No, the title of this Tip is not referring to cold winter weather (although many of us would agree with it if it were!). It is referring to something even worse - cold calls. Cold calls are a unique challenge. Almost everyone hates making them, and almost no one is good at making them. These are stressful for us and our success rate is low. Yet, they are a reality of life for many people in sales and account management jobs.

Contrast these calls with "hot calls". These are calls to our coaches, who are supportive and almost certain to say yes. These calls are easy and our success rate is high.

There aren't enough hot calls and we don't like cold calls, so the challenge for all of us - how can we warm up cold calls? There are many ways, including:


Get a referral from someone, such as a coach. This gives us some instant credibility.
Find some common ground, by learning more about the person's background and responsibility. Looking at someone's LinkedIn profile can provide great information and help us find commonalities such as connections, companies, education, interests...
Be current with your knowledge of the company and be able to reference a recent and relevant development in your meeting request.
Reference an upcoming meeting. This could be a research meeting you have scheduled or even a presentation to a senior level decision maker. It could be a meeting that is firmly scheduled or one that you are hoping to deliver.


See our blog for specific examples of these requests.

Another way to warm up a call is to simply have a professional approach with a fair request. There is a big difference in asking for a 1 hour sales meeting and a 30 minute research meeting.