How this shows up in interviews
On this page
"Talk me through how you'd structure a cold call." Give the architecture, not a script: a fifteen-second opener that names you and the interruption honestly, a thirty-second problem statement built on peer group, a specific problem, the trigger and an easy question, then two or three genuine discovery questions, then a specific time-boxed ask. Land the principle underneath — every stage is buying the next thirty seconds, and the goal of the call is a conversation, not a pitch.
The live mock cold call. Most SDR and many AE processes run one: the interviewer plays a prospect, you get a one-paragraph brief, and you dial. This is the highest-signal exercise in the process and candidates lose it in predictable ways.
How it's scored. Interviewers typically mark 1–5 across a fixed set: opener and tone; whether you established a reason for the call; question quality; listening (do they get to talk?); objection handling; whether you actually asked for the meeting; and — usually weighted heaviest of all — coachability, meaning what you do when they give you feedback.
How to pass. Ask for thirty seconds to prepare and use them. Open honestly and slowly, with a pause after your name. Give a problem statement, not a product description. Ask a question and then stop talking — the most common failure is filling the interviewer's silence. Take exactly one bounce at whatever objection they throw, then respect it. Ask for the meeting; a large share of candidates never do, and that single omission fails more mock calls than anything else. Then, when it's over, ask for feedback, take it without defending, and offer to run the last thirty seconds again. Doing the retake well outscores a flawless first attempt, because the manager is buying a person they can coach.
What fails. Feature-dumping. Talking for ninety seconds unbroken. Arguing with the objection. Fake enthusiasm. Never asking. And getting flustered and apologising repeatedly — recover once, out loud, and carry on.
"How many calls a day should a rep make?" Do the arithmetic out loud rather than naming a heroic number: with roughly 17 dials per conversation, 4 conversations per booked meeting and a 75% show rate, about 90 dials buys one held meeting — so eight held meetings a month is around 700 dials, or under an hour a day. Then add the judgement: the number is a floor, not a target, list quality moves it more than volume does, and you'd expect to replace every rate with the team's real data in month one.
"A prospect says 'not interested' in the first five seconds. What do you say?" Deliver the actual line — that they'd have to be psychic to be interested thirty seconds in, followed by an offer of the one thing that keeps their peers on the phone, and a promise to leave them alone. Then explain the reasoning: it's a reflex not a decision, and you get exactly one bounce.
"Isn't cold calling in the UK illegal, or at least a grey area?" This is where a prepared candidate is unmistakable. Say that live B2B calls are lawful and don't generally require consent, but that you must screen against both the TPS and CTPS plus your own suppression list, that a screening file older than 28 days isn't safe, that regulation 24 requires you to identify yourself and display your number, and that penalties under PECR rose to UK GDPR levels in February 2026. Then land the commercial point: compliance is also good calling. The behaviours the ICO fines — hidden numbers, untraceable data, denying it's a sales call — are the same behaviours that make prospects hang up.
"How do you handle rejection?" Avoid resilience clichés. Use the maths: roughly 88 of every 89 dials don't produce a meeting, so a no is a completed sort, not a failure. Then name your actual mechanics — inputs tracked rather than outcomes, the next number within ten seconds, three more dials after a brutal one, and calling alongside someone rather than alone.
"How would you reach a senior clinician who never answers their phone?" Multi-channel and route-aware: their problems are usually documented publicly, so lead with the trust's own board papers; go through the operational manager or service lead who owns the process rather than the clinician who owns the opinion; try 8am and after 5pm when senior people answer their own phones; ask the gatekeeper for the best time rather than trying to beat them; and pair every call attempt with an email of genuine substance. Add that you'd expect roughly eight touches, and that you'd retire the contact gracefully with a break-up voicemail rather than grinding.
"What would your first 30 days on the phone look like?" Walk the programme in section 7 — list and compliance in week one, openers in week two, objections in week three, the ask in week four, with one variable changed at a time and one number written down each Friday. Finish on the recordings: you'd review your own first sixty seconds daily and ask for a weekly listen-back with your manager. Managers hire the person who has already designed their own coaching.
Cheat sheet — the one-page call card
Before the block: list prepared and tiered, TPS/CTPS screened within 28 days, your number displaying, headset on, water, standing.
Opener (15 seconds). Name → company → pause → honest reason → permission.
"Hi [name], it's [you] from [company]. I know I'm interrupting — can I have thirty seconds to tell you why I rang, and you tell me if it's nonsense?"
Never open with: "How are you today?" · "Did I catch you at a bad time?" · "Am I speaking with…?" · company boilerplate · false familiarity · any denial that it's a sales call.
