Cold Call Greeting

When cold calling, what is the objective of your greeting?

The greeting needs to accomplish 2 things:  1. it needs to communicate to the prospect who you are, and 2. it needs to earn you the opportunity to a few minutes of time from the prospect.

The first is obvious, the prospect needs to know who you are and who you represent.  Every salesperson I’ve ever met has had no problem getting that accomplished in the greeting, so we won’t dwell on this.

The second is not obvious to many salespeople.  The prospect doesn’t know you from Adam, and he/she does not owe you anything – they certainly do not owe you the time to listen to your pitch.  Therefore, you must earn the opportunity to that time.

To earn their time, the greeting must communicate something intriguing or compelling of interest to the prospect, enough so that they become willing to trade some of their limited time to listen to you.  In short, you need to communicate your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) in one or two sentences at the greeting to earn some time from the prospect.  Unfortunately, there is a very small window of opportunity to earn that time.

For example: “Hi, I’m Bill from ABC Plumbing Supply.  I’d like a few minutes of your time to discuss how we can be of service to you.”  This is a professional greeting, but it is almost totally lacking in anything intriguing or compelling to cause the prospect to give you some of their time.  Unless you happen to be talking to them right after their current plumbing supply house messed up an order for the umpteenth time, you are likely to get a “We’re happy with our current supplier” type of response and no more time from the prospect.

Here is another greeting: “Hi, I’m Bill from ABC Plumbing Supply.  We have the largest inventory of Kohler products in the metro area.  I’d like a few minutes of your time to discuss how we can be of service to you.”  This professional greeting has at least some potential to be of interest to the prospect, but it’s not very strong.

Here’s a third alternative: “Hi, I’m Bill from ABC Plumbing Supply.  We have the largest Kohler inventory in the metro area, and our warehouse is open 24/7 for your needs.  We can even messenger items to you after business hours if needed. I’d like a few minutes of your time to discuss how we can be of service to you.”  This professional greeting has a much higher possibility of communicating something compelling to your prospect – if your USP is that you are the only plumbing supply house in the metro area whose warehouse is available 24/7, you’ve communicated that succinctly in one sentence right up front, and most likely touched an area of need, since plumbing issues don’t occur only during business hours.

For successful cold calling, it is vital that your greeting communicate something compelling or intriguing to the prospect, to earn you a few minutes of their time to make your pitch.