In the last few years, I've made over half a million cold calls to generate $ 8.5 million for my agency and lead a team of 30 sales reps. I only really started to see results after I learned what I actually needed to focus on. So, in this video, I'll be condensing down 5 years and hundreds of millions of sales pipeline experience into 27 lessons you can implement in your cold call strategy today to set more appointments and make more money with the phone. Lesson number one, when I first started cold calling, I did everything but dial the phones. I strained my chair, refilled my water bottle, reorganized my desk. I told myself I was being productive, but really I was just stalling. Every sales floor has those reps, you know, about to start once they tweak their CRM or rewrite their opener for the 12th time. It wasn't until one day my CRO pulled me aside and said, "Micah, your numbers are down because you're not making enough calls." That was it. So, call reluctance or fear of picking up the phones comes from overthinking. And the cure is simple. Just dial. We had a rule, no weasels. No fake prep, no walkarounds, no water cooler chat. Because 90% of success in cold calling is just showing up and doing the work. So lesson number one, no weasels, just make the dials. Lesson two, early on I saw cold calling as a grind, something you suffer through until you level up. But now I see it as one of the most foundational skills in business. Doesn't matter if you're trying to be an entrepreneur, executive, or top rep. If you can't interrupt a stranger's day, earn their trust in the first 7 seconds, and create massive curiosity out of thin air for them to take action, you're always going to play small. Cold calling teaches you how to communicate under pressure, control a room that doesn't want you there, and think fast on your feet. Here's what most reps forget. It's a skill set. And like any skill set, it takes years to master. You have to think long term, not just 3 weeks. Think 3 years. You don't get jacked after two workouts. Same thing here. So, lesson number two, co- calling is a future CEO skill set. If you treat it like a craft and give it time, it'll open doors most people will never get close to. Lesson three. I was lucky. I started with a solid, ethical sales team early in my career, but some of my buddies weren't. They came up in toxic boiler rooms, cocaine between calls, booze before noon, closing at any cost. But honestly, there's something worse than that. It's doing it alone. Cold calling solo day after day will eat you alive. The rejection, the doubt, the slump, you'll spiral out of control. Yeah, you know, there's some vets who crush it solo out there, but if you're new, you don't even know what good looks like yet. So, lesson three, that's why I say cold calling is a team sport. Iron sharpens iron, and the right crew makes all the difference. So, find your tribe. Lesson four. One of the biggest mindset shifts I've had in sales was realizing that every no still pays you. In training, my coach asked Micah, "What if every conversation made you money, even the ones that you don't book?" That clicked. Say you make a 100 calls, talk to 20 people, and book a meeting worth $500. That means each convo 25 bucks. Every call $5. Even the rejections you get paid. No matter what I'm calling on, I know a deal is coming. It's just a matter of when. You can't learn that in a classroom. Only by doing the work. So, lesson four, every no pays you. Never forget that rejection is part of the paycheck. Lesson five, in the early days, no one warned me how unnatural cold calling would feel. you're ambushing strangers, asking them for time and money. Of course, it's going to feel off. I'd hit a dry spell a lot of times and think, maybe I'm just not cut out for this. But over time, I realized that pain, that frustration, it wasn't failure, it was growth. Most people hit that wall and fold. But if you keep swinging through the discomfort, you become real dangerous. So, lesson five, pain is a sign of growth. If it feels unnatural, good. You're doing what most people run from. Lesson six. Through my sales journey, I didn't realize how much my ego played a role in my success or lack of, I should say. I used to think that I was coachable, resilient, but the truth was I was insecure and my ego was in the way. Every bit of feedback stung. Most of the time I wasn't focused on getting better. I was just trying not to look stupid to be honest. Then I read ego is the enemy. And it finally came to me most of my mental battles in this role were actually battles with my ego. I didn't want to be seen failing. I didn't want to admit I wasn't a natural. But once I dropped the ego, cold calling got 10 times easier. So lesson number six, your ego is not your amigo. Get out of your own way and let yourself be good. And be sure to read ego is the enemy. Lesson seven, one of the biggest traps in cold calling and sales is neediness. Back in the day, there was a concept that always stuck with me. It was David Sandler's big two. Number one, you're a psychiatrist on a Broadway play. And number two, you're financially secure and don't need the business. And so that posture changed my selling style quite a bit because when you come in sounding desperate, prospects can smell it. We call that commission breath. And the moment they catch a whiff of