Sales Call Scripts

Struggling to open up sales calls? These 4 opening tips are making my cold calls much warmer 🌤️ 1. Email or LinkedIn them first, then acknowledge this at the start of the call 📧 A cold call is never really cold if you’ve made an attempt to communicate async first People are a lot more receptive to giving to time when you’ve done this e.g. “Sent you an email earlier and thought I’d pick up the phone to see if it was worth a chat; did you get that one?” If they have, ask them what they thought! If they haven’t, give them a summary to save them time h/t Jake McGaw for suggesting this one 2. Ask them how they’re going and assuming they ask back, give a genuine response about something that happened in your day 😊 Simple way to build a genuine human connection over the phone rather than sounding like a call centre employee robotically reading a script Talk about your morning exercise, a recent meal, something funny that happened in the office e.g. “Yeah not too bad! Skipped breakfast this morning and was instantly regretting it by 11, so just gulped down a protein smoothie” h/t Samuel Westley, an Earlywork grad who is GREAT at this 3. Lead with personalised context to build trust that your call is well-researched and relevant to them 📝 e.g. “Hey X, saw you recently listed your first Junior Sales Consultant role, it’s Dan Brockwell from Earlywork” (can also use this info after Steps 1 and/or 2) 4. Use lower modality language in your ability to help them and get permission to ask questions to find out if you can 🙏 It comes off a lot less pushy and builds more trust that you don’t want to waste their time + genuinely want to understand their situation e.g. Thought your role may be a fit for some of our students, but okay if I ask a question or two to better understand whether it would make sense?” — Would love to hear any unconventional call openings that you’ve found are working well for you / your sales team :)

I've taught sales to ex-Google and IBM directors, former corporate leaders and solo founders And across all of them, one change made the biggest difference: ↳ Their pace Most people speed up when they get to the part that matters ↳ The price ↳ The offer ↳ The close They rush through it because that's the bit that feels uncomfortable And the buyer feels every second of that rush (I did this for years by the way. Spoke faster the moment money came up. Like if I said the price quickly enough they might not notice it) Your buyer mirrors your state ↳ You rush, they feel rushed ↳ You're nervous about the price, they get nervous about the price ↳ You're calm, they trust what you're saying Look, your words are maybe 10% of why someone buys The other 90% is how they felt sitting across from you So here's what to do on your next call: 1. Notice the moment you start speeding up ↳ It's almost always when you transition from the conversation to the offer ↳ You'll feel it in your chest before you hear it in your voice ↳ That's your signal 2. Pause for 2 seconds before you move to the price ↳ Feels like an eternity to you ↳ Feels like confidence to them ↳ Try it once and you'll never go back 3. Say the number at half the speed you want to ↳ "It runs for five thousand pounds" ↳ Not" sofivethousandpoundsandthatincludeseverything" ↳ Let it sit in the room. Don't fill the silence after it with noise 4. If you feel yourself starting to rush, use this line: ↳ "I want to make sure I explain this part properly because it matters" ↳ It buys you time to breathe ↳ And it tells the buyer this is the important bit That's it. Four things. Try them on your next call and tell me what happens. -- PS This is one technique. I've got over 23 years of them. I put the best ones into 4 free videos. Watch them here: https://lnkd.in/e_7JBt3b #RichTips

Dear Students, I recently spoke to a student who had faced rejection in three campus interviews in a row. He was disappointed. Not because he did not prepare. But because he had started questioning himself. If you are entering placement season or are already part of it, do not take rejection personally. An interview is a selection process. It evaluates fit for a role at a point in time. It does not measure your full potential. Sometimes there is a skill gap. Sometimes someone else aligns more closely with the requirement. And sometimes, it is simply about timing. What truly matters is your response. Reflect calmly. Work on your clarity. Strengthen your fundamentals. Practice speaking about your experiences with confidence. Then step into the next interview with the same energy, not a defeated one. Resilience is a professional skill. The ability to hear “no” and still show up prepared the next day is what builds careers. Rejection is not the opposite of success. It is often the training ground for it. Keep learning. Keep improving. Keep moving forward. With belief in you, Manoj

