Want to learn how to sell?
Here’s our complete guide to sales that can help you get better at cold outreach, improve your sales skills, and make more money.
Desensitize Yourself to Rejection
Sales inevitably involves facing rejection after rejection after rejection.
That’s why learning to cope with the pain of rejection is essential if you want to master the art of selling. Otherwise, you’ll either quit immediately or burn out in a matter of months.
Fortunately, if you don’t let rejection deter you, you’ll probably become desensitized to it eventually. People ignoring you, declining your offers, or telling you off won’t faze you anymore. You’ll stop taking it personally.
But to get to that point, you’ll have to put yourself through hell. The first time a potential customer curses you out because they are having a bad day can be a shock to the system. Take a moment to calm down, get yourself together, and move on to the next lead on your list. And then the next one. And the next.
Here’s a framing that you may find helpful: it will take a certain number of rejections to desensitize yourself, so you might as well get them out of the way as fast as possible. Each rejection will hurt less than the previous one, until one day you realize that you are over it altogether.
The best way to stay on track is to set daily, weekly, and monthly cold outreach quotas for yourself and then meet them no matter what. Whatever happens, continue sending those emails or making those calls!
The Importance of Empathy
Empathy is the key to persuasion.
And sales is just persuasion in the business context.
That’s why the most important skill that you need to improve is your ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, see things from their perspective, and understand how they feel.
Fortunately, this is something that you can practice anywhere, not just with sales prospects. This means that you can get better at it really fast if you put your mind to it.
So start using regular interactions with other people – your family, friends, colleagues, service workers, anyone really – as opportunities to practice empathy.
Here’s a video from Robert Greene, an author who is best known for his controversial book “The 48 Laws of Power”, in which he shares his advice on developing empathy:
Psychology of Persuasion
Robert Cialdini’s book “Influence” is widely considered to be an essential reading among salespeople.
The author is a renowned academic who used to teach business, marketing, and psychology at Stanford as a visiting professor. Currently, he’s a Regent’s Professor Emeritus of Psychology of Marketing at Arizona State University.
What’s interesting is that he spent three years undercover at car dealerships, fundraising organizations, and telemarketing firms where he got to observe how persuasion works in real life when money is at stake. So while the book is grounded in scientific research, it’s also extremely practical.
Here are the six principles of persuasion that Cialdini introduced in the first edition of “Influence” which was published in 1984:
- Reciprocity – People tend to feel obliged to return favors. Doing someone a favor will make them more open to your requests. In the business context, this is often implemented by providing free value first and only then pitching your products or services.
- Commitment and Consistency – People tend to value consistency in others and want to be seen as consistent themselves. That’s why getting someone to make a small commitment will make them more likely to agree to bigger commitments in the future. In the business context, this is often implemented with what’s known as the “Foot in the Door” technique where you get the potential customer to commit to something, then use that small initial commitment to escalate to bigger and bigger commitments.
- Social Proof – When people are unsure of what to do, they tend to look at what others do in order to determine the best course of action. That’s why providing evidence that other people trust you will make them more likely to trust you as well. In the business context, this typically means showcasing customer testimonials and case studies, endorsements from well-known people, “As Seen On” media badges, etc.
- Liking – People tend to be more open to requests from those they like than to requests from those they feel neutral about or dislike. This means that if you want to influence someone, you need to get them to like you first. In the business context, this is most commonly done by giving the person you are talking to a compliment and establishing common ground with them by pointing out some similarity between you two (e.g. you went to the same university).
- Authority – People tend to be more open to requests from those whom they see as authority figures. In the business context, this is usually implemented by establishing yourself as an expert in your field.
- Scarcity – People tend to value things that are scarce. In the business context, it’s extremely common to use scarcity to nudge potential customers towards buying, typically with time limits such as 24-hour sales, seasonal sales, etc.
The new and expanded edition, which was published in 2021, is not only more accurate from the scientific perspective but also introduces the seventh principle of persuasion: unity.
Basically, people tend to be more open to requests from those whom they see as belonging to their in-group. Cialdini explains that this goes beyond mere similarities, this is about a shared identity.
We strongly recommend reading “Influence, New and Expanded: The Psychology of Persuasion” because it’s arguably the best book on the subject. Also, modern copywriting, marketing, and sales are heavily based on these seven principles, so if you understand them, everything will make much more sense.
Customer Research
You won’t be able to close sales if you don’t understand the people you are selling to. That’s why customer research is so important!
