thank you for your time” (it shows their time is potentially more valuable than yours)

“Calling to see whether you received the email” (it’s adding no value)

“I was wondering” (conveys insecurity)

“Show you” “Tell you” (implies one-directional communication)

“Wanted to introduce myself and the company to you” (they don’t care)

“Do you have a few minutes to talk?” (permission and gives them a way out)

Etc.

The first 30 seconds: key Intro best practices

In a previous section, we stated that our aim in phone prospecting is to minimise resistance and move the prospect into a more positive, receptive state of mind to participate. We also highlighted how we can’t cut people’s feelings out of a sales process and, therefore, need to learn to work with those feelings and, in particular, deactivate the negative ones which are likely to arise.

At this point, we can look at what are some of the phone prospecting best practices to reduce the chances of negative feelings arising in the first 30 seconds of the call. Most of those practices are the result of data-driven research conducted by revenue intelligence platform Gong which analysed more than 100k cold calls to figure out what does and doesn’t work. Points of view from other sales leaders are included as well.

1.????Use your full name and company name.

Salespeople who state their full name and company name clearly command respect. By doing so they put themselves in a position to control the conversation instead of being hit with the typical response “Who is this?”

2.????Use a pattern interrupt.

Senior decision-makers are extremely busy folks and they probably get contacted by hundreds of salespeople every week. As you reach them on the phone unannounced, your first task is to catch their attention and get them out of their autopilot mode.?Here is that pattern interrupts come in handy.

Gong found that using the expression “How’ve you been” performs 6.6X higher than cold calls that don’t include it. That’s because it causes the prospect to stop for a moment to figure out whether they know the caller or not and, therefore, prevents them from instinctively hanging up.

In one of his LinkedIn posts sales influences Belal Batrawy, slightly criticise this approach as it operates at a level where you pray on people’s politeness to do your job as a seller and instead suggests that you simply acknowledge that they don’t know you from the outset.

“Hi {First Name}, it’s Tom Hefford with Company. You’re not expecting my call. Do you have a moment? I promise to be brief.”

This approach classes as a permission-based opener which can prove effective in calling out what generally stays unspoken on a cold call and breaking down the barrier between you and the prospect.

3.????Ask for permission or just acknowledge the interruption

There is a lot out there around whether or not you should be asking for permission in your first few seconds of a call.

According to author Jeb Blount (see the assumptive language table above) [3], asking “Is this a good time?” or “Do you have a minute to talk?” at the beginning of a call is weak and passive language. In fact, he suggests a more assumptive approach in which you assume is a good time and get straight to the value you want to convey or discuss.

On the other hand, sales leaders like Josh Braun and Belal Betrawy support the idea of asking for permission whilst also acknowledging the fact you have never spoken to them before to lower the zone of resistance.

In this post, Josh Braun proposes a list of 18 openers that mostly adopt this strategy.

Gong also support the use of a permission-based opener; however, it strongly recommends not to open with “Did I catch you at a bad time?” as data shows it makes you 40% less likely to book a meeting. Instead, they suggest using something like “Did I catch you at a good time? If there is such a thing...” in which humour is leveraged to be more personable as well as signal that you realise you are interrupting them.

According to Gong, acknowledging the interruption on a cold call is important. The use of tactical apologies and what Chriss Voss calls “accusation audits” [2] can help defuse any negative reaction by anticipating and calling out what prospects may silently think when approached on the phone:

“I know I am calling out of the blue”

“You are probably going to hate me because this is a cold call.”

“Full transparency, this is a cold call. I know I caught you probably in the middle of something.”

If you are not a supporter of permission-based openers, you can limit yourself to acknowledge the interruption and get to the point. For example:

“{First Name}, I appreciate I am coming through unannounced and I know you are very busy, so I promise to be brief.”

4.????State the reason for the call

Research from Gong shows that clearly stating the reason for the call increases the chances of success for your cold call by 2.1 times.

Again, sticking to the principle of deactivating negative feelings, stating your reasons upfront will anticipate the typical question “Why are you calling me?” and defuse prospects’ natural defensiveness.

If this is not enough to convince you of the power of stating reasons, there is some interesting research by social psychologist Ellen Langer that demonstrates just that [4].

In her experiment, she asked a small favour to people waiting in line to use a library photocopier: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush?”

The request that included the reason resulted in 94% of the people agreeing to her request.

The request that didn’t include the reason, “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine? resulted in 60% of people letting her skip the line.

