4 Cold Calling Tactics you can Only Learn from Improv Comedy. If this was a cold call, that first actor would have hung up. In both cases, it doesn’t work because audiences can sense a phony. What can improvers and salespeople do? This is honest to the situation and it works the same in cold calls: be yourself. Our product and me being a salesperson aside, what are you going to do?” You will see that prospects find this pure, guileless honesty so disarming that they’re forced to sheepishly drop their own act as well. Together you’ll have a more productive conversation. The same is true of cold calling: new salespeople who only ask boring questions of their prospect like, “What does your business do?” put all the weight on their prospect and are annoying. In improv, offerings are about taking action, describing the scene, and offering a role to your partner. What’s your reaction to that?” You’ll find that with offerings, prospecting conversations morph into real conversations and you get a lot further.
What do Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey, and Michael Dubin (the CEO of Dollar Shave Club) all have in common? Two things: they’re all known for quick-witted responses and they all got their start in improv comedy.
For those not familiar, improv is where actors make up the show as they go. There’s no script, the audience provides plot point suggestions, and it’s all about hilarious honesty and occasionally cringe-worthy mistakes. Because it forces participants to think quickly on their feet, there’s a tremendous amount it can teach your sales team about being top performing cold callers.
Improv: Your Cold Call Secret Weapon
Now, are we actually advocating that you go sign your entire sales team up for improv classes? Yup. Michaela DiChrio, former Manager of Enterprise Sales Development at Salesforce did just that and she found that “It helped our BDRs think on their feet and understand how to continue leading a conversation even when they were hit with unfamiliar topics, questions, and objections. Without a doubt, it made them more agile on the phones.”
Improv acclimates your sales team to jumping into awkward situations. The action moves fast and improv actors must respond faster than they can filter themselves, so what they blurt out is often painfully honest. With time, your sales team will lose any sense of self-consciousness. They’ll become brazen, bold, fearless about cold calling and able to keep a lively conversation going with a brick wall. That’s when they’ll start to apply these tactics:
1. Yes, and…
Imagine this scene: An improv actor throws an imaginary salmon at her partner and shouts, “Get away, bear!” and the partner just says, “We’re not bears, we’re rabbits.” What happens next? The comedy dies a sudden and painful death. Why? Because the second actor didn’t accept the situation. He said “no” when he should have said “Yes!” Now there’s tension because they can’t agree. If this was a cold call, that first actor would have hung up.
Salespeople say “no” a lot more than they realize and it destroys their chances of building rapport. They do it every time they correct their prospect, repeats themselves, or tells their prospect how to feel. Instead, as a salesperson, you need to say “Yes!” and build a scene with the person on the other end of the phone.
Using “Yes, and…” validates your prospect’s feelings. Is the…
COMMENTS