Don't call customer service soft skills. This 3-part framework makes them just skills. 📚A quick history lesson before we dive in... The term "soft skills" likely originated with the U.S. Army in the 1960s. The Continental Army Command regulation 350-100-1 defined them this way: "job related skills involving actions affecting primarily people and paper, e.g., inspecting troops, supervising." Over time, "soft skills" have come to mean two things to trainers: 1. Interpersonal skills, like customer service 2. Vague skills that are hard to define or measure 🫤 It's the second part that hurts training. You can't consistently train or evaluate a skill that isn't clearly defined or measurable. In 1972, the Continental Army Command held a soft skills training conference to tackle this issue. Dr. Paul G. Whitmore from HumRRO (a contractor) presented a framework to make soft skills easier to evaluate: 1. What is the purpose of the skill? 2. What are typical situations where this skill is used? 3. What behaviors will successfully achieve the purpose? This framework works really well for customer service skills. 🤝 Let's use rapport as an example. The scenario is receptionists at a health club: 1. What is the purpose of building rapport with customers? ↳ Rapport creates a positive experience that encourages prospective members to join, encourages existing members to renew, and makes it easier to quickly solve problems. 2. What are typical situations where rapport is used? ↳ Examples where the health club receptions might use rapport skills include: ✅ Welcoming new and prospective members ✅ Greeting existing members ✅ Assisting members with membership-related issues 3. What specific rapport behaviors should receptionists exhibit? ↳ A few things might be on this list: (1) Use welcoming body language, such as a friendly wave and a smile. (2) Give visitor a friendly greeting such as "Welcome," "Good morning!", or "Hey (name of member)!" (3) Learn and use member names (4) Demonstrate an interest in the member Yes, this takes a bit more effort upfront to define each customer service skill. Here's the payoff: Clear expectations + consistent training + easy evaluation = Skills

Want to sell £30k packages without burning out? Here’s how. High-ticket sales don’t come from one perfect email (although everyone loves that narrative 🙄) They come from a clear nurturing journey that respects how premium buyers actually make decisions. Think of it in three stages: STAGE 1 — Familiarity: “Who are you and why should I care?” Goal: Turn a cold subscriber into someone who actually looks for your name in their inbox. Your emails here should: ✅ Use their words to speak to their problems. ✅ Show you understand their world/ constraints ✅ Give useful insights they can apply quickly ✅ You’re building relevance not rushing a pitch. STAGE 2 — Depth: “Do you think like someone I’d trust at this level?” Goal: Shift from “this is interesting” to “this person gets how I operate.” Your emails here should: ✅ Share how you think and make decisions. ✅ Walk through recognisable real scenarios. ✅ Name the trade-offs, risks and realities of high-ticket investment. STAGE 3 — Decision: “Is this the right move, right now, with you?” Goal: Make the yes/no feel clean, not pressured. Your emails here should: ✅ Clearly position who the offer is and isn’t for. ✅ Show what working together looks like. ✅ Help them weigh this against other options they already have. You’re building confidence in their decision, not trying to “overcome” them. When your email strategy walks someone through: 1️⃣ Familiarity 2️⃣ Depth, and 3️⃣ Decision Selling 30K offers stops feeling impossible and starts feeling like the logical next step. What resonates most about what I’ve said? (cannot wait til my hair’s this long again 🤩)

