In a slump? Build up your strength with these cold calling exercises.
Athletes warm up. Singers exercise their vocal cords. Pilots check their airplanes. Professionals and enthusiasts from a variety of industries get themselves ready to perform, whether that’s at a tennis match or a community talent show. So it only makes sense that cold calling exercises would be part of your agenda.
What does this look like when you’re making phone calls? Interestingly, actual physical exercise can help. Though they aren’t specifically cold calling exercises, a walk around the building or some light stretches are proven ways to gain focus and energy.
Let’s get into some specifics for you, though. These seven exercises will help you find more success day in and day out.
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7 Cold calling exercises you can start doing right now
Whether you’re new to debt collections or you’ve done this for a while, it’s always helpful to visit or revisit some basics. So here are some starter cold calling exercises. First, look through these, then move on to the more advanced activities below.
1. Exercise your smiling muscles. No, debt collection is not exactly the phone call people look forward to getting. Even so, you really can take some control in directing the conversation when you are energetic and pleasant. Smiling does help with this, whether or not the person you’re calling can see it.
2. Stand up. Like smiling, standing opens up your lungs and gives you more energy. Plus, it’s good to stand up every now and then.
3. Set goals. You may or may not reach your goals, but if you don’t have any, you’ll never be able to track your success.
4. Record your calls. Then listen back to them. Where are you making headway? Is there a point where your calls go off the rails? How do you sound? Tired and bored or like you want to help people resolve issues?
5. Review your script. It’s always good to get familiar with a script, and it’s also easy to get so familiar that you stop looking at it. It’s okay to add your own personality and make a script conversational, but there is important information in there that you don’t want to miss.
Once you feel comfortable with those cold calling exercises, it’s time to move on to some of the more advanced material. By the way, that doesn’t mean new debt collectors can’t try these. They don’t require a minimum level of experience. They are, however, a bit more intensive than setting goals and reviewing scripts.
6. Head-to-head calling. You’ll need a partner for this one – preferably another person in your office. The concept is easy enough; you cold call your partner, and they give you every possible objection and difficulty they can. Then you reverse sides, and they call you. Once you’re done, talk with each other about what you noticed, where things could have gone better, or ideas for improvement.
You aren’t done yet, though. Once you’ve gone through this exercise, do it again. Ask more challenging questions. Be combative. Be angry. Be so nice that your partner feels terrible making the call. Then have them do the same for you.
7. Rehearse your voicemails. With software like Call Logic, you can record your voicemail and let the software leave the message while you move on to another call. Still, there may be times when you want to leave a message personally, or you find you need to leave a message with someone who answers the phone. How can you practice this? Call yourself and leave a message. Then, just like recording calls, listen back to see where you may need to smooth things out or if you need to shorten your message.
In addition to these cold calling exercises, it’s essential to make sure you’re doing the right exercises. You can practice all you want for dealing with objection A, but that isn’t going to be much help if you come across objection B way more often.
This impacts the scripts you write, the practice calls you have with a colleague, and even your goals. This is part of the reason it’s important to record your calls, so you can go back and take note of the most frequent difficulties you run into.
Similarly, you can tag them in live time. Before long, you may find that there are common threads throughout the calls that you find most challenging.
Some of these cold calling exercises might seem too easy. You might feel silly going through practice calls with a colleague. But these exercises will only help you grow and get better at what you do.
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