How to Make Cold Calls Warmer (Without Sounding Like a Sales Script)

 Cold calling has a reputation—and not a good one.

In this episode of The Luxury of Choice, Steve Vaughan is joined by the George James training team and special guest Manel Berga to explore a simple but powerful question:

How do we make cold calling… warmer?

From rejection and low pickup rates to the rise of LinkedIn, AI, and changing buyer behaviour, this conversation unpacks what modern prospecting really looks like in B2B sales—especially in technical and life science environments.

The big shift?
 Cold calling isn’t about calling strangers anymore. It’s about earning the right to the conversation before you pick up the phone.

 What You’ll Learn

•  Why cold calling still matters (even if nobody enjoys it) 
•  How to “warm up” a call using LinkedIn, AI, and smart research 
•  The role of personalisation—and why most salespeople get it wrong 
•  How to add value before asking for a meeting 
•  Why generic outreach destroys trust (and what to do instead) 
•  How AI can dramatically improve your prospecting efficiency 
•  The importance of treating B2B as person-to-person (P2P)
•  When (and how) to ask for the meeting without turning people off

Special thanks to Manel Berga for joining us on this show. https://www.linkedin.com/in/manelberga/

Steve Vaughan, Jonathan Cooper, Pru Layton, Christian Walter, Pascal le Floche,  Jayne Green  and Jonathan Slasinski are Sales Trainers from george james ltd.  You can email the show at:  Podcast@georgejames-training.com

 The trainers on LinkedIn:

 Steve Vaughan https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-vaughan-salestrainer/
Jonathan Cooper https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-cooper-18716b1/
Pru Layton https://www.linkedin.com/in/pru-layton-b46a3528/
Christian Walter https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-walter-a1857b1/
Jayne Green https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayne-green-salestrainer/
Pascal Le Floch-Riche https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascal-le-floch-220ba46/

Jonathan Slasinski https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-slasinski-449a655/

george james training website https://georgejames-training.com/

Transcript

Steve Vaughan (00:00)
Hello again and welcome to the Luxury Choice of B2B Sales and Business podcast brought to you by the training team of George James Limited. My name is Steve Vaughan. I'm a Senior Sales Trainer at George James. I'm also the host and producer of this podcast. And today I have no less than four other people on the pod. So we have five with us today. So it's going to be...

It's going to be interesting. I've got three members of the training team and we also have a special guest. So Jonathan Slasinski hi, how are you? Good. Welcome Jayne Jayne Green, how are you doing?

Jayne Green (00:31)
Yep,

yep, I'm here, good, thank you.

Steve Vaughan (00:34)
Great. And we have Pascal Le Floch also in France. How are you Pascal?

Manel (00:35)
you

Pascal (00:37)
Very good, thank you.

Steve Vaughan (00:38)
Thank you for being here. And today we also have a special guest who's been on the podcast before actually, Manel Berga Manel, how are you, sir?

Manel (00:46)
Thank you for having me here. Thank you and I'm very glad to come back to the next period.

Steve Vaughan (00:51)
Great to have you back. for the

people who didn't catch the podcast you are, I think it be about 18 months ago. Do you want to briefly introduce yourself? You it is you do, where you're based, that kind of thing.

Manel (01:02)
Absolutely. So I'm Catalan living in Copenhagen, Denmark, since five years. And I've spent most of my career building commercial excellence capabilities from scratch in usually growth oriented environments, typically in B2B, human health, science driven industries. And in many of these environments, I found myself and my team pioneering initiatives to generate pipeline and accelerate growth.

that were at the intersection of marketing and sales. Often it was too early in the funnel for sales to prioritize, but at the same time it was too close to real concrete opportunities and customers for marketing to fully own. So I have been moving in this space for last almost 20 years.

Steve Vaughan (01:47)
fantastic a key place to be that interface between marketing and sales basically. Yeah. Marketing people would say sales is a branch of marketing and probably sales people would say marketing is a branch of sales, but you're, you're an example of both. So fantastic that you're, you're here today and I'm sure we're to have a great conversation with you along as well. So the topic today is how can we make cold calling warmer? Now cold calling is inevitably a part of sales at most people.

with a few exceptions, most people don't enjoy, don't look forward to it. I've been doing it for 30 years and I'd be lying to say if I said I enjoy doing it and I look forward to doing it. But I think it is still a key part of a salesperson's role and in a technical B2B role particularly. you know, saying that it's dead, it doesn't work. think, we'll cover this, I'm sure. But I don't think it's an option just to pass on that. So cold calling. Why do people hate cold calling, first of all?

Why do people hate cold calling, first of all?

Jayne Green (02:41)
definitely because they presume nobody will pick up and this big, the big E of rejection isn't it? It's that part that we just don't like somebody to say no and also we feel it's a bit of a waste of time if people don't pick up.

