What do you do in this cold-calling situation?

Jason's answer is going to be better than mine. But I say my first and last name as though I'm important. Believe it or not, I don't get "Why" very often.

When I do, I laugh and say "Don't worry, nobody's in trouble. (Some reason, any reason). Is he in ?"

For example;
"Hi This is Claude Whitacre calling for Tony. Is Tony in?"
'"Why do you want to talk to him?"
Me- "Don't worry nobody's in trouble (as if that is answer enough), I'm a speaker and I had a question for him. Is he in?"

My giving that answer as though it should be enough, gets me in 90% of the time. (I mean, including the ones who don't ask anything)

Beyond this point, I take on questions that Jason Kanigan asks.
And as soon as Tony is on the line, I just start asking questions. But I do give my name out as though it means something, and that's a little different.

This is actually just out of habit, and I know I'll be in for a learning experience with just a few more posts here. I'm glad you asked your question. It's one I hadn't considered.

I use Kanigans approach nearly word for word, (after he taught me) except for the fact that I use my name.

Its a shame that Jason didnt share his answer with all of us here...

This is what I say as well....

Sometimes after that I say.... "I'll hold"
And then just go quiet.

G o back to basics.

What i mean is this... what business do you know the most about ?

auto repair... restaurant... something else.

Start there.

You will know the lingo, you will know when some one is BS'ing you ...

You will know exactly how to help them... while sounding
confident and authoritative.

If you dont have a specialty niche.

Pick one.. any one.. and record the conversations.

call 1000 business in ONLY that niche.

by the time you make it to the end, you will be as close
to an expert as one can expect with out being in the bizz.


and then you can sound confident and authoritative.

Did you ask for the owner? Did you stumble? When she caught you offguard did you freak out? All normal, but it will get better with each call...

Yea. What sucks about cold calling for me is that I get home from school at around 4, and I only have until 5:30 to make cold calls then like 90%+ of the businesses I want to call are closed.
I was stuck writing the script until around 5:25. It took me until 5:28 to muster up the courage to do the call. I'm hoping to improve my confidence in cold calling.
Tomorrow I'm hoping to at-least call 50.

Though I've always wanted to do online marketing there's simply too much competition & it's way too hard to be found. I thought I would turn to offline marketing to fix this.

Exactly, try this: Not pulling ANYTHING...Just say why you are calling to 150 people. Less thinking, more dialing.Less being self conscious, more communicating.

You arent calling to be a superstar, you are calling to ask an honest question and get an honest answer.. Honestly self consciousness, is really self "centered" ness. Its about getting down to finding out what you want to know,. Im not interested is one of those things you want to know.

learn time zones, and then you can make that volume under any restraint.

Making 150 calls is simply "humbling yourself" to success, if you approach her humbly she will bless you...but if you approach her like "Im too good to make 150 calls" then she will show you that you arent, and tell you to come back when you are humble.

Im not speaking directly to you saying you are self centered meanwalrus, I dont get that from you at all. its just a rule in my head today that I want to express.

When a person thinks that something is wrong when they dont succeed for a few calls, it means they think more highly of themselves than the successes they look up to in a sense.

In my own example, I will make a fool of myself to get a message across, and do it all the time here at the warrior forum,because the message is important. Im more concerned about reaching people than looking cool and collected.

On another note, there are alot of people who come to the warrior forum wanting to have stripes they havent earned, and they either give up, or the forum humbles them. You have to be willing to be broken by success.

Ps. I have a head cold though, so maybe Im not thinking too clearly. In any event, no matter how many times you fall off the bike, if you want to ride you got to get back up.

Btw how many calls max can you handle a day?.
I managed to do something like 60-70 , if I tried to do more I started getting confused and emotionally drained...

Thank you for the replies, I can regularly check the forum at school using my cell phone however I have to sneak it as cell phones are "disallowed", so I typically do not have enough time to respond.

I would also like to more directly say thank you for the advice on cold calling in certain situations and tactics to address these.

I can completely vouch for this statement. The Windham's are a God send.