You should learn as much as possible about the demographic and the individuals that you are targeting.
Say, if your target audience is product managers, figure out where product managers hang out online and observe the conversations happening there.
You also want to consume the same content that they consume, so take time to read popular product management books, subscribe to product management YouTube channels and podcasts, and start following people who are influential in the product management space.
Consider also attending industry events, such as product management meetups and conferences. This will give you an opportunity to casually chat with product managers. We all want to feel heard, so if you show interest in people, ask thoughtful questions, and listen to what they have to say, they might tell you something that you may not have learned otherwise.
When it comes to researching individuals, you want to do your homework before you cold email or cold call someone. Check out their LinkedIn profile, Twitter, blog, podcast, books, etc. Read articles about them. Listen to interviews with them. See if they have accomplished anything noteworthy recently (e.g. got a promotion, got a new job, published a book, etc.).
It’s worth mentioning that you should limit your research to what they themselves have publicly shared in a professional capacity. Don’t stalk their personal social media!
Also, you will almost certainly encounter leads who are privacy-conscious and don’t have much of an online presence to speak of. In these cases, it’s extremely important to respect their boundaries. Just go by what’s on their LinkedIn profile. Otherwise, if you bring up some detail that you found through open source intelligence (OSINT) tactics, you’ll creep them out!
Obviously, the amount of time you can spend on customer research will depend on your daily, weekly, and monthly cold outreach quotas. Generally, though, it’s better to send fewer emails or make fewer calls, but do more research on each lead so that you can personalize your approach.
Lead Scoring
Leads can be classified into three categories:
- High-quality leads that are highly likely to convert into paying customers.
- Medium-quality leads that are somewhat likely to convert into paying customers.
- Low-quality leads that are unlikely to convert into paying customers.
We recommend developing a lead scoring system where you use a set of criteria based on historical sales data to determine which of these categories each lead belongs to. This will allow you to prioritize high-quality leads.
Ideally, you want to automate this as much as possible. You can use customer relationship management (CRM) software for that.
If you work at a large company that has a big sales department, the chances are that they already have a lead scoring system in place. But if you work at a small business, you might have to develop one, even if it’s just for your own personal use.
And if you are an entrepreneur, lead scoring can be a game changer and help you take your business to the next level!
Cold Email
The easiest way to get started with cold outreach is cold email.
Alex Berman, the founder of the X27 marketing agency, used cold email to grow his business to seven figures in annual revenue. He shares his methodology in his book “The Cold Email Manifesto”.
Here’s a quick summary:
- Create an alternative domain name for your business – Say, if your business domain name is yourcompany.com, create an alternative domain name such as yourcompany.co.
- Create a new email account associated with that alternative domain name – You can use Google Workspace for this or other popular providers such as Fastmail or Protonmail. This will protect you in case your cold emails get marked as spam. Should that happen, it’s your alternative domain that will get blacklisted by email providers, not your main one.
- Warm up your new email account – This means creating a track record of back-and-forth email messaging with established email accounts. It’s important for avoiding spam filters. You can use services such as Lemwarm for this.
- Build a list of leads – While you can do it yourself, you’d probably be better off outsourcing it to a lead generation expert. You can find freelancers that specialize in this on Fiverr.
- Start your cold email campaign – You don’t need any additional software for this but we recommend using a cold outreach management tool like Lemlist to keep track of everything.
Alex argues that a great cold email consists of five parts:
- Subject line
- Compliment
- Case study
- Call to action
- Email signature
Here’s the exact cold email template that his agency used to generate $600,000 in annual revenue in just 30 days and then millions in revenue for both themselves and their clients:
Subject: Quick question
Hi Jackson,
Been following Fuzz for a while and love your work, awesome job with Rockefeller Center!
I specialize in finding new clients for web and app developers. Recently, we helped Dom and Tom, an NYC-based developer, bring on McDonald’s and close an extra $1,000,000 in 6 months.
Can you take on more clients at Fuzz? Let me know and I can send over a few times to chat.
Thanks,
Alex
—
Alex Berman, Founder
EXPERIMENT 27
12249 McKinnon Rd, Windermere, FL 34786
Mobile: 9729229823
alex@x27marketing.com | x27marketing.com
As you can see, the purpose of this cold email template isn’t to sell a product or service, it’s to get the potential customer to schedule a call.
Here’s a template that Alex provides for booking a call once the potential customer responds:
Hey, Mike!
