Sales conversations cheat sheet: 10 powerful questions for successful cold calls

A cold call is hard, but with the right structure and the right questions you improve your odds considerably. I am Tijs, Senior Account Executive at Bizzy, and this is the cheat sheet I use myself: ten questions that turn a sales conversation from a pitch into an actual conversation.

What a cold call has to achieve

A cold call is first contact with someone who has never dealt with your company. It succeeds when you achieve four things.

Understand the situation. Find out how things run today, where it hurts, and who decides.

Create interest. Give the other person a reason to be curious rather than a reason to politely end the call.

Qualify or disqualify. A fast no is worth more than a slow maybe. Your time is the scarce resource.

Set a concrete next step. When there is a fit, book something specific there and then, for example a discovery call to explore the use case.

Note the order. Most calls fail because the seller starts at step two and skips step one.

The ten questions

Four blocks. You never use all of them in one call.

Opening

1. "This is a cold call. Can I have thirty seconds to tell you why?"

You ask for permission instead of taking it. Almost everyone says yes, and from that moment the other person is listening voluntarily.

2. "Before I called I saw [specific signal]. Is that right?"

This is the most important of the ten. A cold call with a real reason is a different conversation from one without. A vacancy, a move, a new location: something that shows you looked.

Understanding the situation

3. "How do you find new customers today?"

Open, not leading. You let the other person describe their own process in their own words, and you use those words for the rest of the call.

4. "Who does that, and how much time does it take per week?"

This is where the pain surfaces. Time is more concrete than satisfaction, and people answer it more honestly.

5. "And what happens if that falls short for a quarter?"

This makes the stakes visible. Without a consequence there is no urgency, and without urgency there is no second conversation.

Qualifying

6. "Is this on the agenda this quarter, or more likely later?"

A friendly way to test timing. "Later" is a perfectly good answer, because then you know when to call back instead of pushing.

7. "Who else would be involved if you took this further?"

Not "are you the decision maker", which sounds like a test. This asks the same thing without diminishing anyone.

8. "Have you already tried something for this?"

You immediately learn whether a competitor is in play, whether there is an internal project, and which solution was rejected before. That last one is gold.

Closing

9. "What would you need to see to say this was worth it?"

The other person defines their own success criterion. After that you only have to meet it.

10. "Shall we put half an hour in the diary on Thursday to look at it?"

Specific, with a day and a duration. "I will send some information" is not a next step.

How to use them

This is not a script. A script is audible on the other end of the line, and once it is, the call is over.

Use it as a map. You always open with questions 1 and 2, you pick two or three from the middle based on what you hear, and you always close with question 10. Six questions in a five-minute call is a lot. Ten is an interrogation.

The ratio that matters: if you are speaking for more than a third of the time, you are pitching rather than qualifying.

And write down verbatim what they say to questions 3 and 9. Those two answers are the opening of your next conversation.

What I see go wrong most often

Calling with no reason. Without an answer to "why are you calling me, today", question 2 becomes empty and the call collapses back into a pitch.

Pushing past a clear no. Fast disqualification is a win. It saves you three follow-up emails that go nowhere.

Leaving the next step vague. "I will send something over" is the end of the process, not the beginning of it.

Not preparing the list. If a quarter of your list is unreachable or irrelevant, the problem is not your call.

Preparation makes the call shorter

The best cold call starts before you dial. Two things decide almost everything: are you calling the right companies, and do you have a real reason.

For the first, it helps to build your profile on attributes that actually exist in the data rather than attributes you wish existed. We worked that through in building an ICP on filters that actually exist.

For the second, hiring signals are the most usable: a company that is recruiting is changing something. See how to find Belgian companies that are hiring.

For the telephone side more broadly, see B2B cold calling in Europe. And for what is legally allowed in cold outreach in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, see the rules for cold outreach.

Frequently asked questions

How long should a good cold call be?

Four to six minutes is normal for a first call. Shorter usually means you jumped to the meeting too quickly, longer means you started pitching. The goal is not the call itself but the next step.

Do I have to ask all ten questions?

No. Use questions 1 and 2 to open, pick two or three from the middle based on what you hear, and close with question 10. Ten questions in a row feels like an interrogation.

What do I do when someone says they are not interested straight away?

Probe once with question 3, how they solve it today. If nothing comes back, disqualify and move on. A fast no is more valuable than a polite maybe.

What is the difference between a cold call and a discovery call?

The cold call is first contact and exists to qualify and book a meeting. The discovery call is that meeting, where you genuinely explore the situation. The ten questions above belong to the first.

Is cold calling allowed in Belgium and the Netherlands?

Business-to-business calling is permitted, but rules apply around registers where numbers are shielded and around what you do with the data afterwards. The detail per country is in the rules for cold outreach.