In tough conversations, we’re told to build rapport. 🤝🏿 But let’s go deeper. Let’s talk about bias. 👀 Most people hear that word and think: “Bias = bad.” ❌ But bias isn’t evil. It’s human. 🧠 It’s how our brains try to make sense of the world. The real danger? When bias influences our decisions without us realizing it. ⚠️ In negotiation and business, we can’t ignore bias— But we can learn to work with it. So here’s my mindset 👇🏿 The more different I am from someone… The more likely in-group/out-group bias might be working against me. My strategy? I slow down. 🛑 I listen deeply. 👂🏿 I lead with empathy. 💬 I learn what they value, what drives them, and what they relate to. Then, I highlight the parts of myself that align with those things. I help them say, “Hey, Kwame is one of us.” 🙌🏾 That’s affinity bias—and in this case, I’m using it on purpose. Not to manipulate. But to connect. Because when people feel like you’re in their group… They trust you more. They open up. They say yes. ✅ This tactic has been misused in harmful ways. But in ethical communication, negotiation, and persuasion… It’s a powerful tool to build real rapport. 💡 💬 Have you ever noticed bias working against you—or used connection to turn it in your favor? Also check out more of my conversation with Tony Anagor on his podcast 🎙️🚀 👉🏿 : https://lnkd.in/etRjeq7X #RelationshipBuilding #Negotiation #Business

Your prospect Googled you before the call. The least you could do is return the favor. Yet so many reps still show up and open with: "So, tell me about your company…" "What do you do?" "Who are your competitors?" ⌛ Your prospect's time is precious. And you only get one first impression. Every basic question you ask that could've been answered with 10 minutes of prep silently tells your buyer: "I didn't care enough to prepare for this." I promise… buyers remember this sort of thing. Show up well and you'll be rewarded. Not just with deals, but with trust, referrals, and a reputation that opens doors. Differentiate not only your solution, but yourself as a seller and advisor. ––– Here's 5 ways to take your pre-call research to the next level: 1. Find out what leadership is betting on right now. For public companies, skim the latest earnings call or annual report. For private companies, look at recent press releases, funding announcements, or interviews with their executives. Don't just know what the company does, know what they're prioritizing RIGHT NOW. 2. Check their job postings. With a particular eye for roles that matter for your product or service. Open roles reveal where the company is investing and what problems they're trying to solve. A wave of data engineering hires tells you more than their About page ever will. 3. Study your champion's digital footprint. What have they posted, commented on, or shared on LinkedIn recently? What podcast were they on? What blogs have they written? Be sure to connect the dots between what matters to them and what you’re slinging. 4. Map the buying committee before the first call. Use LinkedIn and org charts to understand who else will likely be involved in the decision. Walk in knowing the landscape, not just the person in front of you. 5. Know the competitive landscape. Get a sense of the players in their space and the headline differences between them. See if any are already customers of yours and keep that in your back pocket. ––– The bar is on the floor. A little homework goes a long way. Show your buyers you respect their time, and they'll give you more of it.

CMOs & CROs.....Brace yourselves: iOS 26 is about to rewire cold calling. Come September, Apple launches a new Call Screening feature that fundamentally changes the channel of outbound calls: - Cold call from an unknown number? It won’t ring. - The rep must leave a quick intro message = name + reason. - That message is transcribed and shown as a text preview. - Only then does the prospect choose to answer or decline. Translation: Less volume. More friction. Less control. And let’s be real: if your team is already struggling to book pipeline, this will wreck your dialer strategy. Your strategies need a reset: - Every call counts now. - Only high-intent prospects will pick up—every opener better spark interest in 8 seconds or less. - Elevate your voicemail game. - Your intro is the make-or-break moment—invest in script training, tone, clarity. - Diversify outreach. Pure cold calling and ads won’t cut it anymore: - Personal LinkedIn audio/video - Video-first email sequences - Seed content & social signals before calling - Activate on intent signals only to be REALLY relevant Your brand is your barrier breaker. A recognized individual voice changes caller ID from “spam” to “connection.” If your reps aren’t building presence on LinkedIn, this hurts bad. TL;DR Apple is not just dialing privacy - it’s dialing down your outbound volume. You can: Blame it on Apple Or double down and de-risk your pipeline Your move: Does your team have 8‑second screen-tested openers ready? Who’s coaching storytelling at scale? Because the funnel is shrinking. Stay ahead.