Problem statement (30 seconds). Peer group → the specific bad day → why you, why now → easy question with an escape hatch. Swap test: could a competitor say this word for word? Then rewrite it.
Objections — acknowledge → reframe → question. One bounce only.
| They say | You say (in one line) |
|---|---|
| Not interested | You'd have to be psychic to be interested 30 seconds in — one thing, then I'll go |
| Send me an email | Happy to — so it's not generic, is X live for you or is something else top of the list? |
| I'm busy | I'd worry if you weren't — 90 seconds now, or Thursday morning? |
| We have a supplier | Good, most do. I'm not here to replace them — where's the gap between what it tracks and what an auditor asks? |
| How did you get my number? | The plain truth, plus: we screen against TPS and CTPS, and I'll suppress you now if you'd rather |
| No budget | Nobody has a line item for something unseen. I'm asking if the problem's real — is it? |
| Call me next quarter | Can do. What changes by then — budget, a project finishing, or is it just not important enough yet? |
| Is this a sales call? | Yes. I sell X, I rang because of Y. Want the 30-second version? |
Gatekeeper: straight ask → help-me-out ("you'll know better than she will…") → specificity ("it's about [unglamorous operational thing]") → route-around (8am, 5.40pm, internal transfer, ask when she's at her desk). Never claim to be expected.
Voicemail: first — name and number slowly, one reason, when you'll ring back, nothing needed from you. Final — the graceful break-up, door left open.
The ask: 20 minutes, named purpose, "if it's not relevant we've both saved an afternoon", two options. Send the invite while on the phone, confirm the email out loud, ask who else should attend.
No-show prevention: pre-meeting note within the hour → day-before question (not a confirmation) → an explicit easy out.
The numbers (planning model — replace with your own): 100 dials → 18 connects → 10 target connects → 6 conversations → 1.5 booked → 1.13 held. So ≈17 dials per conversation, 4 conversations per meeting, ≈67 dials per booking, ≈89 per held meeting. One 45-dial power hour a day ≈ 10 held meetings a month.
The law, in six lines: live B2B calls need no consent · screen both TPS and CTPS, plus your own do-not-call list · a screen older than 28 days isn't safe · never call a listed number unless that subscriber told you by name (reg 21(4)) · always identify yourself and display your number (reg 24) · stop permanently when asked, and record it.
Best windows: 10–11am, then 2–3pm. Thursday strongest, Friday weakest.
References & further reading
- Armand Farrokh & Nick Cegelski, Cold Calling Sucks (And That's Why It Works) (2024) — the current best word-for-word text on the phone channel: openers, problem propositions, eighteen objection talk tracks, gatekeepers and voicemail, backed by Gong data on a stated 300M+ cold calls and interviews with several hundred top reps. If you read one book from this list, read this one.
- Jeb Blount, Fanatical Prospecting (2015) — the discipline text rather than the technique text: the 30-Day Rule, the psychology of interrupting strangers, and the most honest writing in print about the emotional cost of the work.
- Josh Braun — joshbraun.com and his LinkedIn output — the counterweight to volume-first thinking. His "poke the bear" material and his argument that persuasion generates resistance are the intellectual basis for the low-pressure openers in section 3. Free, prolific and genuinely different.
- ICO, Guidance on direct marketing using live calls and Business-to-business marketing (ico.org.uk) — the authoritative source for everything in section 1: corporate versus individual subscribers, regulations 21 and 24, the 28-day rule and the regulation 21(4) exception. Note the standing caveat that this guidance is under review following the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025.
- Telephone Preference Service and Corporate TPS (tpsonline.org.uk) — operated by the DMA; registration is free, screening is a legal obligation. Worth ten minutes so you can describe the mechanics in an interview.
- Ofcom, Persistent misuse policy statement (ofcom.org.uk) — silent and abandoned calls, the removal of the 3% safe harbour in 2017, and penalties up to £2m. Read it before you work anywhere running a predictive or parallel dialler.
- Gong Labs, "The best and worst cold call openers" (gong.io/blog) — the opener rankings quoted in this module. Vendor research, so treat the ordering as the finding and the decimals as marketing.
- Cognism, The State of Cold Calling (cognism.com/reports) — annual, UK-headquartered, useful for day-and-time patterns and for market-level direction. Cognism sells B2B phone data; read its own performance figures accordingly.
- 30 Minutes to President's Club (podcast) — Farrokh and Cegelski's tactical show; the cold-call episodes are the closest available substitute for sitting next to a top-decile rep for a week.