Last updated on December 10th, 2025 at 02:50 pm
Let’s be real:
Cold calling can be SCARY!
But we believe that everyone can get better at it with practice.
That’s why today we want to share seven super effective cold calling sales techniques + a proven five-step cold calling framework.
If you implement what you learn and don’t let anything deter you from making cold calls, you should start seeing results in no time!
Does Cold Caling Still Work?
Okay, so before we get into cold calling sales techniques, let’s address the elephant in the room: does cold calling still work?
Well, there’s no denying that it’s losing its effectiveness due to technological progress.
Thanks to the widespread smartphone usage pretty much everyone has immediate access to text messaging, instant messaging, and email nowadays. As a result, the popularity of phone calls as a medium of communication is declining.
In fact, the Millennial aversion to phone calls is well-documented. And now Gen Z is continuing this trend to the point of developing a fear of phone calls also known as “phone phobia”!
This is something that you need to take into consideration as Millennials are advancing in their careers and Gen Z is entering the workforce.
That being said, cold calling can still be extremely effective, especially in industries where it remains the modus operandi (e.g. B2B tech sales).
Do This Before You Pick Up the Phone
Here’s what you should do before you pick up the phone if you want to increase your chances of success:
Clearly Define Your Lead Qualification Criteria
You should start by developing your lead qualification criteria.
These criteria need to answer these three questions:
- Do they need your product or service?
- Can they afford your product or service?
- Does their timeline for making the purchase work for you?
Of course, you can’t know anything for sure until you talk to the decision-makers, but you can make educated guesses based on the industry, niche, company size, annual revenue, recent events, etc.
You should only cold call companies that meet your lead qualification criteria!
Research Each Sales Prospect
How much time you have to research each sales prospect will depend on your daily/weekly/monthly cold call quota.
However, while it’s true that cold calling is ultimately a numbers game, you do need to find the right balance between quantity and quality.
In general, it’s typically better to call fewer sales prospects but do more research on each one, provided that you are still making a reasonable number of cold calls every day.
Meaning, you’d likely be better off making 100 well-researched cold calls per month instead of 1,000 cold calls per month with zero research. This is especially true if the product or service that you are selling is expensive.
You should research both:
- The company that you are targeting – Learn as much as you can about its business model, structure, revenue, etc. Also see if there have been any recent developments such as a rebrand, an acquisition, an investment round, etc.
- The decision-maker that you will be calling – Learn as much as you can about their education, career trajectory, professional accomplishments, etc.
Check if they have professional social media accounts, a blog, or a podcast. See if there have been any recent developments such as being featured in the media, appearing on a podcast, speaking at a conference, publishing a book, etc.
Note that your research should be focused on the information that they have made publicly available for professional purposes. Don’t stalk their personal social media because that’s just going to creep them out!
The more research you do on someone, the easier it will be to connect with them once you cold call them. So don’t skip your homework!
Prepare Social Proof
You should also prepare social proof.
Ideally, you want to have a case study that shows how you helped a similar company get measurable results, something along the lines of “We recently helped company X to increase their revenue by 25% in just 3 months.”
Of course, if you are just starting out, you might not have any social proof yet. But that means that you need to go out there and acquire it. Work for free if you have to but get your case study!
Cold Calling Sales Techniques
Okay, so now that we are done with preparation, it’s time to start making cold calls.
Here are seven super effective cold calling sales techniques that can help you close more sales:
#1 Use a Proven Opening Line
Once the sales prospect picks up the phone, you only have a few seconds to get their attention before they hang up. That is the purpose of the opening line.
We recommend experimenting with these proven cold calling opening lines to see what works best for your business:
- “Hi. Am I speaking to [name]?”
- “I’m calling because…”
- “I was hoping you could help me with something.”
- “We’ve never spoken before.”
- “I only have a couple minutes, but…”
- “We’ve recently helped [competitor] — we thought you could use our help, too.”
- “I’m calling because [referral] mentioned that you might be interested in hearing a bit about our services…”
And here are three ridiculously bad but nevertheless inexplicably popular opening lines that you should ⛔ NEVER⛔ use:
- “Is this a bad time?” Yes, it is a bad time, you are interrupting whatever it is that they were doing before you called them. They will probably tell you as much. And then you’ll have to end the call immediately because attempting to talk to them when they just told you that they are busy would be incredibly rude.
- “Do you have 30 seconds to hear how we can save your business time and money?” Are you really going to explain that in just 30 seconds? Because if you don’t have a perfect elevator pitch and are just using this line to hook the sales prospect, you will come off as a manipulative liar. Not the best way to start a business relationship! Moreover, they might tell you that they don’t have 30 seconds, at which point you’ll have to end the call immediately.
