Cold calling is both the bane of existence for many sales professionals, while also being the key to success for sustained revenue generation growth! Chris Beall is the CEO of ConnectAndSell, an assisted dialing, technology enabled managed services company conducting over 60 million outbound calls for their clients every year. The human voice is the most powerful thing in business.  The phrase the Chris started the conversation with.  In a day where social media engagement is promoted as a top strategy to engage in buyer discussions, Chris is running a company that helps sales organizations unlock the potential of the telephone call and human to human conversations. Voice mail became the first "obstacle" to successful outbound cold calling.  As a result of this challenge and the evolving use of email, the phone became a secondary prospecting tool to email.  Moreover, humans have a fear of the "invisible stranger" and an unexpected phone call can often trigger that fear that someone, who was uninvited is interrupting their day. ConnectAndSell has empirical evidence from over 60,000,000 fully navigated calls resulting in 3,000,000 targeted conversations. Think about that, insights and experience from over 60 millions calls being applied to your outbound cold calling efforts? Chris Voss, a leading FBI hostage negotiator shared that a seller only have 7 seconds to gain the initial trust of a cold calling recipient.  The secret to gaining this trust - ensure you show the person you see the world through their eyes (tactical empathy) and then show you are competence to solve the problem they have right now!  That first problem to disarm their fear that you are wasting their time, and they are not sure how much time it will take to get you off the phone - thus the hang-up syndrome. One technique is to use two voice inflections, the first being a hard flat, self-indictment voice to a playful, come with me voice during those first 7 seconds.  Do not apologize or ask for permission in those first seven seconds,  simply state the fact of your call. As an example of this technique, a team of 9 sales resources conducted a 2 hour flight-school and the results per rep hour standard of .5 meetings increased to 1.78 meetings per rep hour.  This represented a 3x increase in meetings schedule per rep hour. If you or your company uses outbound prospecting as a tactic to drive meetings and opportunity, this conversation with Chris Beall is a highly insightful chalked full of strategic insights and tactical advice to dramatically increase the efficacy of your outbound sales programs and sales professionals.