In this episode of the Simply Be Found Huddle, Rob interviews Aidan Sowa about modern cold calling in 2025, strategies and how his company, Zodto Dialer, is revolutionizing outbound sales.
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About This Huddle’s Special Guest
Aidan Sowa is one of the owners of Zodto Dialer, a cutting-edge parallel dialing system designed to maximize sales team productivity. With extensive experience in the telecommunications and sales technology industry, Aidan has developed solutions that address the modern challenges of cold calling in an increasingly difficult outreach environment.
As an entrepreneur with a deep understanding of both sales processes and data quality, Aidan has positioned Zodto Dialer to serve high-volume sales operations across real estate, B2B, and SaaS industries. His expertise extends beyond just dialing technology—he also runs a separate data business that provides access to hundreds of thousands of mobile contact records, recognizing that “data is the key to success in anything.”
Aidan’s approach to sales technology balances efficiency with ethical considerations, rejecting deceptive practices like local caller ID spoofing while embracing innovations that genuinely improve results. He remains at the forefront of integrating AI capabilities into sales processes, focusing on practical applications like call transcription and prospect intelligence rather than replacing human conversations.
Rob had a great time speaking to Aidan. Everyone at Simply Be Found would like to extend their appreciation to Aidan for dropping by the huddle. If you want to reach out to Aidan, you can do on these platforms:
Key Takeaways From This Huddle
Zodto Dialer is a parallel dialing system that calls multiple phone lines simultaneously, dramatically increasing the efficiency of cold calling operations. Unlike traditional power dialers or robocalls, Zodto connects sales agents with live prospects while intelligently managing call queues when multiple people answer.
The platform serves various industries including:
- Real estate wholesalers and agents
- B2C sales organizations
- B2B agencies and SaaS businesses
- Any company needing high-volume call capacity
As Aidan explains, “Most of our clients are people who want to do volume, people who are like, ‘Okay, doing 100 cold calls just doesn’t cut it anymore because the pickup rates every single year are just getting lower and lower.'”
Cold Calling in 2025: Myths vs. Reality
The Local Number Myth
Contrary to popular belief, using local area codes for outbound calls actually reduces pickup rates by about 60%. People now associate these with spam, and as Aidan points out, “If someone from the local area code is calling me, I probably already have their number saved in my phone.”
Mobile vs. Landline Numbers
A critical insight: landline pickup rates have plummeted to just 1-2%, while mobile numbers average around 10%. This represents a massive shift from the 30-40% pickup rates common in the 1990s.
The “Send Me an Email” Objection
According to Zodto’s data, 90-95% of prospects who say “send me an email” never respond. Aidan recommends countering with: “Typically what we see is if we send out an email, no one’s going to really respond back. So if this is something you’re really interested in, what I’d recommend is getting on a short 10-15 minute Zoom call.”
How the Technology Works
Zodto provides users with a rotating pool of phone numbers and a cloud-based dashboard that:
- Makes 14 parallel calls at once
- Automatically records all conversations
- Tracks lead status and outcomes
- Integrates with popular CRMs like Follow-Up Boss and Go High Level
- Provides detailed performance analytics
The system also handles inbound calls when prospects call back, which happens about 10% of the time, typically within 10-15 minutes of the initial call.
The Future of Cold Calling and AI
While completely AI-powered cold calls face legal hurdles and practical limitations, Zodto is implementing AI in other valuable ways:
- Call transcription to capture key insights
- Prospect information overlays based on LinkedIn data
- Objection analysis to refine scripts and training
As Rob notes, these transcriptions could also power content marketing: “You could almost build it to where it’s building ‘These are the problems, these are some blog titles you should be thinking about, and here’s some content strategies based on that data point.'”
Is Cold Calling Dead?
“Maybe the old ways of doing cold calling are dead,” Aidan concludes. “If you’re still calling landlines and you’re still manually picking up your phone and calling them, yeah, that might not be very profitable.”