it, it's game over. Neediness kills all deals. So lesson number seven, eradicate all neediness. Detach from the outcome. Give the perception of a peer and let them qualify themselves to you. Lesson eight. One thing that's made coal calling way more bearable and honestly way more effective. I stopped pitching for the prospect and started pitching for myself. Or better yet, if the team was around, I'd pitch for them. And here's what I mean. Your prospects don't really know what your pitch is supposed to sound like. They don't know your script or how well it was supposed to be performed. They just say yes or no. But for you, you know when you hit it clean and delivered a face melter. I can't tell you how many times I've pitched janitors by mistake and I still didn't care because it wasn't about them. It was about how I showed up. And the crazy part, sometimes they booked anyways. So, lesson number eight, don't pitch for the prospect. Pitch for yourself. Make it a performance. Stay present and hold yourself to a higher standard than they ever could. Lesson nine, I've seen it over and over. New reps run a few calls, then start freestyling, changing things up before they know what works. They're finding their voice without data, consistency, or results. And I get it, you know, we all want to sound smooth and natural. But when I worked with Orin Claf, one of his famous quotes was, "Be yourself." Terrible idea. You're not good enough to be yourself. early on, you haven't earned the right to improvise. So, lesson nine, don't be creative at first. Stick to what's already working until it's second nature. And then once you build consistency, that's when you can make small adjustments. Usually, it takes about two to three word changes just to double your conversion rate. A lot less than what people think. Lesson 10. I used to think top reps were just naturally gifted, some instinct I didn't have or some secret sauce. But the reality was they were just better thieves. They paid attention, borrowed what worked and tested everything and kept what stuck because the sales landscape is always changing. A pitch that crushed 6 months ago might flop today, but there's always a pitch that works right now. Your job is to find it. If you're around other reps testing in real time, you'll find it faster. So, lesson number 10, great artists steal. Someone out there is doing it better. Study them and steal it. Lesson 11. A lot of reps hide their scripts, leads, and tactics, afraid that sharing means losing deals. But that scarcity mindset is going to isolate you. It's going to burn you out. Top reps really know that abundance is a competitive advantage. They share, they collaborate, and somehow they win more because when you become valuable to others, you attract more trust, opportunity, and leverage. So lesson 11, embrace an abundance mindset. Compete hard, but build together. Lesson 12, in cold calling, you might last a day, a week, or maybe a month, maybe a whole quarter running on pure willpower, but eventually burnout hits. That's why it's not just about showing up. It's about how you show up over time. The fix is simple. Create shortterm rewards weekly, monthly, and quarterly for yourself. A state dinner, a lake day, a beach trip, big or small, give yourself something to chase. And if your company doesn't dangle the carrot, you should. So, lesson 12, set micro goals. Keep fuel in the tank and a prize insight. Lesson 13. When I interview new reps, I have one rule. No sales tourists. Too many reps claim 10 years of experience, but really it's one year repeated 10 times. Why? Because they never took sales and cold calling as a serious profession. Sales is unique in that it's one of the only careers where you can make doctor money without going to school for a decade. No GMAT, no LSAT. But with that low barrier to entry comes a flood of journeymen and amateurs who don't respect the game. The best reps, they study, they train, and they take pride in what works. So if you want a shortcut to mastery, watch Jiro Dreams of Sushi. It'll show you what it means to go allin. Lesson 13, respect the craft. Give cold calling 100% and it'll give back big time. Lesson 14. When I handed new reps the cold call talk track, I'd always say this isn't a script. It's a screenplay. Because scripts are read. Screen plays perform. On a cold call, you're not just saying lines. You're pulling someone into a story. And the better you perform, the more attention you command and the more deals you land. So, lesson 14, treat the cold call like a performance. Because when it feels real to you, it'll feel real to them. Lesson 15. Some reps think that they can cold call for 20 minutes here, 30 minutes there, and somehow get into a groove. It doesn't work like that. Even for me, sometimes it takes a full hour or even 2 hours before I'm fully locked in. The best calls a lot of times don't come at the start. They come when you're deep in the rhythm, when you're in a flow state. That's why you need to batch your sessions. Create space in your calendar and be sure to block the distractions and give yourself enough runway to hit the jetream. So, lesson 15, batch your dial sessions. 