Steve Vaughan (02:48)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Rejection is something none of us like, is it? But it's part of the job, isn't it, really? You just been training last week, I think, where you had some good examples of doing cold calling live in the flesh, didn't

Jayne Green (03:06)
Yeah, so I was a kickoff to the start of a prospecting week with a company, an amazing group of people. And then I did the final day, sort of joined their prospecting scrum every four o'clock, 4pm throughout the week and then went back up on a Friday. And they honestly, they were incredible. So there's a research side, but they did a lot of calls. They were getting about over a 25 % pickup rate.

Steve Vaughan (03:19)
I love that prospect in Scrum. That's great.

Yeah.

Wow,

Jayne Green (03:36)
you know, and

Steve Vaughan (03:36)
wow, amazing.

Jayne Green (03:37)
actually over a 25 % follow up sort of hit rates as well. So that was in really, really good rates, very intentional time. And they did a lot of time to go from actually had you make it less cold. So yeah, excited to talk about this. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (03:44)
Okay. It is. Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (03:44)
Those are really good rates, Jayne.

Steve Vaughan (03:55)
Okay, we'll explore that more during the call, I'm sure.

So how can we make cold calling less painful, first of all, because it is a difficult thing.

Jonathan Slasinski (04:02)
Well, it's funny,

know, Steve, when you said it's painful, it's things that I used to love it. Like I used to love, I used to love just going into an unknown lab and just trying to sell something. Right. But I will say in today's technological environment, there is no way a cold call should be like what I used to do, which is walk in blind. It needs to be warmed up.

Steve Vaughan (04:06)
That's interesting. Yeah.

Hmm.

Okay.

Jonathan Slasinski (04:24)
There's

so many tools around LinkedIn, AI, where you can even just stand outside of a lab, read a few posters, have AI give you a summary of the poster where you are going into that lab warmed up. You know something, you can connect with them, personalize it, some kind of value add, right? ⁓ And again, to me, it's got to be a tool in the Sales Reps toolkit.

Jayne Green (04:40)
Hmm.

Jonathan Slasinski (04:47)
But it's exactly what we're talking about today. How do you co-calling warm? Right? Because warming it is the key to being successful. It's not going to be, you're not going to be walking lab to lab, the lab, the lab, the lab right now, just blind. You should be having a plan and figuring out what's going on with these things, with all the tools that we have at our, at our disposal today.

Steve Vaughan (04:50)
Okay.

No, hopefully not. Yeah.

Go ahead, Manokhia.

Manel (05:05)
Yes. And I was going to say the

concept of calling and the technology has evolved in the last 15, 20 plus years. I remember 15 years ago, my boss called me at any time during the work hours and sometimes after if the thing was urgent. Nowadays, my boss writes to me asking me permission if he wants.

Steve Vaughan (05:12)
Absolutely.

Jonathan Slasinski (05:28)
Ha.

Manel (05:29)
If he can call me, Manel, can you talk? Of course I can talk. working for you. You know what I mean. So even what we were expecting and the way we use technology nowadays changed a lot. And frankly, a little, mean, nobody almost calls anybody else. Cell phones, which is of course the telephone we have sometimes are in my kids hands because they are watching a video I'm showing them. So it might...

Steve Vaughan (05:29)
That's interesting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mm. Yeah.

Manel (05:54)
seem much more intrusive as it versus what it used to be. ⁓ Well, things change as well.

Steve Vaughan (05:56)
Hmm.

I think you're right. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. But it's a key it's a key part of the role, isn't it? Yeah, you know.

Jonathan Slasinski (06:03)
Yeah.

And Menel brings up a great point, right? This is a generational change now, because I look at my nieces and my nephews, if I call them, they immediately think something's wrong. Like what's wrong? Well, you know, why are you calling me Uncle John? And then now I do exactly what Menel's boss does where, hey, you free for a few seconds, want to chat, right? I text them first so that I can get back to it. And I just think that that's the general shift of calling. But again,

Steve Vaughan (06:09)
Yeah.

Manel (06:13)
Hahaha.

Jayne Green (06:14)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (06:29)
Even if we're doing that, we still have to do some of the prep and the work and figuring out how do we personalize, how do we add value when we are communicating with some of our potential customers.

Steve Vaughan (06:32)
Absolutely.

So let's explore this preparation then Pascal. Yeah. What kind of things would you think we need to prepare if we're to make more successful on code calling? ⁓ okay.

Pascal (06:47)
Yeah, actually ⁓ back to what Jonathan said, there more

tools being available and that's great. At the same time, it sounds that there are more barriers, meaning that to be in position to reach out to the customer, the prospect you want to discuss with, you have to become more prepared.

To make the connection warmer, first of all, ⁓ instead of just calling directly someone, what about using LinkedIn to start the connection?

Steve Vaughan (07:19)
Okay.

