How To Get Cold Prospects To Genuinely Listen   Every call to a prospect provides an opportunity to get a sale. Your job is to move the odds in your favor and you do this about strategizing the right approach in that initial call. With the right preparation, your prospects will genuinely want to listen to what you have to say.     About 25% of the phone calls you make are answered by the person you are reaching out to. Now that you have them on the phone, however, what do you say to maintain their interest? In cold-calling,  every second matters, every word matters. In this episode, Donald will offer tips on how to excel in cold-calling by grabbing your prospects’ attention, and eventually make an appointment and hopefully, a sale.    Grab your prospects’ interest Cold-calling can be difficult and when you let your nerves get the best of you you can end up rambling. Before you know it, they’ve hung up on you. You need to do what you can to ensure the call is successful and a lot of that success is going to be based on how you prepare long before the call happens.    If you are getting to talk to people only 25% of the time,  the other 75% of your time is spent going straight to voicemail so don’t waste that opportunity! You can still leave an interesting message for them to listen to. Donald learned that there are two things people want to know - your identity and purpose. Human beings have a primal need to know if someone is friend or foe. Prospects can get very defensive the moment they perceive they are part of a cold call.  As a salesperson himself, Donald is one who listens and engages in conversation and sometimes, he provides tips as well. Donal would always give them the benefit of the doubt but he is more the exception than the rule.     Putting yourself in their shoes When making cold calls, put yourself in their shoes. Think about what might be on their minds at that moment. If they don’t know you, the person answering the phone will wonder who you are and why you’re calling. In this scenario, Donald employs the POR strategy or Point of Reference. Everyone you’re calling will automatically distinguish and categorize you as either a friend or a foe depending on your initial statement. Your job is to give them a point of reference to extend the conversation.  Using a referral One way to provide a point of reference is a referral. For example, Donald wants to call an organization  about sales training. In that first call, he’ll  ask to speak to someone in the finance department.  Once he’s connected he then asks that person who is in charge of their sales training. Once he’s given the name, he asks this initial contact if it’s okay to use their name as a reference. Let’s say Donald is prospecting Dave Smith.  After he calls finance, he calls Dave saying, “Hey Dave, Megan from Finance told me to connect with you about sales training.” Dave will now give Donald the time because he knows Megan, Donald’s point of reference. Dave from sales training is now willing to listen to Donald and hear his proposal.   Connecting via LinkedIn Another point of reference you can use is by initially connecting to your prospect through LinkedIn or some other platform before you make the first call. You can send them an email or  private message. Once this is done, you can open the call with, “Hey Linda, we connected on LinkedIn last week...” This prompts Linda to look at her messages to find you and if your message is well done, your odds are much better that Linda will take the time to listen to you.     Donald had this experience recently. He connected with a prospect on LinkedIn and shared her content because it resonated with him. When Donald made the phone call to her, he was able to mention that particular reference of him sharing the post. They had a good dialogue and their conversation went on for some time.    Through LinkedIn profiles, you can find several other points of reference as well: company content, interests,  hobbies