Mastering Cold Calling: A Step-By-Step Guide from a Top Enterprise SDR
And 3 tactical tips for new SDRs that you can use today.
Read time: 5 min
Today, I’m trying something new in the newsletter, so let me know if you like this format or not.
I’m going to share what Brad Norgate, Snr. Enterprise SDR at Cognism shared with me on the podcast a few months ago.
If you want to listen to the conversation, here are the links:
Btw, I just released a 2nd episode with a top SDR: Ashley Hanomano.
For context:
Brad is in the top 3 of 30 Enterprise SDRs at Cognism
He sells to companies with over 500 employees, and with a sales team. Industry: tech, and fintech
He sells to sales, marketing, and operations buyer personas: CROs, VP of sales, heads of SDRs, VP of marketing, CMOs,
Most of his SDR pipeline is created via cold calls, so he shared with me his cold call framework on the show so you can start using it today.
Mastering the Art of Cold Calling
Brad’s approach with cold calls is focused on being relevant and not personalizing.
He said it’s really repetitive but he knows really well his prospects and focuses on their pain points.
Permission-based opener
Starts with a permission-based opener:
This is a cold call. Do you wanna hang up now or give me 30 seconds?
Hook
Whatever the ICP Brad is speaking to he’ll talk about one big frustration his prospects are facing.
And then he'll move on to three problems.
The importance for him of listing these problems is it's a very quick sort of qualification piece.
Either they've got one of those problems and they can have a conversation around.
Alternatively, if they're telling him they don't have one of those problems, and he needs to discuss that, and explore that a little bit further.
Example:
Typically I speak to SDR leaders and they tell me they're frustrated. The team, they've got everything they need. They're just not speaking to as many decision-makers as they could be.
Problem #1: Either they dunno who to speak to and the companies they're reaching out to.
Problem #2: Maybe they know exactly who they want to speak to. They just can't get the cell phones, the emails for those peoples.
Problem #3: is they've got all that information. They've got a piece of tech that's trying to solve that. It’s not just giving them the results they were hoping for.
Then he finishes with his signature:
I've got a funny feeling, Elric, you're gonna tell me now that not a word there really applies in your world.
Instead of using the typical “does any of that resonate with you? “ he goes for the no, like Chris Voss’ negotiation techniques.
And it works because he gets more yeses from that.
What I like about his structure is he shows his prospects he knows about their world and the problems they might face with the 3 common problems Cognism’s customers face.
Great way to build reports with your prospects.
How to handle objections
What Brad does do if the prospect says
None of that really applies
He’ll ask follow-up questions to understand:
That's fine. I'm glad number one, that it's going as perfectly as it sounds.
My question off the back of that, Elric, would be, is that because your team aren't cold calling?
They're not cold emailing?
They're not using those?
Or is it something else?
He wants to understand what's going on, and what are their processes there.
What are their current systems?
Or if it’s just a brush-off objection?
Another objection that Brad might get:
If the prospects give an objection that the prospect says they make 50 cold calls per day and don’t have any pains.
Brad answer:
Are you telling me that that's going perfectly, Elric? They can speak to who they want when they want, and there's no issues surrounding that?
Am I understanding that correctly?
And the reason he means, most sales leaders are probably then gonna say, well, will say “It's never perfect”.
That's something I hear quite often, which for an SDR is like the golden egg, where you've just got a little bit of a foot in the door now to say.
Well, listen, if it’s not perfect, what's going wrong with it?
Is it that they're not speaking to the right people or they're just not, not speaking to, they're not having a high enough connect rate,?
These questions just allow you to start a conversation, which is your ultimate goal with a cold call.
How to end the cold call
In the dream scenario: you find pain, and you've probably quantified that pain.
So they understand that it's causing them a problem and that they're losing out.
And then the last step is just to position Cognism as a solution to that problem.
Now it's not enough, in the enterprise segment to just say:
Hey, listen, Cognism can solve that. Do you wanna have a chat?
If you are speaking to VPs or directors, they wanna know exactly how you can do it, to make sure this 30 min is a good use of their time.
So what Brad says is if we've had a discussion and I found out that for example I was targeting CTOs in Europe, and actually my connect rate is five.
I think it could be higher and you're missing out on opportunities.
He’s gonna bundle that all into one final sort of statement, which is saying
Elric, Cognism can solve that by providing you contact data for X, Y, and Z.
We can solve that issue and, and hopefully the goal being to increase your connect rate and increase your pipeline generated.
If we could do that. Is there any reason you wouldn't meet with us to discuss this further?
If you've done the cold call well then the answer is probably yes.
Recap of Brad’s framework
Now you can use this framework with your product:
Permission-based opener
Hook: 1 frustration of your prospects and list 3 common problems your solution solves
Handle objection
End the call
His 3 tips for new enterprise SDRs
Tip #1: soak up everything that your top performers are doing
You need to make it like a sponge and just soak up everything that your top performers are doing.
It's a matter of utilizing those tools like Gong or whatever it is, just listening to their calls, even if it's just sitting next to them and understanding what they're doing on the phones, what they're doing with their day, that's helping them to achieve so much.
They're not superheroes.
They're not doing anything crazy.
There are things that you can take from them that will work for you.
Tip #2: Understand your ICP better than anybody else in your office
You have to understand your ICP better than anybody else in that office.
That is gonna be: your superpower.
If you understand better than anyone in that office.
What the sales director of a tech company in the UK has just gone into his boardroom complaining about and how Cognism, or whatever it is, can solve that.
Then that is almost a superpower when you get on the phone and you speak to these prospects for rapport building, and for everything.
Tip #3: A/B test
Don't be afraid to A/B test, try different things and different approaches.
You should run your SDR career like its own business in that sense.
You know, you've gotta try different things and fail.
You've gotta try things that work and then iterate on those.
But people that aren't afraid to try a different approach are the ones that will keep winning.
You also have to really understand your numbers, your conversion rates, and what you need to do to win.
Your inputs versus your outputs.
So that can be even building reports in Salesforce to understand those numbers.
That those are all steps that are proactive, that other SDRs probably aren't doing.
Which all comes back to that proactivity versus reactivity,
It's on you to learn, improve, and succeed.
Not even your SDR manager can do that for you. So you, you've gotta keep doing that.
1 thing SDRs should ignore
Take everything with a pinch of salt.
People are in different industries targeting different job titles with very different approaches.
Just because they've had an experience and they've shared it on LinkedIn doesn't always necessarily mean that's your experience, or what your experience will be.
🎧 New Podcast
#18: Top BDR: $1.6M in pipeline created with cold emailing, LinkedIn, a chatbot, how to rank prospects: CFOs and accounts, and her different sequences - Ashley Hamano, Senior BDR at Mosaic
That's all for this Sunday.
Quick Reminder: If you like my emails please do “add to address book” or reply.
See you next week.
Happy prospecting,
Elric
PS: Here're the 3 last issues if you miss them:
If you want to read the previous ones, here's the link.