Pascal (07:19)
And

when you think about LinkedIn, same preparation, know, what sort of message I would like to provide or send your prospect, you know, what sort of, let's say, key idea or key thoughts I could share so that it brings interest and motivates the other to answer you or to accept the connection. And then when the connection is made, then you can think about calling the customer, you know, so it's

Steve Vaughan (07:35)
It's.

Pascal (07:45)
sort of a stepwise process, but whatever the media you are using, I think that you have to generate interest and to really make the interaction very personalized.

Steve Vaughan (07:57)
Absolutely. Now, the LinkedIn thing is, you know, is one of my favorite, favorite topics, but I don't want to this whole ⁓ podcast all about LinkedIn, but just to recap on what you'd say or to revisit what you said, really, and I'd welcome everybody's thoughts on this really. So if I'm going to make a cold call to one of you guys, what you're suggesting, Pascal, and I'm sure I agree with this, is that we would find the person on LinkedIn first and get connected with them first before we try and make a cold call. Is that the approach we're suggesting?

Jayne Green (07:58)
Hmm.

I think it's also by any means possible. know, use whatever tool there is available to us. And that's one of the, we've talked about, you know, the changes and the shift in the way that we used to, cold call used to happen, or the way people approach the thought of actually ringing up, would people answer? Would they want a bit of a text beforehand? You know, actually we've never had so many tools available to us to be able to reach out to people. So I think it's by making sure we...

Steve Vaughan (08:28)
Okay.

Mm.

Yeah.

Jayne Green (08:53)
we access all options, know. So LinkedIn is a great way of connecting with people because normally people have, we all do, think, I think we do, yes, pictures of ourselves, a little bit of a bio, all of a sudden you see a real person, you know.

Steve Vaughan (09:09)
Most people are linked in.

Jonathan Slasinski (09:09)
But you see, Jayne,

this is the kind of point that you and Pascal are both kind of, and I'd love to hear, you know, Manel's kind of take on this as a lead generation specialist is that we have all these tools to connect, right? It's how you connect. So Pascal brought it up, personalize, right?

Jayne Green (09:20)
Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Jonathan Slasinski (09:25)
So to me, it's three things personalized value add call to action, right? Whenever you're doing some kind of, of, of calling type activity, but I'd love to hear from you. Like obviously when you do mass reach outs or you do kind of Legion, how do, how do you personalize? Cause I think that really is the key to making that great connection is that personalization.

Jayne Green (09:29)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (09:39)
Great question.

Jayne Green (09:41)
Yeah, great.

Manel (09:44)
Sure. I would say there's a couple of things that come even before personalization. First of all is the channel. ⁓ Steve just said we will not dedicate a full podcast to LinkedIn, which is a pity, but I understand. Fair enough.

Jayne Green (09:49)
Hmm.

Jonathan Slasinski (09:51)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (09:58)
You

Manel (10:00)
What I'm trying to say here is that the channel you use conditions the response you get. You're not wearing the same clothes in all the rooms in your house. You're not speaking in the same way to everybody during your week. And that's perfectly okay. For example, the telephone number or the job email, I find them highly overvalued. Usually people are not necessarily

Jonathan Slasinski (10:06)
true.

Steve Vaughan (10:07)
Interesting.

Manel (10:25)
highly responsive or highly looking forward to see yet another email in their Outlook inbox. What was the last time you received the good news in your job email? ⁓ I frankly cannot recall because even that spot bonus was communicated by my boss earlier. So usually it's about bad news, work to do or issues.

Jonathan Slasinski (10:30)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (10:31)
Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Jayne Green (10:38)
Okay.

Steve Vaughan (10:40)
That's a point.

Manel (10:49)
So, you know, work email is not really a thing. In my opinion, the same as telephone that can ring in the most unexpected way, usually, of course, and then in the middle of a meeting, a number you don't know, usually it's not somebody with a lot of money to offer you because you know, because a distant relative just passed away. If you know what I mean. So LinkedIn is very nice in this sense. It's a social network. The permission that I have to connect with you

Steve Vaughan (11:12)
Exactly.

Jayne Green (11:13)
the

Manel (11:19)
to write to you is already there because it's called social network, not don't write to me network. And most of people are in LinkedIn not only but as well to find for jobs or just be aware of opportunities. So a new message in LinkedIn could be your next big opportunity. So usually people are much more positive in LinkedIn. And that from my point of view could...

Jonathan Slasinski (11:21)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (11:30)
Absolutely.

Agreed.

Manel (11:42)
can come even before what I'm going to tell you. The second thing I think comes before whatever you say is you show respect. If anything that looks like a pre-made copy-pasted message is lack of respect, as we know. But not only. I brought some real examples of things. Maybe I can let other people speak and I can...

talk about them later, I brought some material.

Steve Vaughan (12:09)
brilliant. OK, yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (12:09)
Yeah.

I mean, he's a great point. It's like, what are people going to react to? Right. What are they, what are they going? So I think you're, you're spot on with email, right? It's a really tough medium to try to get through and get connections through, but that doesn't mean you don't do it. Right. And that doesn't mean you can't be more effective at it. and I think one of the first things that we train to is creative subject lines. you know, what's going to catch my eye. Is it, is it going to be something again?

