- One of you guys has sent me
an appointment setting cold call.
He sells SEO services to lawyers,
and in this video I'm gonna run through that.
It's gonna be anonymized,
and I'll give feedback on an actual sales call.
Here's the call.
- [Client] Hello?
- [Salesperson] Hey, Michael?
- [Michael] Yes.
- [Salesperson] Hey, this is Jason.
You left me a voicemail just a few minutes ago?
- [Michael] Yes, yes, I remember. How are you?
- [Jason] I'm good. How are you, Michael?
- Good, good. - I'm just--
- So notice, Jason asked this question.
He's like, "How are you?"
didn't wait for the response,
and just started jumping into his sales pitch.
One, I wouldn't recommend asking a question
like "How are you" in a cold call.
It sounds like this was a call he made,
the guy sent him a voicemail and then he called him back.
I would jump right into it.
But, if you do screw up and ask a question like that,
wait for the response.
- [Jason] (laughs) Excellent.
Just to clear things first,
just to make sure we're both not wasting our time,
we have a lot of partnership deals going on at the moment,
and one of those is passing cases that we have.
This is not a marketing.
We're not selling you on a six month marketing thing.
We already have cases coming in.
It's as simple as looking it over
and seeing if it fits with your firm.
Is that something that we're clear on? Just--
- Instead of getting super sales-y off the bat,
I would compress it a little bit
instead of having to sell him,
I would say something like,
"I was looking through your site.
"You guys obviously have a great team.
"I was wondering what you do right now
"for finding new clients.
"What's your marketing strategy look like?"
It's tighter, it's more human,
and it's in line with my persona.
I'm usually like a to-the-point type of guy.
Somebody else might get more flowery.
And what I like to do in these cold calls
is get to the point as soon as possible,
which is kind of what Jason was trying to do
with the "wasting your time" line,
but I also wouldn't say words like
"I don't wanna waste your time",
or "Let's make sure neither one of us is wasting our time,"
'cause you don't want them to
have that thought in their head
that you might be wasting their time.
- [Michael] Yeah, I'm curious.
Where did you get my information from? My phone number?
- That's the response of a guy
that has no idea why you're calling him,
knows you're in a cold call,
and feels like you're wasting his time.
The fix to that is being more human in the intro,
showing that you've done some research on the company.
- [Jason] We're looking for personal injury on Facebook,
and I found you there.
You fit with exactly what we need,
which is for, like, dog bites.
You've done dog bites in the past, right?
If I'm correct there? - Right, right.
Right, I have done dog bites in the past.
- [Jason] Okay. So there's a limit to the amount of
lawyers in Cali so we're,
you're one of the person that we really wanted
to partner up with.
Do you,
are you able to take up partnership right now
with multiple cases?
'Cause these are more than just one case a month,
there's multiple.
- [Michael] Um,
well what volume are you talking about, first of all?
So I can--
- It's kind of cringy, right?
He's talking about partnerships instead of saying
"marketing" or "sales",
which, maybe this is tested, maybe that works.
I'm interested to see where this call goes
in the next 14 minutes,
because at this point I probably would have hung up
if I was this lawyer.
- [Michael] Just trying to understand.
- [Jason] Not super high,
but definitely more than one case a month.
- And then he downtalks his own service.
He says, "Yeah, it's more than one case a month,
"but it's not super high."
The better response here would be
to use a case study.
So if they say,
"What type of numbers are we talking about here?"
you could say,
"Well, for Morgan and Morgan
"who have an office just down the street from you,
"we generate two to three clients every single month."
If you don't have a specific case study in their industry,
you can go a little bit further back,
but some kind of case study,
and if you're in marketing,
it definitely has to have numbers attached to it.
Similar to what we do in a cold email.
- [Michael] Okay, alright.
Well, here's, um,
here's my idea.
I'll tell you what I'm doing right now.
- [Jason] Sure.
- [Michael] I'm independent. I'm on my own, and--
- The fact that he's still talking about marketing
with Jason at this point,
means that this guy is
extremely desperate for marketing services.
This is a lay-up, and I'm gonna be extremely disappointed
if he doesn't have a meeting
or a sale booked by the end of this call.
- [Michael] I contract out my services
to a giant insurance firm that I'm working with
where I deal with, like,
high-volume,
large cases,
usually in the several millions of dollars.
So that's really kind of what I'm doing right now.
I work with a lot of lawyers
down here in Southern California.
You're located in Northern California, though, right?
- [Jason] That's correct,
but we sometimes get offers for cases in Southern, as well.
- What the client's doing here
is trying to disqualify himself.
