The 17-Minute Cold Call Course for B2B Sales

In this course, Anthony Iannarino—bestselling sales author and veteran cold caller—breaks down everything you need to make confident, effective cold calls in B2B sales. You will learn why cold calling remains the most powerful synchronous medium for securing meetings, how to structure a call that trades genuine value for a prospect's time, and how to handle the objections that stand between you and a booked meeting. Anthony draws on decades of personal experience—including 76 consecutive weeks of calls to win one account and a seven-year pursuit of a two-million-dollar deal—to show that success in cold calling is not a numbers game but a game of strategy, preparation, and persistence. By the end of this course you will have a repeatable cold call script, a clear understanding of the single real objection every prospect raises, and a daily prospecting habit that keeps your pipeline healthy quarter after quarter.

Learning objectives

• Explain why the phone is the only synchronous medium that positions you as a peer and makes it possible to ask for a meeting in real time
• Distinguish between the two goals of a cold call—booking a meeting versus pitching on the call—and apply the correct strategy for each
• Construct a cold call script that opens with your identity, states a clear reason for the call, trades an insight or briefing for the prospect's time, and includes a risk reversal
• Identify and avoid common talk-track mistakes such as asking 'How are you?', 'Is this a good time?', or offering a generic company overview as the value exchange
• Recognise that every prospect objection—'not interested', 'happy with our supplier', 'no budget'—stems from a single concern about wasted time, and address it directly
• Build a list of strategic target accounts and commit to a daily 90-minute prospecting block to create pipeline opportunities ahead of the sales cycle

Key takeaways

• Cold calling produces low yield on individual calls but high yield on overall revenue—expect to make many calls to book a few meetings, and do not interpret hang-ups or rejections as personal failures
• The phone is uniquely valuable because it is synchronous; email and LinkedIn are asynchronous and far less effective for securing a meeting commitment
• Positioning yourself as a peer starts on the very first call—calling directly and confidently signals that you are an advisor, not just another vendor
• A strong cold call script trades a specific, relevant insight (such as an executive briefing, a best-practice checklist, or a list of common mistakes) for 25 minutes of the prospect's time, not a generic 'learn about each other' meeting
• The only real objection to a meeting is the prospect's belief that you will waste their time; overcome it by directly and confidently assuring them the 25 minutes will be genuinely useful
• Persistence over months or even years—combined with professionalism—is what separates top performers from peers who abandon prospects too early
• Prospecting every day prevents the feast-or-famine cycle; opportunities created in one quarter typically close in the next, so consistent daily outreach is non-negotiable