Sure thing, I’m free next week on Thursday and Friday between 12 – 1pm PST. Would either of those work for you?
Thanks,
Alex
And if you don’t hear from them, continue to follow up. One of Alex’s favorite ways to do that is to simply send:
Bumping this up!
Alex advises starting with just 10 cold emails per day for the first week. Then, after that initial week, start increasing it by 10 emails per day, until you are averaging 100 customized emails per day. This will allow you to test various approaches, figure out what works best for your target audience, and optimize your workflow.
That was just a quick summary of the methodology outlined in “The Cold Email Manifesto”. We highly recommend reading the entire book. It’s a treasure trove of actionable advice on how to make the most out of cold email!
Cold Calling
Cold calling is much more intimidating than cold email but it can help you desensitize yourself to rejection real fast. Make 1,000 cold calls and see what happens. Our guess is that by the time you reach that milestone, you simply won’t care about rejection anymore.
It’s also one of the quickest ways to improve your sales skills because it allows you to get feedback in real time. Once someone answers your call, you might get a negative, neutral, or positive reaction. They are all valuable because they contain lessons that can help you grow as a salesperson.
You shouldn’t just wing it, though. While you’ll inevitably have to improvise when talking to leads, you should have a framework that you can follow. Otherwise, you’ll be easily flustered, which will make the call awkward for both parties.
Patrick Dang is an international sales trainer who has helped over 70,000 students across 150+ countries improve their sales skills. He recommends this 5-step framework for cold calling:
- Research – Make sure to do your homework. Does it even make sense to call this person?
- Building rapport– You have to get the other person to like you if you want them to listen to what you have to say. And that starts with the right tonality, cadence of speech, energy level, etc.
- Setting the agenda for the call – Explain why you are calling, show them the value that you bring, and give them a reason to stay on the call until the end.
- Uncovering pains – Ask questions to understand the problem that they are struggling with, see if you can help them solve it, and figure out the best way to position your product or service so that it would be obvious to them why they should buy it.
- The next step – Say, if your next step is a virtual meeting where you will give them a presentation about your product or service, you can end the cold call by setting it up.
We highly recommend watching this video where Patrick explains this framework in detail and provides an example:
Discovery Calls
Once you get someone on a call, you should make small talk to establish rapport and then start asking questions that can help you determine if they meet the five main lead qualification criteria:
- Need – Do they need your product or service?
- Interest – Are they interested in your product or service?
- Budget – Can they afford your product or service?
- Timing – Does their timeframe for buying your product or service work for you?
- Authority – Does the person you are talking to have the power to authorize the purchase?
Remember, the goal of a discovery call should be to figure out whether they are a good match for your business.
If you feel that they are, then you can pitch them your product or service and end the call by asking them to take the next step, whatever that next step may be.
And if you realize that they are not a match at this point in time, you can suggest keeping in touch should the situation ever change. Send them an email every few months. Nurture that relationship. Warm leads are the best leads!
CRM Software
Human memory is fallible. You don’t want to rely on it to remember every follow-up email that you need to send, every call you scheduled, the right timezone for each call, etc. Rest assured that you won’t be able to keep this up for long until you drop the ball on something important.
That’s why you should use customer relationship management (CRM) software to keep track of everything. There are plenty of great options out there.
We also recommend automating your workflow as much as possible. Take full advantage of sales pipeline dashboards, calendars, email reminders, etc.
After all, the more repetitive tasks you outsource to CRM software, the more time, energy, and cognitive capacity you’ll have left for what matters the most: cold outreach, discovery calls, and closing sales.
Sales Funnels
We believe that everyone who has a business or wants to start one in the future should master sales. But once you do that, you need to go beyond it.
The next step is learning to build automated systems – sales funnels – for converting visitors into leads, leads into customers, and customers into repeat customers.
Sales funnels are the key to making money while you sleep. They are also the secret to growing your business FAST.
Our co-founder, Russell Brunson, created the Value Ladder sales funnel which he then used to take ClickFunnels from zero to $10M in annual revenue in just one year (it’s at $100M+ now!).
He has since written three best-selling books that are collectively known as “The Secrets Trilogy”:
The first one, “DotCom Secrets”, is all about sales funnels. So if you want to learn how to use them to sell products and services online, we recommend reading it.
You can get a copy of “DotCom Secrets” for FREE. All we ask is that you cover the shipping!
