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A big shout out to our sponsor again this week - Agent.ai! More on that below!

Here’s what’s on the agenda:

• Tips from the top

• Objection Handling Framework

• Agent.ai - Let AI Agents Supercharge Your Outbound Strategy

• Sales Feed’s Best and Worst Cold Emails

• Building Trust on a cold call

• Creative Tactic of the week

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Tips from the top

"Your social proof might be hurting your outreach performance.

Social proof can be a huge help, but if you use it wrong it will work against you. A common mistake SDRs make is that they don’t match the social proof to the company they prospect.

For example, by saying things like "Amazon uses our tool to solve XYZ", your prospects might make negative assumptions based on that. Things like:

• "if Amazon uses it, it must be expensive"

• "Amazon has far more resources than us to roll this out"

• "Amazon doesn't have the same problems as we do"

• "they are a much bigger company so it's not relevant for us"

But a much more positive thing happens when we match social proof with the type of company we're prospecting. They start to get curious.

For example, if we're prospecting a credit union that has 100 employees, talk about how you helped a similar-sized credit union or financial services company solve a specific problem. Prospects like to know what their industry peers are doing.

Match your social proof with your prospect."

The easiest objection-handling framework

Getting objections while cold calling is part of the process. Sometimes prospects resist the fact that you're calling in general (a brush-off), sometimes they object to what you're saying (real objections).

Keep in mind that brush-offs often happen when you sound like a traditional telemarketer. Their instinct is to get you off the phone. Tone is critical here. Remember - speak slowly, avoid buzzwords, and use downward inflections.

But for the real objections? Here's a framework you can use: AAA

• Accept their Response - Acknowledge what they say

• Answer back - Respond to what they say

• Ask a question - Ask a follow-up question or ask for the meeting

So for example, if a prospect says "we're already using your competitor, Product X, for this"

Accept their response: “Got it. I'm familiar with Product X as well. That's part of the reason I was calling.”

Answer back: "Some of our customers were previously using Product X before they switched over. They were previously experiencing (insert challenges), but they have since found that they can do (product benefits) now with us.”

Ask a question: "How have you been handling that at the moment?" OR "Would you be opposed to taking a closer look at it tomorrow to see exactly how we do this?"

Sales Feed’s Best and Worst Cold Emails

Will Aitken from Sales Feed recently held a contest asking people to send him their best cold emails.

In this video, Will shares some of the best and worst cold emails that he received.

Take a look at the video to see what other people are saying in their cold emails. If you like this video, be sure to support Will by liking the video and following the channel!

Pro Tip for Building Trust on a Cold Call

A quick way to build trust on a cold call is to tell prospects what type of clients are NOT a good fit for your solution. Here's an example.

Let's pretend we sell a solution for SDR teams with more than 5 SDRs. We would say: "I wouldn't recommend this solution for any company that has less than 5 SDRs on their team"

The real catch here is that because you've done your research, you already know they have more than 5 SDRs, but you build credibility with the prospect because it doesn't sound like you are trying to sell to everybody.

Creative Tactic of the Week

"I use a lot of screenshots in my outreach. I know this goes against the "deliverability" best practices, but my reply rate is higher when I do this.

I work with website design, so I screenshot my prospect's websites and use a markup tool to highlight several specific things I want to highlight. The image is highly relevant, it's targeted, and most importantly it adds value.

I don't this for everybody, but only for my potential high-ticket best-fit prospects."