Start a sales call without rushing the pitch.
Four steps to start a prospecting call, explore a relevant problem, and agree on what happens next.
Joe Ippolito built his own sales-training business by making cold calls. Tim Roberts, principal at Sandler Training–Trustpointe, brings 28 years of experience to the conversation. Both tackle a familiar challenge: you’ve interrupted someone’s day, and you need to give them a reason to talk before launching into what you sell.
In this guide, we take excerpts from our interviews with these two sales pros to walk through a prospecting call in four practical steps. You’ll learn how to introduce a relevant problem, make the opening easy to answer, follow what the person actually says, and agree on what happens next.
Read on, then use the accompanying worksheet to prepare your next call. You’ll have a reason to reach out, an opening you can say naturally, a useful follow-up question, and a clear next move.
Start with a problem they might recognize.
Which problem would make someone care? Tim hears sellers fall back on quality, service, and expertise. Buyers hear those claims all day. His customer stories describe what was going wrong and why it mattered.
“Think about why people choose you.”
Get specific. A team struggling to assign incoming jobs has something to discuss. A claim about powerful scheduling features gives them more to decode.
Use a story you can support. For example, a founding AE can ask the founder what customers actually said before buying. If you’re a founder without customer stories yet, start with a relevant observation and a question. Don’t borrow someone else’s results and present them as yours.
That research takes time. Topsail ONE brings prepared company and contact context into your daily work. You decide what to ask.
Make the opening easy to answer.
Joe acknowledges that they haven’t spoken and asks for a moment to explain the call. The person gets a choice before he continues. Ask, then stop talking.
Turn growth into a useful question
Fictional example: Maya sells scheduling software at Routewise. A prospect’s job posting mentions two new service locations. She knows they’re growing. She doesn’t know how their scheduling works.
- Name, purpose, permission
- “Hi Sam, it’s Maya at Routewise. We make scheduling software for service teams. We haven’t spoken before. Can I take a minute to explain why I called?”
- Connect the observation
- If Sam agrees: “Your dispatcher posting mentions two new locations. I wondered whether keeping job changes straight across teams has become harder, or whether that’s running smoothly?” The question leaves room for either answer.
If Sam declines, thank them and end the call. The permission needs to be real.
An editorial example applying the interviews, not a guest script or a customer result.
Ask enough to understand what matters.
Someone mentions a problem. It’s tempting to jump straight to the feature that fixes it. Joe keeps a different question in mind:
“does this person have a problem that I could potentially solve?”
Continue the fictional call. Sam says, “Dispatchers call each branch to check changes.” Maya asks, “What happens when a change gets missed?” Sam replies, “We send someone to the wrong site and lose half an hour.” Now she has an impact to explore. She still doesn’t know whether Routewise would solve it.
If Sam says the extra calls work fine, don’t manufacture urgency. Ask whether anything about the process needs attention. If not, there may be no reason to continue.
Tim’s advice on practice matters here: learn the approach in your own voice. Rehearse with someone who gives different answers. You’re practicing listening as much as speaking.
Give the conversation somewhere to go.
Joe’s three-minute reminder is a cue to arrange a fuller conversation once you understand a relevant problem and its impact. It isn’t a hard stop. Tim makes room for an honest no, too.
Worth exploring
Agree a meeting purpose and time.
Bad timing
Ask whether and when a callback would help.
No fit or interest
Thank them, end the call, and respect a stop request.
In the example, Maya asks, “Would 20 minutes help us look at those missed changes and see whether we can help?” Sam agrees to Thursday at 10. They confirm the time zone; Maya will send an invitation with that purpose.
Ready to make the call?
Give the conversation a quick check.
Start with the first unchecked item.
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Topsail ONE prepares the contacts and organizes the next steps. You make the outreach and have the conversations.
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