But with modern systems that enable 55-60 conversations per hour (versus 3-5 with manual dialing), cold calling remains a reliable lead generation channel—one that isn’t subject to the algorithm changes that frequently disrupt digital marketing channels.
As part of a balanced organic marketing strategy, smart cold calling still deserves a place in your sales toolbox.
What’s Next For Your Business?
Cold calling, AI, and automation; these are just some of the things that every business owner should keep in mind for 2025 and beyond. If you want to learn more, check out our membership benefits at Simply Be Found and see what else we can teach you to help you grow.
Transcript
- 00:00 | Welcome to the Simply Be Found Huddle
- 00:07 | Introducing Guest Aidan Sowa
- 00:21 | What Zodto Dialer Does
- 01:10 | Common Myths About Robocalls
- 01:56 | How Parallel Dialing Works
- 02:38 | Who Uses Zodto: Real Estate, B2C, B2B
- 03:49 | Why Manual Dialing No Longer Works
- 04:27 | CRM Integration and Lead Tracking
- 05:45 | Do Local Presence Numbers Help or Hurt?
- 06:45 | The Spam Score Problem with Area Codes
- 08:04 | Signs You Need a Better Calling System
- 09:24 | Cold Calling as a Backup Lead Source
- 10:11 | How Calling Fits into Organic Marketing
- 11:27 | From Yellow Pages to AI: The Cold Call Journey
- 12:05 | Decline in Pickup Rates & Spam Labeling
- 13:14 | Mobile Numbers vs Landlines
- 14:01 | How the Rotating Number System Works
- 14:50 | Real-Time Call Queueing and Inbound Handling
- 15:33 | What Call Analytics and Stats You Get
- 16:53 | Underused Feature: Data Quality
- 18:00 | Why Mobile Data = Gold for Outreach
- 19:13 | The Power of Accurate Contact Info
- 20:05 | Ethics in Cold Calling: No Fear-Based Scripts
- 21:00 | Overcoming Objections and “Send Me an Email”
- 22:12 | Reducing No-Show Rates on Sales Calls
- 23:10 | Prequalifying and Setting Genuine Appointments
- 23:56 | Can You Handoff Calls Between Agents?
- 24:42 | AI in Cold Calling: What’s Legal, What’s Not
- 26:42 | Future Features: Transcription & Smart Pitching
- 28:00 | AI and Content Repurposing Opportunities
- 29:34 | Using Call Data for SEO & Training
- 30:50 | Text, Email & Add-ons—Why Most Don’t Use Them
- 31:44 | Why Being on the Phone Improves Sales Skills
- 32:19 | Old School Cold Calling vs Smart Dialing
- 33:02 | Desktop App vs Mobile App Debate
- 33:45 | How to Contact Aidan Sowa & Zodto
- 34:05 | Final Thoughts and Thank You
00:00 | Welcome to the Simply Be Found Huddle
Rob: Welcome to the Simply Be Found Huddle where we go everything business and just marketing related. Welcome to the show.
00:07 | Introducing Guest Aidan Sowa
Rob: It’s our guest Aidan today. How are you doing?
Aidan: I’m doing great, good to be on the show.
Rob: Awesome. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about you and kind of what you do?
Aidan: Yeah, so I’m one of the owners of this company called Zodto Dialer, and what we are is we’re just like a parallel dialer, which means that we’re calling multiple lines at the same exact time.
00:21 | What Zodto Dialer Does
Rob: So you’re behind all those different robocalls that happen all the time with the ones that hang up at random?
Aidan: Not exactly, no. Like those are some pretty sketchy people, and they often start with like a beeping noise at the beginning. We do no such things.
Rob: Oh, okay. So I’m assuming since by the name you guys tie into the Zoho group of CRM and systems. Am I assuming correctly?
Aidan: It’s Zodto like with a T, so Z-O-D-T-O. So it’s just a completely different company.
Rob: I thought you said “Zoho caller” at first. So Zoho, Zodto Dialer.