Jayne Green (12:21)
Hmm

Steve Vaughan (12:33)
Hmm.

Jonathan Slasinski (12:35)
Did it personalized? Did it add a value or did it have a call to action? Even just in that quick subject line, you're a hundred percent right about copying, pasting and, and people, people can see that right away. That's where like.

Jayne Green (12:44)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (12:46)
Well, we get them every day. I get one

today. Yeah. It's obviously just a copy paste. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.

Jonathan Slasinski (12:49)
That's where Jayne and Pascal were talking about that personalization is so key, right? Right off

the bat. It's got to, Hey, I saw you went to university of Maryland. So did I, right? Just how do you personalize this thing to make that connection warmer? but yeah, I'd love to, I'd love to kind of dive deeper. don't know. I'm just, just very, again, loving kind of your insights into, into this stuff.

Manel (13:08)
Sure,

sure. I give you one example, real example. A few days ago, I received something that starts with, Hymenel, Semper Tic's day is coming. What are your plans for it? So I'm a Catalan living in Denmark, and with all due respect, I couldn't care less. I understand it's important if you're Irish and so on, but...

Jayne Green (13:21)
You

Jonathan Slasinski (13:23)
Exactly.

Manel (13:28)
You know what that could have sound if instead the thing could say something like, Hi Manel, I hope you could enjoy these last three days of good weather in Denmark. Because that I could even know in the weather report. So I'm writing something, you know, and I can copy paste to all my Denmark, Danish, you know, at least Copenhagen area context. So it's not that much a matter of I need to be, you know, I saw a picture of you and your children and they look very nice. That's not exactly the

Steve Vaughan (13:40)
Great point. Yeah, me too.

Jonathan Slasinski (13:43)
I love it.

Manel (13:58)
but it can still be something like I wrote this thinking in something that might be really good to you.

Jonathan Slasinski (14:03)
Yeah.

Jayne Green (14:03)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (14:04)
Yeah, yeah,

I see a nod in Pascal. You agree with this approach?

Jayne Green (14:05)
Yeah.

Pascal (14:07)
Definitely, and Manuel just referred to what I was thinking about, to be more specific about how to personalize, meaning that you know better the person you want to reach out. So it goes with looking for information about where the person is located, what is his role, what are the last activities he had, and so on so on. So anything that this person did quite recently,

Jayne Green (14:22)
Yes.

Steve Vaughan (14:25)
Mm.

Pascal (14:36)
and which is related to his job, his activities and where there is something that sort of a trigger that you can use to be in touch with.

Steve Vaughan (14:46)
And this is why I think it's so important. know, people always say to me, I don't have sales navigator. None of this stuff needs sales navigator. In fact, I'd suggest we avoid that. You know, if I've found Manel on LinkedIn and then I think he's somebody I'd like to possibly get to know and hopefully get a meeting with, I'm not going to use sales navigator. I'm going to find out about him, the kind of things he's talking about on LinkedIn, what he's interested in, and then send him a personalized connection request rather than a...

Manel (14:46)
Yes.

Steve Vaughan (15:12)
you know, an email which is just really another email really, yeah.

Manel (15:17)
Because B2B, business to business, is actually P2P, person to person.

Steve Vaughan (15:21)
Absolutely.

Manel (15:22)
And if we receive any message saying, congrats on the acquisition of that company or the launch of new product. Okay. Yes. Maybe the organization I work with and maybe not that close to my area, the way, launched this product, acquired another company, which could be bad news for me, by the way, or maybe a lot of work, you know, whatever. That is not really related to me. However, in LinkedIn, again, we have all the work history of the person.

Steve Vaughan (15:43)
Possibly,

Manel (15:51)
So work anniversaries, interesting trajectories, common interests, posts that we liked, connections in common. Everything is connected to the person. And of course...

Jayne Green (15:56)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (16:00)
Yep.

Manel (16:06)
We don't talk to accounts. Account-based marketing is not really a nice way of putting it because it's not about accounts, it's context and it's on marketing, it's connecting to the person ⁓ is essential because that person will be the gatekeeper for anything that comes after.

Steve Vaughan (16:12)
No.

It's a super way of looking at it.

Jayne Green (16:23)
Hmm.

Jonathan Slasinski (16:24)
I really kind of again connecting to that a person's key, but if we want to flip it to the science sales, right? And life science sales, it's connecting to their work, right? And what their lab does. And to me, this is where AI really comes in, right? So LinkedIn's kind of cool. Hey, they went to this university. Hey, they had these publications, but now this is the power of AI. Summarize this journal article for me as a rep at so-and-so company selling these products. Boom.

Steve Vaughan (16:35)
Absolutely.

Jayne Green (16:47)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (16:52)
Wow.

