I’ve talked about cold calling a fair bit over the years.

And my position hasn’t really changed:

I don’t particularly love cold calling either.

I don’t hate it, but it’s not my fave part of the job. I think you’d struggle to find many recruiters that would rate it as their favourite part.

But I’m a recruiter.

It’s part of the job.

The phone is still one of the fastest ways to speak to a candidate, get in front of a potential client, test the market and create opportunities that weren’t sitting there waiting for you.

And despite the endless claims that cold calling is dead, there’s some pretty decent data saying otherwise.

82% of buyers accept meetings from sellers who proactively reach out to them. Analysis of hundreds of millions of cold calls has also found a massive difference between what the better callers do and what everyone else does.

PLUS – with so many people avoiding picking up the phone these days, being good at cold calling can be a massive advantage.

So perhaps the question isn’t:

Does cold calling work?

It’s:

Are you actually any good at it?

Because there’s definitely a difference.

1: stop making every “no” about you

This is the bit I reckon recruiters make far harder than it needs to be.

You call someone.

They’re not interested.

And somehow that becomes:

I’m sh*t at BD.

No.

They just didn’t want what you had at that particular moment.

That’s it.

I’ve spoken about this before on The Lone Recruiter Podcast because I think recruiters completely misframe rejection. If you’re canvassing a genuinely good candidate and a client says no, they haven’t rejected you. They don’t need that candidate right now.

Same with headhunting.

Do you want to hear about this role?

No.

Cool.

Next.

You were never going to get 100% of people saying yes.

Once you accept that, the phone becomes a hell of a lot less threatening.

2. Know your numbers so you stop recruiting emotionally

Know your own numbers. I’m a huge advocate for this – particularly for more junior staff (but it doesn’t hurt us old salty dogs either).

And not somebody else’s. No 2 people will be the same.

Yours.

• How many calls do you make?
• How many people actually answer?
• How many proper conversations come from those?
• How many turn into client meetings?
• How many meetings actually happen?
• How many eventually turn into work?

Because imagine you know from your own desk that, historically, it takes you 16 decent conversations to create one client meeting.

You make six calls and get nowhere.

Are you failing?

Who knows? You’re not even halfway through the call reps you normally need.

That changes the mental conversation enormously.

Instead of:

“F*ck me, nobody wants to talk to me today.”

It becomes:

Six done. Keep moving.

And that is far more positive mentally.

I’ve always been big on controlling the controllables in recruitment.

You cannot control whether someone needs you today.

You can control whether you make the call.

You can control how you react to the result.

3. The feast-and-famine BD rollercoaster is killing your consistency.

Here’s probably the biggest problem I see with recruiter BD.

Recruiter gets quiet.

Recruiter panics.

Recruiter starts doing BD like their life depends on it.

Recruiter wins three jobs.

Recruiter gets busy filling them.

Recruiter completely stops doing BD.

Jobs get filled, cancelled or go cold.

Recruiter gets quiet.

Recruiter panics.

And around and around we go.

There’s a strong point to be made about consistency: when prospecting becomes something you only do when you desperately need work, you’re constantly having to overcome the resistance to starting again.

That rings very true to me.

Because action creates familiarity.

The more regularly you pick up the phone, the less significant each individual call feels.

Leave it for three weeks and suddenly that first call feels enormous.

This is why I’d rather see a recruiter doing a manageable amount of quality BD consistently than declaring:

“SH*T! I need to spend the whole day doing BD because my pipeline is completely dry”.

then avoiding the phone for another fortnight.

Build the habit.

Then build the volume.

4. Stop waffling

If someone could find me a gluten free waffle, I’d be stoked. And my dog’s name is Waffles – but they’re literally the only kind of waffles I want in my life.

One of my favourite analogies I’ve used on the podcast is offering someone cake.

Would you like some chocolate cake?

Yes.

Great.

No.

Also great.

What you don’t do is spend three minutes explaining the plate, the recipe, the bakery and the history of cocoa before finally telling them there’s a piece of chocolate cake sitting in front of them.

Yet recruiters do this constantly on the phone.

“Hi Sarah, Brett here from ALRA. We’re a specialist recruitment agency and we’ve been operating for blah blah years and we work across blah blah and I just wanted to introduce myself because we provide…”

Mate. Yawwwwn.

They’ve mentally already left the building and are wondering what they’re going to get for lunch.

Get to the bloody point.

• Why are you calling?
• Why them?
• Why now?
• And most importantly – what have you got that might actually matter to them?