3 to four hour blocks is optimal, but be sure to protect that time at all costs. Lesson 16. Speaking of flow state, getting into flow isn't magic. It's preparation. Top reps don't just hop on the phones cold. They have a pre-flight checklist, a ritual that gets their head, body, and voice ready to perform. Because the faster you can drop into the groove, the faster you start winning the day. So, here's my quick pre-flight checklist. I do 10 minutes of journaling, 10 minutes of breath work, 5 minutes of vocal warm-up, and three minutes of roleplay. It's not fancy, but it's repeatable. And that's the key. At the end of the day, cold calling is part muscle and part mind. And a ritual locks in both of those. So, lesson 16, have a pre-flight checklist. And at the very least, don't start a call block without at least one dry run of your screenplay. Lesson 17, one of the most common rabbit holes reps fall into is actually knowing too much. I've seen reps spend weeks memorizing every feature, every technical detail, every edge case of their product, and they talk way too much. Because here's the truth. As a B2B cold caller, your job isn't to educate. It's to initiate. You're not here to close the deal on the first touch. You're here to book the discovery meeting. That's it. So, no, you don't need to know every product spec. You need to know how to spark curiosity. You need to know how to get them to say, "Sure, I'll hear more." Anything beyond that, leave it to the discovery call where you're not ambushing them. So, lesson 17, don't overtrain or overthink. Know just enough to get the meeting, then pass the mic and move on. Lesson 18, legendary NFL coach Bill Walsh says the score takes care of itself. Same goes for cold calling. I'd argue that cold calling is the most athletic part of the sales cycle. You got to think fast, adjust on the fly, and run tight plays over and over and over again. Obsessing over outcomes gets you stuck. Your job is to solve for the very next bottleneck and push it down until the outcome presents itself. And so very simply, dials, then conversations, then bookings, shows, then opportunities. And that's the game. And remembering that simple mental model helps alleviate what a lot of folks call analysis paralysis. So lesson 18, focus on the inputs, not the outcomes. The score will take care of itself. Lesson 19. List building is one of the most neglected skills in cold calling. Sure, you might have a data team feeding you leads, but if you don't know how to build a list yourself, you're at the mercy of two things. number one, hours of your own research, or number two, whatever marketing decides to hand you. When you control your list, you control your destiny. So, lesson 19, learn how to build a contact list. There's plenty of lowcost tools out there like Apollo.io or salesbot.io and tons of tutorials for beginners. Lesson 20. When I first started in cold calling, I asked my CEO, "How can I be sure that the product I'm pitching actually adds value to the customer?" He paused and said, "You know, Micah, that's a good question because if you don't believe in what you're selling, how can you sell with integrity?" Then he said, "Let me ask you this. What is the product that you're selling?" And so I said, "Cyber security, IT, whatever the client offers." And he shook his head and said, "No, the product is the meeting, the discovery call, and that's your job, not to sell the solution, but to sell the conversation." And so that shift changed everything for me because when a true expert or specialist shows up to that meeting, someone who lives and breathes the stuff every day, they will always know more than the prospect who is a generalist. Even if the generalist is a smart, skeptical VP, the objective of the specialist is to deliver value in one or all of three key areas, strategic, emotional, or economic in the downside case that we never do business with them. That's how I have confidence that the meeting always has value. So, lesson 20, in cold calling, your product always has value. Lesson 21, because your prospects are getting hammered by other cold callers every single day. Obviously, none as great as you. The best strategy is actually to be the antithesis or opposite of what every other salesperson sounds like. So, here's what everyone else does. They speak quick. They're overtly enthusiastic, supplicative, or low status, and you can feel the pushiness. So, what do you do? Number one, you go more negative. Number two, you modulate your voice to be low and slow. And number three, you create credibility through your pitch and maintain status. These are just a few ways to stand out of the sea of average sales folks. So lesson 21, be the opposite of every other salesperson. Lesson 22. A lot of reps ask me, "What is the best intro for cold calling?" For me, most of my campaigns have been in scaled cold calling where there are tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of accounts that I can call into. So for scaled cold calling, it's not that you can't personalize, it's that it's just more efficient not to. So you can engage with more people faster. That's why PBO's permissionbased openers are king for high volume calling. So, here's my go-to framework for my intro. I'll say, "Hey, John." Oh, hey, John. It's uh Micah over at Company X. I know I'm an interruption here, but do you mind if I grab half a minute? I'll tell you why I called, and then you can let me know if it's relevant or not. So, I'm doing quite a few things here. I'll list them off quickly. I'm