When you have to talk to someone you don’t know about a job, what you say at the start matters. Copywriter and marketer Johnson Kee shares his secret for cold calls: Make the company think about its problems by offering solutions.
He illustrates this with an example of a “problem statement”, where he talks about the skill he is good at and makes the person on the other end think about their need for that skill:
“I’m looking for a job and I would like to speak to someone at XYZ Company to see whether my experience as a Business Development Manager that specialises in closing sales would be a good fit or not.”
It sounds natural. You’re looking for a job. No point beating around the bush or being wishy-washy about it. The point here is the “specialises in closing sales” part. It could be a problem that they have where they can acquire new contacts, but they always lose them at the end.
It’s an old sales trick applied to the process of job-hunting. The larger takeaway here is to not regurgitate your resume when you cold-call someone. Instead, identify your core expertise and craft it into a small and polite statement that tells the other person what you’re good at and makes them think about whether it’s something they need.
Another important element of Kee’s approach is that he includes an actionable element: “I’d like to speak to someone.” The request is clear and respects the other person’s time by telling them exactly what you expect the next action to be.
Kee has had some success with cold calls, and he shares more advice in his full post, linked below, as well as in other articles on LinkedIn.
How To Find The Courage To Cold Call [LinkedIn]
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