That’s your call.

5. A script isn’t the problem. Sounding scripted is.

I used to think scripts could make people sound robotic (and I was trained on them).

But I’ve changed my thinking on that quite a bit.

The problem isn’t having a script.

The problem is reading a sh*t script that makes you sound like you’re being held hostage by your recruitment Director standing behind you telling “KPIs!”.

There’s actually some decent evidence for preparing your calls.

Analysis of cold calls has found successful callers tend to be deliberate about their opening and reason for calling rather than simply winging it. Giving a clear reason for the call has also been correlated with higher meeting success.

When I look at my own data, that absolutely makes sense to me.

• Know your opening.
• Know the two or three things you need to communicate.
• Know the common objections.

Then stop thinking about remembering your lines and listen to the person.

That’s the real benefit of preparation.

It frees up some brain space.

You’re not standing there mentally rehearsing sentence three while the client is giving you useful information.

6. Stop pitching recruitment. Talk about their actual problem.

This is probably where a lot of recruiter BD goes wrong.

We start talking about ourselves.

• Our database.
• Our network.
• Our years of experience.
• Our process.
• Our incredibly passionate team of specialist recruitment consultants…

It all misses the one, most important point:

It’s not about us. It’s about your client or candidate.

Your client cares about their problem.

• Maybe they’ve had a Senior Engineer role open for four months.
• Maybe every candidate they interview wants $30k more than they’ve budgeted.
• Maybe they’ve had three people reject offers.
• Maybe the hiring manager is spending ten hours a week recruiting when they should be running their team.
• Maybe their internal talent team is brilliant at 90% of the hiring but continually struggles with one bastard of a niche.

That’s the conversation.

And the more specialised you are, the easier this gets.

Because you know what’s actually happening in your market.

You’ve heard the same problems from five other clients this month.

So instead of telling them how brilliant you are, you can demonstrate that you understand their world and can help them with their problems.

That’s a very different call.

7. When someone objects, get curious before you get defensive

It’s probably one of the most famous lines from Ted Lasso (and for good reason) – “be curious, not judgemental”. And it’s a similar idea here. Be curious before you get defensive.

“We do everything internally.”

“We already have agencies.”

“We’re not hiring.”

“Send me an email.”

Recruiters hear an objection and immediately go into combat mode.

Yes, but…

And off we go trying to explain why they’re wrong.

Why?

They’ve just given you a tonne of information. Data points.

Use it.

If they recruit internally:

“Makes sense. Are there any roles the internal team still tends to struggle with?”

If they already have agencies:

“Fair enough. What do the good ones do that keeps you using them?”

If they tell you recruitment is going brilliantly:

Great.

Maybe there genuinely isn’t an opportunity today.

You’re allowed to get off the phone without winning the client.

That’s another important BD skill people don’t talk about enough.

Disqualification.

Not every prospect needs to become a client.

Buyers will accept proactive approaches, but a significant proportion of sales meetings still aren’t considered valuable by buyers.

Getting a meeting for the sake of getting a meeting isn’t the goal.

Finding somewhere you can genuinely add value is.

8. Listen back to your calls

This one will hurt. And feel super weird – especially if you hate the sound of your voice in digital form.

Do it anyway. It’s honestly a game changer.

If you have call recording available and it’s appropriate within your company’s legal and privacy requirements, listen back to yourself.

Especially the bad ones.

• Where did you start waffling?
• Where did your energy change?
• What question did you completely miss?
• Where did the client give you something useful and you barrelled straight past it because you were desperate to deliver your next line?

Athletes review their performance.

Salespeople should too.

And don’t just listen to the sh*t ones.

When you absolutely nail a call, listen to that too.

What did you do differently?

That’s how you start creating your own playbook rather than using somebody else’s.

9. Cold calling gets easier when you stop trying to be perfect at it

I think this is ultimately the mindset shift.

Your job isn’t to make the perfect call.

Your job is to make the call.

Then the next one.

Learn.

Adjust.

Go again.

Some people won’t answer.

Some won’t be interested.

Some will tell you to piss off, call you a name or be less than friendly.

Some will have absolutely no need for a recruiter.

And every now and then you’ll call someone at exactly the right time with exactly the right conversation and BOOM, new client or candidate.

That’s recruitment.

Cold calling isn’t particularly complicated.

But avoiding it definitely doesn’t make you better at it.

Pick up the phone.

You’ve got this.

Let’s go.