Good day and happy Tuesday. We’ll be off for the next few weeks as we enjoy the holidays. Be sure to finish this week strong so you can do the same!

Also, a big shout out to Hubspot for sponsoring this week’s edition. Check out their tactical guide below with 51 tips on social selling (with tons of examples).

Let’s dive in! What’s on the agenda?

• Tips from the top

• “call me back after the holidays”

• Hubspot: 51 Tips for Social Selling on LinkedIn and Beyond

• 10 Most Common Cold Call Objections (And How to Handle Them)

• Cold call examples

• Creative Tactic of the week

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Tips from the top

This week’s tip from the top comes in the form of a LinkedIn post from Will Allred. Will always shares great insights so be sure to follow him and like his post! Here’s the post:

“I’m sorry we already use competitor” 😬 

Talking about competition isn’t hard. Here’s a psychology-backed framework:

1. Acknowledge the competition

2. Optional (but ask how they like it)

3. Compliment the competitor this is big

4. THEN… Show where you differentiate

   …If you have context that adds emphasis on why it matters… ADD IT

5. Then Open it back up for conversation

✉ Here's an example in a cold email ✉

Subj: Support Hire

Will,

Saw you use Acme-Bot on the site. How’re you liking it?

It’s great for lead capture. But, I saw you’re hiring for support.

When folks switch to us, they usually need a chat solution that can help with support requests too.

We can probably help delay that hire, if it'll help.

—--

The competition got there first. It might be a bad time to reach out / talk to them. Typically - we hear "competition" and to try and 1-up. We talk about why we’re better. This is dumb.

Why? Because you subconsciously signal that they’re dumb and they shut down.

Instead? Compliment the competitor. They bought them for a reason - lean into that.

Then - show them what makes you different.”

“Call Me Back After the Holidays”

If you're making cold calls, it's likely that you'll hear this objection. So how can we work through this?

The first step is to understand precisely why they are looking to push to January. There are two possible scenarios:

1. They are not actually interested and are using this as an excuse to get off the phone

2. They are interested, but there are outside factors they have to consider. This could be things like:

• They'll know more about the budget in January

• There are other stakeholders that they need to speak with who are out of office

• They need to review their current vendor

• and many more

So the first thing you'll have to do is to understand the true objection. You could ask this in a variety of different ways.

Here's one example: "sounds like you've got a lot on your plate right now. Curious, what will be different in January?"

In most cases, this will get you the true reason they’d like to wait - or you will learn that it's a brush-off. Now it's up to you to find a compelling reason why they shouldn't wait (keep in mind that oftentimes their objection is true and that it actually would make more sense to connect in January. If that's the case, schedule a time in early January).

This could sound like:

"Got it. Given that your colleagues won't be back for a bit, would you be opposed to connecting later this week to see exactly how we solve (problem X)? Typically, it’s helpful to set up a short call before inviting others to make sure we're all on the same page before we loop in the rest of the team."

To summarize, the key is to understand if it's a real objection, and then to give them a reason as to why they shouldn't wait.

In partnership with: Hubspot

10 Most Common Cold Call Objections (And How to Handle Them)

Are you curious to hear how other people handle common cold call objections?

The Sell Better team put together a short video that outlines how other sellers work through some of the most common cold call objections

Check it out below!

Listen to Other People’s Cold Calls

Now that you’ve heard some examples of objection handling on cold calls, you might find it helpful to hear other people’s complete cold calls! We’ve collected a bunch of call recordings from salespeople across the web.

Take a listen and steal your favorite techniques and talk-tracks!

Check it out here!

Creative Tactic of the Week

“I reach out to individual contributors, end users, and lower-level prospects all the time. Not to book a meeting, but rather to collect information or potentially get a referral. They're great people to reach out to because their inboxes are less cluttered, and if they have a true pain point, they will be more than willing to share that with you if they think you can solve it.

I have a separate cadence for these people with simple messaging that's straight to the point. That way, when I go to reach out to the true decision maker, I can say something like "I spoke with a number of people on your team (such as person A and person B) and they mentioned that they are having challenges when it comes to XYZ..."

These people can be great sources of information and can get you a few warm intros."