Ninety percent of people never answer a number they do not recognize. The problem is not your pitch, it is that nobody knows who is calling.
James Buckley sat down with Sara Uy, founder of SellingSara, and Chris Stalnaker of First Orion, on what happens in the two seconds before someone decides not to pick up. Chris's framing: a random ten digit number is about as good as showing up as spam.
Two openers Sara uses every day
The first: hey James, you are totally gonna hate me, this is a cold call. If you give me 27 seconds and what I say is not valuable, I will never call you back again. Her defence is that people who hate it have not tried it, and that it only works if your tone is confident.
The second: hey Chris, it is Sara over at SellingSara, what did I catch you in the middle of? Most people answer before they think, then ask how they know her, which is the opening. Even a hang-up is a win if you learned they were walking the dog, because that is your reference next time.
Her deadline for both is five to seven seconds to sound like a person, not a bot.
The voicemail argument
Chris does not leave them, because nobody listens. Sara leaves them because nobody listens and everybody reads the transcription. She reads every one she gets.
Hers is built for that: there is absolutely no need to call me back, but I am sending you a LinkedIn video right now so you can reply there. The voicemail is not a request, it is her name in front of them plus a reason to look elsewhere.
James stopped leaving his phone number years ago, credits John Barrows for it, and instead names the email he is about to send, sometimes with the subject line, so the reply comes back by email.
Nine before nine, five after five
Sara's timing rule. Call your nine hottest leads before 9am and your five hottest after 5pm, and yes, call the same person twice in a day. Her record on the morning block is seven pickups, set at Pareto. Nobody is at their desk yet and nothing has gone wrong yet. She has caught people in the coffee queue and sent a gift card after. Chris runs Tuesdays and Thursdays and avoids evenings.
More is the answer, but only up to a point
Sara's read: at ten to twenty dials a day, your manager is right. At ninety, pick the twenty you most want and hyper-personalise those, and let the other seventy carry the volume. Chris signed the largest contract of his career on roughly his 270th dial of the day.
What to do about AI call screening
Sara: get your name and company out in the first few words, because that is all the screen shows. Chris's counterintuitive one: if you have branded calling, say nothing at all, because screening needs something to transcribe and silence lets the branded display take precedence.
More answers does not mean more sales
Chris's own caveat on his category, and the most interesting thing he said. Answer rates can fall while conversation length, engagement, and conversion all rise, because identifying yourself properly means the people who actually want to talk are the ones picking up.
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