"Oh, we only do million dollar cases,
"also you're in Northern California,
"we're in Southern California,"
which might sound bad,
but is actually a very good sign,
because literally all Jason has to say here,
which he didn't,
but all he had to say was
"We work with three lawyers
"in Southern California right now.
"They're all getting clients from us,
"so our services work all around the coast.
"And we're specifically reaching out to you,
"because based on the research,
"I can tell that you're gonna get a lot of value from it.
"Typically we do actually source
"these million dollar deals."
Now I'm not saying a lie.
Only say that if that's true.
But if you're doing your market research correctly,
I'm assuming these guys do source
these million dollar deals.
If not, Jason should say,
"Oh, alright, I guess we're not qualified,"
and he should hang up.
But if you've done your target market research,
assuming this guy is a good lead for you
and this isn't the first time you've heard this question
about the deal size,
then you should have a good answer ready to go
about how you've done it before in the past.
- [Michael] Okay. I mean, well, nowadays,
geography I don't think matters that much.
People can work remotely and they can file documents,
and all that,
so it doesn't concern me too much.
- This guy's giving all the latitude you need
to make a sale.
This is so interesting.
- [Michael] Let me just think about this.
- [Jason] I would think about it.
If you're doing cases in the millions,
the problem with this one, I know for sure that
one of our attorneys has a quarter million dollar case
for dog bites.
Let's see.
I think my partner has more detail in the cases.
Would you want to take a look at the cases,
the calls coming in,
see if it fits with your firm?
And we could just move forward from there?
- [Michael] Well, no, I'm just thinking about it,
because the way that I do now,
or the way that I work--
- Jason should have just said
"Yes, we do million dollar cases,"
if he even thinks that they do.
Saying you do "quarter million dollar cases"
when someone does "multimillion dollar cases"
makes you seem
smaller than he needs,
so you're not qualified to be talking to this guy, right?
And I don't know if the firm that Jason's working for
actually is or is not qualified to be working with him,
but if they have done million dollar cases,
Jason should either know that off the bat,
or shouldn't guess.
- [Michael] --work with this other company,
'cause I work hourly.
So this, with dog bites, I assume,
is contingency cases, correct?
- [Jason] Correct.
- [Michael] Okay, okay.
So what is your,
I mean, what is your split as far as
someone being a partner with you?
- [Jason] For the legal matter for that cause,
you know there's ethical reasons,
there's ethical matters for that,
but each case for the average case for dog bites is $30,000.
We were thinking of doing a really low trial period
which is like 5% of just one case.
Multiple cases are coming in,
where we're thinking of just charging for
a one-case kind of fee,
which is like 5% of $30,000.
- You can just hear the hesitation in his voice.
"We're thinking about doing this."
"Our cases are $30,000",
even though the client's mentioned
their multimillion dollars.
There's a lot of hesitation
and a lot of disqualification that Jason's doing
that he should just not be doing right now.
- [Jason] But before we talk about that,
we want to give you this trial period for free first,
because we know we're getting calls coming in, so.
- And there's no need to double down there.
"We know we're getting calls coming in."
Just say "we're gonna give you leads for free"
and that should be enough to close this guy.
I would actually even bring that up
way earlier in the call.
- [Jason] See if it works for you first for free,
and then we can go from there.
How's that sound with you?
- [Michael] So let me understand this.
I just wanna understand this, how it works.
You want a trial period, right?
For how long?
- [Jason] That's a good question.
Maybe a week?
- You don't know what you're selling?
"Oh, you want a trial period. For how long?"
"I don't know, how long do you wanna do it for?"
Like, come on.
Before you're doing these cold calls,
before you're doing these appointment setting calls,
make sure you know what you're selling to this guy.
- [Jason] Because we're getting calls every month,
we know exactly how many calls we're getting right now.
They're being sent to voicemail.
Some of them are being sent to our partner attorney.
If this sounds remotely interesting,
I think this could work,
but I just wanna make sure.
It's better if I can just show you the cases
and the calls coming in.
- [Michael] Well, I want to understand the terms.
- I'm gonna stop the call there,
but literally all the client wanted to know
was have you worked with lawyers like him in the past,
what does this actually sound like,
he's asking again what the terms are
because Jason has no idea what the terms are.
And if that's the case,
if you're just testing a new product out on cold calls,
at least decide beforehand what it's gonna be.
Is it a week trial? Is it a 30 day trial?
What is it going to be, and what does it consist of?
From there, Jason, all he had to do was say
"Does that sound good?"
the guy would say "Yes",
and then you could get him into the system
and start it going.
Very simple lay-up call
that was undercut by no knowledge
or less knowledge of the product.
This is a new format,
so please, in the comments let me know,
did you find this valuable,
is there anything else you wanna see
when it comes to cold call breakdowns?
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