It’s pretty demoralizing to call 40 people and have 0 conversations. Leaving voicemails for an hour straight isn't effective or fun. Here's 4 ways to maximize your cold call connect rate:  𝟏. 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐳𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬: These numbers have a higher connect rate and allow you to skip gatekeepers and phone trees. For every one prospect who gets upset you called their cell, you’ll have twenty others that 𝑜𝑛𝑙𝑦 answered because you called their cell. ___ 𝟐. 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐬: Your first set of dials through a new list of numbers should be the last time you sit through a long phone tree or call a screeching fax machine. As you dial, mark the quality of each number R/Y/G so you remember which ones are good or bad: 🟢 Rings multiple times and VM greeting confirms it’s them.  - 🟡 Smells fishy. Ex: Busy lines or one-ring-straight-to-voicemail. If it happens again on the next dial, move it to 🛑 - 🛑 Repeated busy lines, fax lines, wrong numbers. Once you’ve marked a number as red, never waste a dial on it again. From there, mark down "obstacles" you encounter when calling so you can more easily navigate them on the next dial blitz: Phone tree paths, gatekeepers (so you can be prepared for them), dead-end corporate lines, etc. ___ 𝟑. 𝐅𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐰 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐬: 5 dials in 4 weeks: When you’ve literally called someone every week for a month straight, give 'em a rest for a month and try other prospects for now. Stop after 2 voicemails: 2 VMs is enough to reap the benefits of increasing your email replies. Don’t waste time leaving a 3rd. Avoid impassable gatekeepers: If they keep shutting you down, avoid them by calling your prospect’s cell, contacting them on other channels, or dialing at off-hours. ___ 𝟒. 𝐏𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐠𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐦-𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐝: Rotate your phone numbers: Wireless carriers monitor unusual spikes in call volumes, so many SEPs and VOIP providers let you buy and rotate additional lines to call from so that you don’t tarnish your number. Test your number regularly: Many purchased numbers are recycled, so call your personal line from any new number first to confirm that it’s not already marked as spam. Call during business hours: FTC considers business hours between 8 AM - 9 PM. Don’t repeatedly call bad numbers: Carriers will flag you if you repeatedly call bad numbers (yet another reason to mark your tracks). ___ Contrary to popular belief, prospects DO still pick up the phone. In writing "Cold Calling Sucks (And That's Why It Works), we analyzed over 300M cold calls with Gong: Average rep's connect rate = 5.4% Top Quartile rep's connect rate = 13.3%

Personal Story: Turning a Setback into a Future Opportunity Rejection can be a powerful motivator if approached with the right mindset. Rather than seeing a setback as the end of the road, it can be viewed as a valuable learning experience and an opportunity to demonstrate resilience and adaptability. My personal story illustrates how a proactive approach to feedback can turn a rejection into a new opportunity. My Last Mission: I once applied for a role in Afghanistan and, admittedly, didn’t prepare as thoroughly as I should have for the interview. When I received the rejection, it was clear that my lack of preparation was the reason. However, instead of letting the rejection discourage me, I sought feedback, approaching the feedback session as an opportunity to show my value and determination for future opportunities, if not for this role. During the conversation, I accepted their points and provided additional context where appropriate, essentially treating the feedback session as a second interview. Afterwards, I followed up with a thoughtful email, thanking them for the opportunity and wishing the successful applicants good luck in their new roles. A few weeks later, I received an unexpected call. One of the selected candidates had withdrawn, and because of my positive and proactive approach, I was offered the position. The rest, as they say, is history! “Rejection is not the end; it's an invitation to refine your approach, learn from the experience, and return stronger. Sometimes, the path to success is found in how you handle setbacks." This experience underscores the importance of resilience and the willingness to turn feedback into a learning opportunity. ·     When faced with rejection, take the initiative to seek constructive feedback. ·     Demonstrate full respect for their time and the feedback they’re offering. ·     Use it to refine your approach and demonstrate your ability to adapt and grow. ·     Follow up with a positive and thoughtful response, showing that you value the process and are still committed to contributing to the organisation. This proactive mindset leaves a lasting impression and can open doors that might have seemed closed.