You will be able to record ten practice openers and check each one against the four-part structure, so you get more confident on the phone.
Most people who prepare a cold call opener write a good one and then read it over to themselves. They never say it aloud to someone who pushes back. On a real call the buyer interrupts, the script falls apart, and the caller falls back on "Hi, how are you today?" The opener itself is usually fine. What's missing is practice saying it aloud against resistance.
You can build that practice with ten calls to a partner. You record each call and score it against the four parts of the opener from Lesson 3.1, "The four-part cold call opener": opener, permission, reason and question. Set aside about thirty minutes, plus your partner's time.
Your partner can be a colleague, a friend or a family member. They need to be willing to be mildly difficult. Spend about two minutes briefing them before you start.
First, tell them which persona they are playing. Use one of the personas you built in Lesson 1.2. It might be a cafe founder with three outlets or a young parent who just went back to work. Then give them a card or a note with the three brush-offs from Lesson 3.3, "The first brush-off and what to say next". Add one real objection you have heard yourself.
Ask your partner to use a brush-off on most calls, in random order, and to let a few calls go well. Ask them not to be cruel. A partner who hangs up every time teaches you nothing except dread.
If you can, make the calls by phone or video call rather than face to face. A face gives you cues that a real buyer on the phone will not give.
Use your phone's voice recorder or the recording feature in your video call tool. Get your partner's agreement before you record. Record all ten calls, including the bad ones. Name each file with a number so it matches the row on your score sheet.
Each call only needs to cover your opener and your first reply to a brush-off, so most calls run under two minutes. If a call goes well, keep going for another minute and then stop. You are practising the start of the call, so there is no need to take it through to the whole sale.
A score sheet has one row per call and four columns: opener, permission, reason and question. Each part gets one mark if it came through clearly. It gets no mark if it was missing, rushed or buried. Each call therefore scores between zero and four. Next to each score, write one word on what went wrong or right. Patterns show up fast once you do this.
Mei scored two out of four on her first call. She gave her own name but forgot the buyer's, and her reason turned into a list of services. On call 4 she scored three. Everything was there except the question. When her partner said "Just send me an email", she panicked and agreed without asking anything. Call 8 scored four. It was the call where she slowed down after the permission line. Her weak calls almost all lost the reason part, because she drifted back into describing her services when she was nervous.
Then listen to the calls a second time, this time for sound rather than words. Two things matter far more on a phone than in person: pace and filler words.
Pace is how fast you speak. Nervous callers speed up, and on a phone line, with no face to help, fast speech is hard to follow. Mark any call where you rushed and note where it happened. It is often the permission line, because asking for someone's time feels uncomfortable.
Filler words are sounds such as um, ah, like, actually, you know and "so basically". In person people barely notice them. On the phone they fill the silence and make you sound unsure. You will not remove all of them. Count them on two or three calls to see whether you have a habit worth breaking. Noticing them is often enough to cut them down. Darren counted eleven instances of "actually" in his first call and three by his eighth, just from noticing them.
Pick your best call. Ideally it scored four and had good pace. Write it out word for word from what you actually said on the recording. This is your working script. It will usually differ from the version you wrote before practising, because spoken lines that work are shorter and plainer than written ones.
Under the script, add notes on what made the call work, where you tend to slip, and your best reply to each brush-off. Keep the script up to date. After your first week of real calls, add any line that worked better and any objection you had not prepared for.
Ten calls is enough to get past the awkwardness of hearing your own voice and to find one or two habits worth fixing. When you finish, you should have:
ten recordings a score sheet with a mark for each of the four parts on every call, and a word of explanation for each mark a filler-word count for at least two calls a working script written out from your best recording, with notes on what made it work
The activity below asks you to record and score your ten now and save the best one as your script.
Record ten practice openers and score each one on the four parts. Save the best one as your script, with notes on what made it work.
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