Jonathan Slasinski (16:52)
couple little points and now you can connect on their work instead of connecting on their comments, their likes, their, you know, they're more of their professional, right? And I really love this from a sales perspective of warming up calls, connecting to their work and AI is just a fantastic tool to be able to do that.

Steve Vaughan (17:11)
That's a super idea. hadn't thought about that at all. And Jayne, the work you did with the company last week, I think you were using AI as well as part of that prep for that. What did you call it? A scrum? Yeah.

Jayne Green (17:20)
Yes. Yes. So yes,

Jonathan Slasinski (17:21)
Heh.

Jayne Green (17:22)
that was the end of every evening. But I set some case studies or a case study, was an example to get people thinking outside the box to say, in 30 minutes, what can you find about this particular customer or customer type? So in groups and of course, we're motivated. So one thing I bring into that, we often work personally and individually, but sometimes when we want to find out a lot more and a lot deeper, we get quite motivated when we can work with other people.

So if we need to find out a lot of information and do some research, sometimes partnering up, buddying with people actually takes some of that pressure, gets a little bit of energy within that to be able to do something a little bit more. you know, with just a case study to find out who are all the possible contacts and the key stakeholders and what would be really, really relevant. AI is brilliant at finding out any of this.

Steve Vaughan (18:14)
And you even use the defined phone numbers as

well, think, from what you were saying here.

Jayne Green (18:17)
finding phone numbers, finding

emails, and it will bring up links in, you know, this person can be found in this place on LinkedIn, and it would reference all of this. We can use all sorts of, you know, research across websites or AI, LinkedIn, to actually cover a whole load. So for me, everything we've been talking about is this research, this preparation time, which is what we do.

Steve Vaughan (18:29)
astonishing.

Jonathan Slasinski (18:39)
The exactly.

Steve Vaughan (18:42)
Mm-hmm.

Jayne Green (18:42)
to get to

that place of, know, this isn't just cold. It's not just a random list that we're trying to attack of people that have got no knowledge of us or we've got no knowledge of them, but it's, yes, no, it's targeted. Yeah, it's targeted. Yeah. With, and as Jonathan said, something that's got value and that will bring a call to action.

Steve Vaughan (18:51)
No, we're not selling double glazing or something. this is targeted. No offense to double glazing sales people listening, but this is targeted business to business sales. Yeah, absolutely.

Jonathan Slasinski (18:56)
to.

Steve Vaughan (19:04)
Absolutely. Yeah, now you got a point. Yeah.

Manel (19:07)
Yes, because in a B2B business it's quite rare.

that the list of potential customers is unlimited. mean, usually we know each other, especially of course in a smaller country. So the ways you have to reach people, especially the times you have to gain their respect or lose it are quite limited. And that's one good thing yet again about LinkedIn, which is your network stays with you all along your career and you can follow.

Steve Vaughan (19:14)
Absolutely.

Jayne Green (19:17)
Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Slasinski (19:30)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (19:36)
Absolutely.

Manel (19:38)
how people move and how people can follow you as well. this idea of respect for me is really important. It's not that difficult to earn it but once you lose it it's as well difficult.

Jayne Green (19:39)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (19:51)
Yeah,

yeah, great points. One of the things that irritates me when I get approached, as I'm sure we all do, let's say through LinkedIn, is pushing too quickly, too early for a meeting. Now know salespeople and we train salespeople who have targets on number of calls per day, per week or whatever, but it's almost like, hey, I've got a connection. Can I come and sell to you?

Jayne Green (19:53)
Actually.

Steve Vaughan (20:16)
Does that, your mind, the only person who finds that annoying, you know, because I think it happens too quickly, you know, a meeting might be appropriate, but perhaps can we at find out a bit about each other first before we actually pitch for that meeting? Would that be a better way of warming things up a little bit as well?

Jayne Green (20:27)
Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, finding a true connection, isn't it? We talk about connecting, which doesn't mean to say we've actually got much that we understand of each other right now. But I think that's the journey. It's the very start of a conversation where we get into a discovery which isn't about product or service related. Often, very specifically, it's about understanding who the other person is and they understanding who we are.

Steve Vaughan (20:30)
Yeah.

Hmm. Yeah.

Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Manel (20:52)
Yes.

And there's an iron rule that I use usually in any outbound process, which is what you wouldn't do in a courting, dating or flirting ⁓ situation. Please, please avoid doing, please avoid doing in a cold calling situation. ⁓

Steve Vaughan (21:10)
You

Nice to meet you, the bar. Would

you like to marry me? No, not quite as quick a say.

Jayne Green (21:17)
Ha ha.

Pascal (21:19)
Anyway, back to the point of bringing value. I really like the point Jonathan and Jayne made about AI because AI can really consolidate data in a...