- “I know you’re busy but…” Everyone’s busy but saying that just makes you come across as inconsiderate. Why are you disturbing them if you know that they are busy??
#2 Provide Social Proof
After you get their attention with the opening line, it’s time to hook them with the case study that you should have prepared as social proof.
This will immediately make it clear what you can bring to the table + establish your credibility in their eyes.
#3 Find Common Ground
It’s important to create a personal connection before talking about business.
Simply put, you want to get them to like you, as that will make them more receptive to what you have to say.
And the easiest way to get someone to like you is to find common ground with them: maybe you are from the same town, maybe you went to the same school, maybe you share a hobby or an interest, etc. This is where the research that you did prior to picking up the phone will come in handy.
Just make sure that you only use information that they have publicly shared in a professional capacity (e.g. on their LinkedIn, their blog, their podcast appearances, etc.)
Meaning, don’t mention anything that you may have come across on their personal social media, which you shouldn’t be stalking anyway!
#4 Give Them a Compliment
Everyone loves flattery, so draw on your research.
Maybe a recent tweet, a blog post, or something that they said on a podcast made you think. Maybe you loved their conference talk. Or maybe you are impressed by their career accomplishments. Whatever it is, give them a quick compliment before moving on to the business talk.
Also, if you genuinely can’t come up with anything, you can always compliment the company that they are working for instead (e.g. its products, marketing, philanthropic endeavors, etc.)
#5 Empathize With Them
Don’t just launch into a monologue on how amazing your product or service is.
Instead, ask them questions so that you could better understand the problems they are dealing with. Do they even need your product or service in the first place?
Then, if you determine that they could indeed benefit from your product or service, empathize with what they are experiencing and explain how your product or service could make their life easier.
#6 End With a Call to Action
You should end every successful cold call with a call to action. What do you want to happen next?
Say, if you want to schedule a discovery call, propose that and agree on a time and date.
Make sure to have your calendar in front of you so that you wouldn’t need to fumble about to see your own availability!
#7 Send a Follow-Up Email + 2 Reminder Emails
Finally, once you end the call, send them a follow-up email with the agreed-on discovery call time and date.
Make sure to also send them a reminder email the day before the call and then another reminder email one hour before the call.
Patrick Dang’s 5-Step Cold Calling Framework
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:
Take Your Business to the Next Level With the Value Ladder Sales Funnel
Cold calling is great but you don’t want to rely on it forever. Why?
Because while it is possible to scale it, doing so will necessarily require hiring more people. And building a sales team is a resource-intensive endeavor that requires a substantial investment of time, energy, and money.
You’d almost certainly be much better off investing those resources into building an automated system – a sales funnel – for converting visitors into leads, leads into customers, and customers into repeat customers.
Our co-founder Russell Brunson has developed such a system: it’s called the Value Ladder sales funnel.
It’s what he used to take ClickFunnels from zero to $10M+ in annual revenue in just one year (it’s at $100M+ now!).
And you can use it to grow your business faster than you ever thought possible!
The Value Ladder sales funnel has four stages:
- Bait – You offer the potential customer your lead magnet in exchange for their email address.
- Frontend – You offer the potential customer your least expensive and least valuable product or service.
- Middle – You offer the customer a more expensive and more valuable product or service.
- Backend – You offer the customer your most expensive and most valuable product or service.
Ideally, you also offer a continuity program of some sort, meaning, a subscription product that generates recurring revenue.
We also recommend adding downsells, upsells, and cross sells to these core offers in order to maximize your revenue.
The reason why this sales funnel works so well is that it allows you to:
- Start the relationship with that person by offering free value
- Nurture that relationship by continuing to provide free value via email
- Build trust by providing progressively more paid value at each stage
Here’s how Russell explains it:
Also, if the Value Ladder graph above seems overwhelming, don’t worry.
You can start with just a lead magnet and a frontend offer and then build out the rest of your Value Ladder sales funnel over time.
In fact, you can build a lead generation funnel (the Bait stage) and start growing your email list even if you don’t have anything to sell yet!
Build a Value Ladder Sales Funnel for Your Business With ClickFunnels!
ClickFunnels has everything you need to build a Value Ladder sales funnel for your business:
- Sales funnel and landing page templates.
- Visual editor that you can use to customize those templates.
- Email marketing functionality that allows you to send broadcast emails, set up automated email sequences, and create email workflows with behavioral triggers.
We also offer a free trial which means that you can check out our software without any risk.
So why not start building your Value Ladder sales funnel today?