A cold call goes quite differently when we already understand something about the account. We don’t need to know every detail of the company. The difference is in not calling with nothing more than a name, a job title and a prepared pitch.
Research beforehand is there so we arrive with context and a hypothesis: something we can test during the conversation. If it doesn’t change the question we want to ask or the reason we decided to call, we probably don’t need to keep researching.
Research starts with the account
Before calling, I need to understand what the company sells, who to, and whether something is happening that relates to the problem we solve: a wave of hiring in one team, an expansion or a change of leadership. That doesn’t confirm a need, but it gives a concrete reason to call and a hypothesis to test in the conversation. I explain how to research a priority account in depth in the article on account research.
There is a limit, too. We can spend half an hour researching an account and still not know whether there is an opportunity. It is the conversation that eventually brings the information nobody has published. Research prepares for it; it can’t put it off indefinitely.
Don’t recite your research to the decision-maker
Being prepared doesn’t mean showing the prospect everything we know about their company. A call can quickly become awkward if we use the research as a performance.
I would rather use that context to ask a better question. We can briefly mention what we noticed, explain why it caught our attention and check whether it has anything to do with the reality of the person on the other end of the line.
It is the basis of the Josh Braun method I use for cold calling: arrive with a specific observation and a question.
If the hypothesis is wrong, we have still learnt something. Perhaps the problem sits in another department, perhaps it isn’t a priority, or perhaps the company has already solved it. That information is worth more than trying to force the original pitch.
The same applies when someone says “send me an email”. Sometimes it is a way of ending the call; sometimes there is real interest. The context we have picked up lets us decide what to send and whether it is worth continuing, instead of automatically firing off a generic deck.
Not every call has to end in a meeting. Some are for confirming the right contact, understanding an account or ruling out a hypothesis. If we only count a call as useful when it books a meeting, we lose much of the information the channel can give us.
What comes out of the call shapes the next contact
The value of a call doesn’t end when we hang up. If we find out the right role is a different one, that changes the next contact. If the same objection keeps coming up across several accounts, we may need to revisit the message or even the choice of segment.
That is the difference between activity and learning. We can log a lot of calls and keep repeating exactly the same approach, or use the conversations to sharpen, step by step, which accounts we prioritise and how we reach them.
Research has to stop at some point. For me, that point comes when we have enough context to form a reasonable hypothesis and a question worth asking.