Steve Vaughan (21:22)
You

Pascal (21:34)
just a few seconds while it took ages to you to get some relevant information. But thanks to this, you have probably information you can use and then how you can link this to the products, the solutions you can offer. And this is where you could easily bring value to a customer or to a prospect. So for instance, I can see that you are working on this, let's say,

Steve Vaughan (21:49)
Absolutely.

Jayne Green (21:49)
Mm.

Pascal (22:01)
compound or potential new drug. And actually we have products related to drug discovery. And I would be interested to get your idea on...

discovery could be improved. Not proposing something immediately to be sold to the customer but get expertise view from this person. So you value the person, you bring value and then you probably you get a chance to get a meeting.

Steve Vaughan (22:16)
That's a great point.

Jayne Green (22:22)
Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Slasinski (22:31)
Yeah, Steve.

Steve Vaughan (22:31)
That's a super point because

we're reaching out to scientists who are subject matter experts in their field quite often really. And we should give them the space and the opportunity to show that really. Yes, Jonathan, sorry.

Jonathan Slasinski (22:37)
Yes.

Jayne Green (22:37)
Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Slasinski (22:44)
No, no, no. Cause it comes back to your original point about, you know, potential annoyance or just being like, why are they asking me for a meeting? Right now I don't, if they've, if they've done the right thing in their message, which is connect with me personally and added us some value. have no problem with them saying, would you like to meet? It's those one, two liners. Hey, I've got this product. Let's meet. Well, okay. We got the

Steve Vaughan (22:57)
Yep. Yep.

Jonathan Slasinski (23:05)
the value, potential value and the call, but where's the personalization, right? So like, those are the ones again, it's, it's gotta have those three components to me, the personalized value add and the call to action. And you're right. I don't think you always have to ask for a meeting, but we're sales reps. We should be asking for something if we're making, you know, this kind of connection and just to kind of, just to kind of back on Jayne and Pascal.

Steve Vaughan (23:08)
Exactly.

Jayne Green (23:09)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (23:14)
Yeah. Yeah.

Absolutely.

Jonathan Slasinski (23:27)
You know, I recently had a training where we were looking at AI for research and I just, it's going to make you so much more efficient. Like just the amount of information in the little amount of time that you can get from using this to summarize this website, summarize this paper, look at this, you know, look at these journal articles. Can't, can't say that enough to in warming up and just being able to pull out a tidbit that you could connect with the scientist on.

Jayne Green (23:33)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (23:51)
Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (23:52)
No more, I mean, I remember having to read the whole paper going through results, methods and being like, all right, well, hey, what did they use? Did they use my equipment? How do I connect? It's very, very cool to see the efficiency gains with this.

Jayne Green (23:56)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (24:00)
you

Jayne Green (24:02)
Yeah, it's great.

Steve Vaughan (24:03)
Super point, yeah. Super point,

Jayne Green (24:05)
Absolutely

Steve Vaughan (24:06)
yeah.

Jayne Green (24:06)
and it's like you know researching key phrases isn't it? Using AI on key phrases so I mean a bit off the subject but it's the same thing isn't it? You want to find out what whether they're using the competition in a certain area or if a publication is mentioning their words and key phrases kind of clearly shows you where they're at.

Jonathan Slasinski (24:09)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (24:18)
Mm.

Great point.

Yes, Manel.

Manel (24:27)
I was going to say, listening to Jonathan, the fact that we have this extraordinary tool that is AI that can process so much information and then deliver the brief makes us have much more time as our competition.

much more time to dedicate on the purely human interaction. That is one site, or I would say the main consequence of AI is we will become even more humans, you know, in a philosophical term than what we were used to do. that's already with Industrial Revolution, you we had this, you know, work that depended on power, individual power. Now we call that kind of work inhuman. So not

Jonathan Slasinski (24:45)
Yes. Yes.

Steve Vaughan (24:46)
Yeah.

I think that is a super point.

Manel (25:10)
away in the future we will call this gathering of information processing and making everything inhuman because AI will do it for us and we will be dedicated to the human touch.

Steve Vaughan (25:21)
It's such a great point.

Jonathan Slasinski (25:21)
Tess.

Steve Vaughan (25:22)
But also I think it's also a red flag for us to be aware of with AI. we mentioned this part earlier, which was not to make things too generic or automated. For all means use the AI to do the research, to do the pricing, but don't use the AI to write you the email or write you the LinkedIn message. Personalise it, make it in your own voice. Because I don't think it's still good enough to do that. And people, would you say...

Jayne Green (25:36)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (25:47)
deal with people, don't they? Not machines buying from machines. not quite there yet, hopefully.

Manel (25:51)
And would add sales people have a lot to say that's not new. ⁓

Steve Vaughan (25:55)
Don't

Manel (25:57)
Sometimes I receive messages and they

Steve Vaughan (25:57)
know what you mean.

