Pick up a copy of the latest Inc. Magazine to see that the old stereotype of salespeople as used car salesmen is dead. In economy 2.0 salespeople create possibilities and value at all turns. The best salespeople I know build a vision and get people to feel it and go along for the ride.

More and more of our clients report that they call to follow up on a marketing activity like a download and the prospect outright denies that they even did the thing that the computer says they did. What does this mean? It means that folks on the Internet are half zombies. Can you tell me the last 10 websites that you visited and what you did? They call it surfing for a reason - you only really remember the best wave of the day and the rest just blend together. The net, net of all of this for salespeople is that you still have to figure out a way to pick up the phone and engage your prospect in a dialogue. In a high end B2B sales environment, nothing will ever replace the moxy it takes to create this interaction.

By the way I hate that 'warm calling' b.s., too. Cold calling is like parenting: you can never really be totally prepared, so just pick up the phone and do it.

So many salespeople living in the day to day of sales 2.0 still struggle with these opening skills. I'm pretty sure that's why Chad wanted to post this - it gets to the heart of some of the down in the trenches stuff that salespeople still need. I agree with all of the ideas in this blog. These skills are only meant to compliment everything here.

Trish - totally agree with you on sales 2.0. You need to understand the prospect's business, pain, trigger events, etc. before you attempt to do any of this. That said you can have the ability to unearth all the pain in the world, but still be unable to have those little hooks that get your prospect willing to listen to you in the first place to let you uncover the pain. My 'tips' are for that bit before you kick in with sales 2.0. Call it cold calling 2.0. It still brings to bear all of the sales 2.0 ideas but gives you the ability to exercise those skills with a targeted audience. The 'all about you' part only lasts 30 seconds until you can transition the conversation to questions and make it about them. You have to establish some credibility before coming with questions otherwise you are just coming from left field and will hear a dial toine pretty fast. I know because I make a ton of calls!

In all of our training classes we make live prospecting and cold calls on speakerphone as if we are the client company. We also have a team of 20 people in our Arlington, VA offices doing outsourced cold sales meeting setting for about 30 more clients. We practice what we preach and do this stuff day in and day out. When I say that a technique works or a technique fails, please know that there are literally thousands of calls supporting the claim. The best part of all is that there are myriad techniques that work differently for each person calling - in that way there are a lot of right answers so you have to find your own path!

Michael: I appreciate your post. Let me address your comments in turn.

1. I structured these sales tips as 11 questions for three reasons
a) the answers depend on the cold calling situation and are specific to each organization
b) the questions are intended to get you thinking and collaborating with peers to find your own best practices
c) I didn't have enough space to elaborate on each point!
With Chad's go ahead, I'm more than happy to elaborate on a few points where readers want to see more. Pick a number, and I'll throw a bunch of tactics out there.

2. This "50% more meetings" statistic comes from one of our clients who sells to government contractors. They have a well defined buying center and need to talk to executives with a very specific role and set of responsibilities. Previously they tried to open the conversation with a little joke or by launching right into the pitch. Once we flipped them over to asking if the prospect has a sec, then clarifying title and responsibilities, booked meetings jumped 50%.