Problems sell deals—but leading with problems can backfire with outbound.

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Why?

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Because outbound is a game of first impressions. And you know what may not make a great first impression?

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Telling someone—who never asked you to reach out to them—about all the problems they have.

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Let me give you an example:

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⛔️ Lead with problem

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Prospect: "Hello?"

Rep: "Hi Samantha—it's Jason. I'm curious, how are you removing all the redundant work from your support team's workload to reduce support costs?"

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That's going right for the jugular. It takes a special kind of rep to be aggressive and pull off the tone to get the prospect leaning in.

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It's too assumptive for having met someone 10 seconds ago.

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✅ Lead with priority, followed by problem

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This sounds more like this...

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Prospect: "Hello?"

Rep: "Hi Samantha, it's Jason. I'm calling because we met with a support leader at a large retailer yesterday. They needed to scale more personalized customer interactions, but their team was bogged down with repetitive work that was driving up the cost to serve. Is that by chance top of mind for you as well?"

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~~~

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It doesn't seem like much, but you'll get prospects to open up way more when you—

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1) Don't assume they have the problem

2) Lead with a goal or aspiration

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Try this in your cold calls this week and you'll get prospects to open up more.

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