To exclude that the difference in results may have been due to the extra information “because I am in a rush”, Dr Langer tested a third type of request where she added because followed by something that didn’t add anything new, just stating the obvious “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?”. Such a request resulted in 93% of the people agreeing to it. Almost the same as the “because I am in a rush” request.

This proves that a request with a reason has more persuasive power than a simple request without it.

People crave reasons so use them to increase the persuasive power of your statements.

5.????Use personalisation

In the first 30-60 seconds of the call, you want to show you have done your homework.

Nothing kills a cold call faster than generic communication and you making wrong assumptions about the prospect or their business.

If what we are trying to do is deactivate negative feelings and move the prospect into a more receptive state of mind, a customised approach helps you with that. It’s harder for the prospect to argue against what you have to say when your information is relevant to them, their business, their challenges, their objectives.

The above five key points are not all there is in a phone prospecting approach. At this point of the call, approaches may differ based on the types of products or services offered. You may introduce a problem statement and then provoke the cost of inaction, state your value proposition, or convey any other insight or appropriate value point to engage the prospect in a dialogue.

Finally, you move towards the close and define the next steps.?

Objection handling technique

In a very ideal world, your phone prospecting call would have been smooth, with no pushback and further resistance, but we know that’s not the case, most of the time.

Applying all of the above best practices successfully, can’t guarantee a smooth process and there is a high likelihood that you are going to encounter a series of initial objections.

In this regard, I like this quote from Frank A. Clark:

“If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.”

Although we may interpret objections as something that is getting in the way, it’s important to recognise that they can be a “blessing in disguise” as long as we learn to work with them effectively. And probably, as per the above quote, if a cold call is going too smoothly, it’s probably not going to lead anywhere.

So, how should we handle initial objections on a cold call?

We mentioned that an unannounced call, from an unknown caller, is going to likely trigger a series of negative feelings and fuel some reactionary responses from the prospect.

Such reactionary responses will likely manifest in instinctive objections that in this article we will call Reflex Business Objections (RBOs).

RBOs are reactionary responses from prospects prior to us creating Value and they differ from real objections as what they say is not what they mean. They are always reflex responses that, ultimately, mean “You haven’t created value yet”.

Whilst a real objection expresses a real concern, a reflex objection is an automatic, reactionary response that has no reasoning behind it. A reflex objection is meaningless and should be interpreted as though we are hearing the words “You haven’t created value yet.”

Real objections are likely to show up at later stages in the sales process (e.g. discovery call), whilst, as far as a phone prospecting call is concerned, the vast majority of objections are going to be reflex responses.

“I am very busy”

“Is this a sales call?”

“I am in a meeting”

“I am rushing into a meeting, can you call me later?”

“Who is this?”

“I am not interested”

“I get calls like this all the time”

“Take me off your list”

“What is this all about?”

“How did you get my number?”

“What’s the cost?”

“I don’t have any budget”

All of those objections and others that I haven’t included should be interpreted as “You haven’t created value yet”. What the prospect is saying at this early stage, is not what they mean. No real thought process has informed those responses.

As we encountered those reflex responses we should deactivate the reactionary behaviour and the negative feelings that have driven it so that we can maintain control and move the conversation to Value effectively.

How do we do that?

First, you should slow down. According to research from Gong, successful sales reps pause longer after an objection than during any other part of a sales call. They pause 5 times longer than average performers, an average of almost 1.8 seconds.?

Second, you should use a three-step technique: Agree – Bridge – Value.?

·??????Agree/Acknowledge/Recognise simply means agreeing/acknowledging/recognising the objection. The aim here is to avoid conflict and defuse their reaction so that we can take back control of the conversation.

·??????The Bridge is a short sentence that helps us move to Value.

·??????The Value can be a number of things depending on the company approach to selling, the product or service offered and the stage at which we encounter the objection. Value could be a problem statement, a value proposition, a customer story, a specific outcome and so forth. Value it’s where we want to guide the conversation in order to open a constructive dialogue with the prospect.

To better understand this technique, let’s consider the typical objection “I am not interested” and see how to acknowledge it and bridge it to Value.?

As we hear “I am not interested” it may come natural to engage with it as though what they have said is what they have meant. A typical reaction from the seller would be to ask a question to uncover the prospect’s reasoning behind the objection and gather more info. This is fine at later stages, yet, this early in the process the problem is that there is no reasoning behind the objection; what they said is not what they meant and what they are actually telling you is that you haven’t created enough value to care yet. Hence, our job is to effectively move to the relevant Value.