Jayne Green (25:58)
you

Manel (26:00)
brag about they have been talking to this and that and that other company that by the way, usually are 10 times at least the size of the one I am in. So it's like bragging about how many girls I have been, but now I'm writing to you. know what I mean? And that to me is not only disrespectful, but it creates a barrier. And it's like, yeah, I'm talking to so many other companies, but I'm writing to you today. What about we change that and we say something like we are developing

Steve Vaughan (26:13)
Ha ha ha.

Manel (26:27)
expertise area focused on your industry and we would really like your input into that because most often B2B ⁓ sales it's not off-the-shelf product that we know you know and we just ship but it's something that can be co-created and that of course it depends on the industry but sometimes we really need our customers to tell us how we can best help them. So this idea that I'm talking to big guys you know and I have

Steve Vaughan (26:30)
Brilliant.

Brilliant.

Jayne Green (26:40)
Hmm.

Manel (26:55)
that you will love for sure, you have 30 minutes for me, might play against you instead of doing I really value your expertise, you have the right experience, would you have 30 minutes or 10 minutes, you know, for me.

Steve Vaughan (27:09)
Yeah, great.

Jonathan Slasinski (27:09)
So

you bring up, you bring up this is the kind of last thing I was thinking about touching on. Cause you know, we talked about email, LinkedIn, AI using all these tools and I agree with you. There's a softer way. I was always a soft sale. I was never the hard kind of sales rep. There's always saw. So there's a softer way to bring that in. But what you're getting to is another real key to warming up calls, which is referral. Hey,

Jayne Green (27:32)
Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (27:33)
I'm working with this company. Hey, this per, you know, this PI is introducing me, right? I, I understand where the reps coming from when they're saying, Hey, I'm because they're trying to build their credibility through referral. And I will say referral in my career was the easiest way to warm anything up working with this person or Hey doctor, so-and-so invited to, you know, tell me you may be interested, right? You know, again,

Steve Vaughan (27:50)
That's such a good point.

Jonathan Slasinski (27:58)
based on your style, there's a softer way to do it. There's a way to look at the messaging, but I think you're really keying in on is just, you know, just trying that referral and how that builds credibility and how that actually warms things up.

Jayne Green (28:00)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (28:10)
Yeah, great point. Pascal, were you good at getting referrals?

Pascal (28:14)
Yeah,

can only agree with this and our thinking about the peer-to-peer

let's say aspect that Manel mentioned earlier and peer to peers, people to people, it's like using a network and of course referral. So yeah, it's very powerful because it makes you different from the others because people can see that you are connected to someone they know or someone they have respect for or someone they worked with, whatever. So then it bridges people together.

Steve Vaughan (28:27)
Mmm.

Pascal (28:47)
or at least some level of trust, although they don't know you yet. So I would always think about who I could refer or mention when I contact someone during a call.

Steve Vaughan (28:53)
Yeah, absolutely.

It's so important. It's something we do in our own business. You know, we rely on people who give us repeat business and people that refer us and recommend us to other people. So it's so important. And I don't know who, I think we picked it up on a course somebody ran a couple of years ago, a great sort of approach to this really is whenever a customer thanks you for something, you know, thank you for sorting that out for me, Steve. Thank you for, you know, your support there. Thanks for that bit of information. It's a great chance to say, you're welcome. I wonder if you could help me.

Manel (29:02)
it.

Steve Vaughan (29:30)
you know, who else do know that might need one of these? else do know that uses these? It's a great opportunity to ask that question.

So.

Manel (29:36)
Because

having...

people that are your friends makes you attractive. That's not only business. When you write a connection message in LinkedIn, it's always nice to reference. have a few connections in common. that we have, there should be always place for that because it means I am not completely unknown. And instead of we have been talking to this, this and this other, which if you're really talking to and not just sending emails like the one you're sending to me now, you shouldn't have time because they are big enterprises.

Steve Vaughan (29:38)
⁓ Absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly.

Jayne Green (29:47)
Yes, definitely.

Jonathan Slasinski (29:48)
Yeah.

Jayne Green (29:54)
Yes.

Manel (30:05)
much more concrete or even better ask somebody from these companies that they know to make the connection.

Jayne Green (30:10)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (30:12)
super

Jonathan Slasinski (30:12)
Yeah, it's

Steve Vaughan (30:12)
points.

Jonathan Slasinski (30:13)
we're humans after all. Right. So again, it's, you know, we evolved over hundreds of thousand years to be social creatures, even as much as technology drives us away from that. This is our instinct. Our instinct is to kind of be familiar with people who are connected to other people that we are. And again, you know, it's what Manel is bringing out about this is going to make us more human. It's it's it's being again, that personalization, right? How do we how do we humanize all of these kind of things to make, you know, a cold call of a warmer? I just I love it. It's just.

Pretty cool to hear your guys' insights into this.

Steve Vaughan (30:42)
Great stuff,

Jayne Green (30:44)
Yeah,

yeah.

Steve Vaughan (30:45)
So we've had a great conversation on this. Any final thoughts from each of you in terms of how we can make those cold calls a bit warmer, how we can make those outreach calls a bit more effective. It'd be great if we could all have one each from everybody. Do you want to start Pascal?

