How to open a cold call and grab the prospect's attention
To book a meeting, the first step is that the person listens to what you have to say!
3/29/20264 min read
If most men struggle to approach a woman they're physically attracted to, it's often because they don't know what to say at the very beginning of the interaction.
"If only I could get into a conversation with her, I'd know how to handle it. But what on earth am I supposed to say without coming across as weird?"
In B2B cold calling, it's exactly the same problem: what can you say to a prospect at the very beginning of the interaction to get the conversation going and potentially turn it into a meeting?
Don't worry. That's exactly what we're going to cover here!
The Different Types of Cold Calling Openers
First, you need to understand that there are different ways to approach someone, and how difficult it is will largely depend on your target audience.
This might not be particularly politically correct, but an attractive woman can be harder to approach than someone who isn't considered conventionally attractive.
Why? Because the first woman might immediately react negatively, as she's potentially approached quite often, whereas the second might even be pleasantly surprised that someone is finally showing an interest in her.
It's pretty much the same in B2B: getting the attention of a heavily targeted persona, typically a senior executive working at a large SME or enterprise, will be much harder than reaching an independent professional or even the owner of a small business.
For example, a Marketing or Communications Director at Carrefour will be much less likely to answer the phone and will often be more dismissive when they do.
Meanwhile, certain independent professionals, public-sector organizations, and even small businesses will answer much more frequently and may actually be quite friendly.
a) Opening a Cold Call with a Heavily Targeted Enterprise Decision-Maker
Executives at large corporations, mid-sized companies (ETIs), and larger SMEs are among the most heavily prospected personas, and they're much less likely to answer the phone.
This typically includes:
CTOs / CIOs
HR Directors
Marketing Directors
Communications Directors
Procurement Directors
Finance Directors
Heads of Sales
And so on.
With these types of prospects, you should expect to make a lot of calls just to get one person on the phone. Out of 10 calls, you might reach only 1 to 3 people at most.
HR Directors are an especially extreme case. It's not unusual to have to make several hundred calls just to speak with around 20 people.
At this point, using a parallel dialer becomes essential. I've also covered [some interesting prospecting tools worth having in your sales toolkit here].
Once the prospect actually answers, here's one possible opening:
1. Standard opener
"Nice to meet you, [name]. My name is Louis, calling from [company]. I don't want to take up too much of your time, but I'm calling because we work with [type of professionals] in [industry]. Would you mind giving me 30 seconds to explain why I'm calling and see whether it might be worth arranging a meeting at another time?"
Sometimes, with certain personas, even this opening will be too long, and they'll interrupt you before you finish.
In that case, you'll need to be even more direct with this shortened version:
2. Shortened opener
"Nice to meet you, [name]. My name is Louis, calling from [company]. I don't want to take up too much of your time. Would you mind giving me 30 seconds to explain why I'm calling and see whether it might be worth arranging a meeting at another time?"
Once the prospect agrees to speak, you can move on to a prospecting pitch tailored to your product or service.
That said, within large corporations and bigger SMEs, some personas are less frequently targeted because their roles are more transversal and they're often overlooked by most salespeople.
These can actually be excellent prospects because they're much easier to reach.
For example:
Regional Directors
Product Managers
Project Managers
Acquisition Managers
And so on.
With these types of prospects, you can use a more relaxed and conversational opener. It should work just fine.
b) Opening a Cold Call with Less Heavily Targeted Prospects
If you're targeting small businesses, independent professionals, or even certain enterprise personas who don't receive many sales calls, telephone prospecting will generally be much easier.
In this case, this type of opener should work perfectly well:
"Nice to meet you, [name]. My name is Louis, calling from [company]. How are you doing?"
Then:
"Basically, I'm calling because we work with [type of professionals] at companies such as [company] and [company]. Would you mind giving me 30 seconds to tell you a little more and see whether it might be worth having a meeting at some point?"
In almost 100% of cases, the prospect will agree, allowing you to move straight into your sales pitch.
With these types of personas, booking a high number of meetings per day becomes much easier. You'll encounter far fewer complex B2B objections, and prospects will generally be in a better mood.
With a well-defined offer that genuinely resonates with your target audience, generating 3 to 6 qualified meetings per day through cold calling can become a realistic and consistent goal.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the difficulty of telephone prospecting varies enormously depending on how heavily your target audience is being approached by other salespeople.
That's also partly why I find it amusing when someone claims to have a specific cold calling conversion rate, regardless of the target audience they're prospecting.
In my opinion, it mainly shows that they don't really understand cold calling. They haven't even realized yet that some target audiences are significantly easier to reach than others.
That being said, the harder a target audience is to reach, the more financially valuable a meeting with them can be.
After all, small businesses and independent professionals often have more limited budgets.
And if you'd rather not spend your time prospecting yourself and would prefer to outsource it to an expert, you can send me an email (louis@outbound-machine.com) to discuss it.