The acknowledge could be something along those lines:

“Tom, I appreciate that, as the CFO at Roche, you get contacted a lot. I speak with many senior finance execs in your industry, and I know how many calls you get daily and how busy your schedule is...”

Here is the formula for it:

Their Name + Prompt + Their Status + What They’ve Just Said + Fact About Them

Their Name: their name is the most beautiful sound they could ever hear.

Prompt: it’s a short expression you can use to initiate your agreement or acknowledgement. I’d recommend using “I appreciate that..”

Their status: simply their role within their organisation, it shows you respect their title and positon.

What they’ve just said: repeat or paraphrase what they have just said in their objection; using mirroring or paraphrasing shows you are listening and not ignoring.

Fact about them: drop 1-2 reasonable facts about them; for example, recognise how busy they are and how many calls they get daily. For most decision-makers this is the case, so can they argue against that? It shows you understand them and it also calls out and anticipates any other excuse they could use against you later in the conversation (e.g., “I am busy”, “I get calls like this all the time”).

Now, the bridge.

The bridge would change depending on whether the objection comes in the first few seconds of the call or 1 minute into the call, but it could be something like:

“…the reason I’ve called you specifically is….”

“…I’ve been speaking with…”

Following the bridge, you can guide the conversation to whatever is going to be valuable and relevant to the prospect so that you can open up a new dialogue.

Since there was no real thought process informing the objection, you would often find that by the time you get to value, the prospect would forget what they have just said.

You will require an excellent execution of the Agree/Ackncowldge/Recognise and a strong Value to succeed in this approach.

You could possibly receive a second RBO after your first objection handling and in that case, don’t get discouraged; stay composed and use the technique once again to deliver or discuss another value point.?

After the second or third RBO, then you may decide to let go. It was meant to go further at this time.

Here is another example with some other RBOs:?

So, this concludes the objection handling approach description.

A final aspect I would like to highlight is that the above approach, applies to objections encountered in the first minute or so of a phone prospecting call. At this early stage, most objections are going to be reflex responses rather than actual concerns.

Later on in the sales process, the approach to objection handling shifts as at those stages actual concerns may likely emerge. In those circumstances, Gong research demonstrates the importance of pausing, asking clarifying questions, validating their concerns, isolating the objection and then addressing it through a reframe. But again, this wouldn’t apply early on a cold call as no reasoning has informed their objections and, therefore, there is nothing to clarify.

Conclusion

We have got to the end of this long article.

I hope it has offered you some useful perspectives on the various elements of a phone prospecting approach.

To summarise, here are the 5 key points we have covered:

1.????Phone prospecting is here to stay. As companies plan to scale in size and reach the mainstream market, they can’t just react to inbound requests and referrals. They require a proactive approach that can drive the development of key relationships with decision-makers. The phone is a great tool to support that.

2.????Focus on the process, not the outcome. For the ultimate outcome of your phone prospecting activity to be achieved more often, the focus needs to be on the process and making sure that such a process is engineered in a way that maximises the chances of achieving that primary objective. In the words of Benjamin Dennehy, “A true sales professional focuses on what they have to do in order to get somewhere, not whether they get there. Do that well, consistently, and you will have predictable outcomes.”

3.????You can’t cut people’s feelings out of a sales process. Your aim in a phone prospecting conversation is to deactivate negative feelings and reinforce positive ones.

4.????Intro best practices. These include using your full name and company name, using pattern interrupts such as “How’ve you been”, acknowledging the interruption, stating the reason for the call and leveraging personalisation.

5.????Reflex Business Objections (RBOs). Reactionary behaviour is extremely common in the first minute of a phone prospecting call. They are generally in the form of reflex objections. We can deactivate reactionary behaviour and the negative feelings that drive it by using the Agree – Bridge – Value technique.

Federico Presicci?is a trainer and an ICF accredited coach dedicated to elevate sales' professional wellbeing and performance through mindfulness approaches. Learn how to better relate to your thoughts and emotions and your life will transform. Connect or follow Federico on?Linkedin.

References

1.????Bartlett, S. [The Diary of a CEO], 2022. The Winning Expert: How To Become The Best You Can Be: Sir David Brailsford [Video].

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTiqySjdD6s

2.????Voss, C., and Raz., T., 2016. Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It. USA: New York. Random House

3.????Blount, J., 2015. Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide to Opening Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, Email, Text, and Cold Calling. USA: New Jersey. Wiley.

4.????Cialdini, R., 1984. Influence: Science and Practice. USA: New York. HarperCollins.