How to make an opening call? This COVID19 pandemic made a huge change in every business. When it comes to sales, the prospects hang up the calls when they hear from salespeople. Lauren has shared with us a few quick tips on how to make an opening call and engage a prospect.  Swift Intro  A great introduction is always short. Our introductions need to answer who we are, what do we want and why should they care? But right now selling during the pandemic, we have to add an important point. Why should they care right now? Why should they take your call right now? One of the biggest mistakes that we see in sales called introductions is that people immediately are leading with a pitch. The swift intro is all about adding value in those first couple seconds of the intro and we start with their names, then our name in an abbreviated version because we need to fit this in 10 seconds or less.  Swift question   Three swift questions should be asked followed by swift intro. The questions should be connected to each other to engage prospects and to show real care toward them. In this pandemic, the question should be like is everybody's still working from home? How many folks in your team? How's that been going?  Three Goals  The next step is to concentrate on the third goal which is the sales pitch. 1st goal is to introduce yourself and 2nd goal is to establish a human connection by asking the follow-up questions. That is a tremendous opportunity. Finally, the third goal is to pitch based on the scenario. It slows down your sales cycle, but it will work better if we keep it focused on the goal of building a relationship. To build a good relationship, don’t go for formal talk, share something personal with your prospects and allow them to feel comfortable to be open up. But most of the salespeople don’t do that. That is why Lauren teaches how to reframe the pitch to create empathy in this situation. She conducts the team engagement and development program.  Three punches of team engagement and development (Meeting, training, call coaching)  She adopts three punches for this program. Generally, if a leader wants to re-strategize the outreach, it's going to start with a meeting. But Lauren gives less emphasis on this part. She emphasizes training than a meeting. Training takes three or four times longer than just a meeting. It allows people to dig in and share their experiences, get their hands dirty or roll up their sleeves with the content they might role-play. A meeting is one way. Training is always two way. Now the third step of the three punches is to do some focused call coaching on these messages for the period after the training. This is where they engage their managers to follow up, to listen to calls, to give feedback along the way.