Pascal (30:59)
Yeah, yeah, probably something we didn't touch so far is that ⁓ let's not let's keep in mind that this is a cold call. So, you know, people you contact, they have probably not so such a long time. So please make sure that after you you you got the interest and and you brought value, you make it short, you know, so probably have a, you know, five to 15 minutes conversation where you you generate value, but you ask permission for the follow

Steve Vaughan (31:13)
Yeah.

Pascal (31:29)
⁓

Jayne Green (31:29)
Yeah.

Pascal (31:30)
with a commitment for the next step but don't make it too long you know so otherwise you can limit the motivation of the customer the prospect to follow up with you

Steve Vaughan (31:41)
So important.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. One from Eugene.

Jayne Green (31:45)
Yeah, I think, sort going right to the very beginning, that understanding of who, why are we reaching out to the people that we're reaching out to? Not a random list, but why are we wanting to reach out to this specific person or this group of people? Having a really good understanding, you know, what they're doing, what it is that would be valuable.

for them to speak to us and for us to speak to them, you know, and if they were to say to us, you know, upon wanting to speak to us, if that was a face-to-face or an in-person conversation, what valid reason, if they said, give me a reason why, you know, I should talk to you, do we know what that would be? Always make sure we have that.

Steve Vaughan (32:08)
Yeah.

Grow point.

It's not about us, it's about them. absolutely. Yeah. Jonathan?

Jonathan Slasinski (32:30)
Steve, I'm gonna go too, sorry. The first thing is just preparation, right? You have to do the preparation. Find the personalization, the value add, the call to action. Just try to find a way to connect on those. And then to me, just the most successful thing that worked for me in my career was referrals, right? How do we use our connections? How do we use the people that we know, the customers that we know, to enable to make something a little bit warmer?

Steve Vaughan (32:32)
it's okay. Yep. Buy one, get one free.

Jayne Green (32:33)
Ha ha ha.

Yeah, true.

Steve Vaughan (32:56)
Great points. And Manel, again, thank you for being with us today. Anything else from your experience and your role that you think you can add to anybody listening to this today? Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (32:59)
Thanks so much, Manu.

Manel (33:03)
⁓

on top of the all good inputs we have had so far. would say...

In my experience, and I'm thinking three different industries, always within human health, but different product situations, et cetera, the idea of cold calling has evolved enormously in the last 20 years. I mentioned it briefly before, a telephone is not what it used to be, a cold call is not and will not be in the future what it used to be. So I would say curiosity and ability to change and to set up from scratch

Steve Vaughan (33:31)
Mm.

Manel (33:39)
in the industry you are, in the country you are, in the culture you are, etc. And I could give examples like WhatsApp, WhatsApp in some countries, LinkedIn in some countries, and what not. So be open to change and constant adaptability because times change and technology usage changes.

Steve Vaughan (33:57)
Great points.

Jonathan Slasinski (33:57)
I love it.

Steve Vaughan (33:58)
Great points. The one for me would be really no matter how much, you know, we can do all the great stuff we've talked about on this, on this podcast, you still will have some significant amount of rejection and nose. And even if you have a great day, like you did Jayne, 25%, that's an incredible success rate. You're still going to have 75 % people that don't pick up. So the one for me would be, know, if you've had a morning cold calling and it's been a bit difficult and a bit, a bit frustrating.

Just remember the next call you make might be the one that opens up a fantastic opportunity. You don't know until you make that call. That was my last thought on that really. Guys, eat some chocolate. Don't tell my dentist that. Guys, thank you ever so much for being on the pod today. Thank you again Manel for joining us. It's always a pleasure to have you. Come back and see us again. Great to have you. Come back and see us again soon.

Manel (34:28)
Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Slasinski (34:30)
Love it.

Manel (34:31)
Absolutely.

Jayne Green (34:33)
eat some chocolate to celebrate.

Manel (34:36)
Absolutely.

Jonathan Slasinski (34:43)
Thanks for now.

Jayne Green (34:44)
Yes, thank you.

Pascal (34:44)
Which was a good question.

Manel (34:44)
Thank you for

having me.

Steve Vaughan (34:48)
If you have enjoyed today's episode, dear listen, don't forget to give us a review on Apple or Spotify or any other podcast app and let you leave a review. We really would appreciate a five star review. It does help us in lots of weird and wonderful ways, really. If you're interested in coming on the podcast as Manau has today, then we'd also love to hear from you. If you're working in life science, lab process, industrial type B2B cells, we'd love to hear from you. People are actually doing the job right now. It's great to get that sort of

voice from the from the industry on the pod. So we'd love to hear from you. And if you've got any ideas for other topics or things you'd like us to cover in the Luxury Choice podcast, we'd love to hear from you as well. We'll be back again in a couple of weeks time. Until then, happy selling and we'll talk to you soon.