doubletapping them on their name, flat delivery of my name, matterof fact tone on the company name, downward-hanging tactical empathy statement leading into the solution to their immediate problem, which is me. Then closing the loop, and a pattern interrupt tack on to show non- neediness. So again, quite a psychology behind why this intro works. All you need to know is that it works. So lesson 22, PBOS are king in scaled coal calling. It's best really in mid-market or small to mediumsiz businesses and low-level enterprise. So bigger than that, you're going to want to personalize a bit more when the accounts are very limited. Lesson 23. I see a lot of reps ask way too many questions way too soon. And I get it. You know, they're trying to qualify so they don't waste time. But here's the problem. You haven't earned the right to ask those questions yet. You're an invisible stranger ambushing their day. And they don't trust you. So the winning strategy is actually to book the meeting, then qualify the prospect, especially when selling a new product or to a new persona. There's two reasons why. Number one, you have to get frequent before you get good. More pitches means you get better faster. And number two, you earn trust after a strong pitch, not before. So, lesson 23, book the meeting, then qualify. Worst case scenario, you get an extra pitch out and cancel the meeting because there's absolutely no way they're a fit for your product or service. Lesson 24, at the end of the day, closing is the most important part of your conversation. So, here's a quick tip to increase your close rate by 30 to 40%. Use a soft ask. Traditional closes sound something like, "Hey, would you be interested? Would you be open to booking a meeting?" But the problem with that is it's too high of a mental commitment in your prospect's mind. Replace this with an easy to answer question that has nothing to do with whether or not they think they might buy your product. This is going to lower the cognitive effort to get them to the next step. So, try something like, "Do you happen to have your calendar available?" or "Are you a morning person?" Then go into scheduling. So, lesson 24, use soft asks when closing. And if they're really not interested, they'll have to expend more energy to come up with a negative response. Lesson 25. I remember one of my first roleplay sessions with my CRO and he said, "You know, Micah, you sound great, but honestly, you sound too smooth." I thought to myself, "How the hell can I sound too smooth? It's sales, right?" And he explained that the cold call shouldn't sound like a TED talk or a state of a union address, but rather as if you're having a conversation at the bar. That made a lot of sense because when we're talking with a friend or family member, we're not reciting lines only. Sociopaths do that. We pause. We search for the next word. We drop in ums and o's or you knows without even thinking about it. These are called verbal disluencies. And while too much of it can sound sloppy, a little bit can actually help you sound human. Because if you sound like you're delivering a script, people tune out. But if it sounds like you're thinking through it, you know, in real time, like it's your first time saying it. Builds trust. Even if it's your thousandth pitch, it should still feel like the first time. So lesson 25, don't be too polished. Sound human, not rehearsed. Lesson 26. Great reps don't just feel productive, they know they are because they track their numbers. What doesn't get measured doesn't improve. And if you're not tracking your funnel, you're flying without a compass. So, here's what I personally monitor when I'm calling. The volume metrics I'll track are total qualified meetings, shows, booked meetings, conversations, dials, and time on dialer. Then my conversion rates. I'll look at show rates, booktolose rates, and pickup rates. I'll track these over different periods of time, daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly depending on what I want to analyze. Sometimes it's to spot trends. Sometimes it's to run experiments, but always it's to get better. So, lesson 26, know your numbers because the data doesn't lie and your improvements live in those patterns. Lesson 27, if cold calling is sucking the living soul out of you, which it can if you're not careful, it's probably time for a wakeup call. And so several previous lessons help combat this, like treating the cold call like a performance, setting micro goals, really working with a team that's got your back and helping you steer you in the right direction. But it all starts with the decision. So lesson 27, choose to make cold calling fun. Otherwise, you're doing it wrong. Now, for my final tip, instead of clicking off this video and thinking, "Wow, I know a lot about cold calling now. I hope to remember to implement all this later." What you need to do right now is to actually apply all of this. But if you don't have a solid system and the right process set up for cold calling, you're going to struggle. So, click here to head over to the next one where I go over the exact system and process you need to efficiently cold call, generate leads, and book appointments. Cold calling is truly one of the most reliable and consistent ways to generate business, but you need a system if you want to succeed. So, we'll see you over there.