01:10 | Common Myths About Robocalls
Rob: So what kind of companies do you work with primarily?
Aidan: We work with like a lot of people in the real estate wholesale industry, a lot of real estate agents. Primarily people doing like a lot of B2C but also a bit of B2B with agencies, some sort of SaaS businesses that like to do a lot of cold calling. Primarily just a lot of—most of our clients though are people who want to do volume, people who are like, “Okay, doing 100 cold calls just doesn’t cut it anymore because the pickup rates every single year are just getting lower and lower and lower.” And the current solutions out there just didn’t cut it, which is why I even developed this to begin with, to be able to solve that issue.
Rob: Perfect. And so does your system do it to where they record a pre-recorded message, or is it actually a live call?
01:56 | How Parallel Dialing Works
Aidan: No, it’s a live call. So like one of the great things about what we do is we 10x the number of calls versus any typical power dialer out there, so you’re immediately connected to a call. And so people often ask me, “Well if you’re calling 14 people at the exact same time, what happens if like two people or three people pick up at the exact same time?” And the answer to that is it just goes straight into a queue. So these people are kind of waiting, and some people will hang up of course, but if it’s just a very quick thing like someone just hangs up immediately, then you go move on straight on to the next guy.
Rob: And do your customers provide the list over for what they’re calling, or do you guys provide that as well?
02:38 | Who Uses Zodto: Real Estate, B2C, B2B
Aidan: They typically do provide lists, but we also do provide lists for clients who need it. Like certain people, for example B2B data, they don’t have access to that. We luckily speaking, we also have like a data component, completely separate business, but I also run a data business and we have access to hundreds of thousands of data points of like mobile numbers and stuff. Because one of the key things is that a lot of people have what I would refer to as bad data, and data is the key to success in anything. So you need mobile data to succeed in this. So if you have landlines, those pickup rates are like one to two percent. They’re not going to really cut it anymore.
Rob: That makes sense. I mean, that whole world—I used to be inside of that world. I used to run sales teams, and we would be, you know, smiling and dialing all day. I remember when the dialers just first came out and they were super expensive. It was power dialers, I think, back in the day if I’m thinking about that right. It’s an industry I haven’t thought about for a while.
03:49 | Why Manual Dialing No Longer Works
Rob: And what’s interesting about, you know, the whole entire dialer software and all the phone sales is we don’t make any phone calls for our company out, but we get most of our business from others making those phone calls and then us piggybacking when they go and do their research on it. We pull up number one in there, and we’ve done really well with that. We considered going through and making phone calls, but after hearing all the different stuff that’s out there, we didn’t want to be in that same group of people making those calls. But I think certain industries have a very—it’s a needed area to be able to do that. If you’re running a sales team, you want to make sure that they’re at their most maximum capacity they possibly can, so that way they’re not manually dialing out and all that different stuff.
Rob: So with your system, what CRM do you guys work with? Like how are you guys tracking all that information?
04:27 | CRM Integration and Lead Tracking
Aidan: Yeah, so we—for one, every single time there’s a call, it’s automatically recorded, so people can go back, listen to the call, be able to get any types of information. And for example, let’s just pretend a lead’s interested. At the end of every call, you can mark like what would happen. So is it an opportunity? Is it not interested? Did they not say anything at all? So that way you can kind of go back into it afterwards and be like, “Okay, that guy was interested, need to follow up with them, put it into the calendar, etc.”
Aidan: We do also have CRM integrations, so if someone wanted to integrate it into like a CRM, and let’s just pretend we don’t even have that CRM integration, we will have like essentially additional costs. If we happen to not integrate with that particular CRM, we can integrate it with their CRM. We’re able to do it with pretty much every single type of CRM out there, whether it’s like Follow-Up Boss, whether it’s Go High Level, pretty much any type of CRM we can integrate with.
Rob: Perfect. So Dean and I, which Dean wasn’t able to be on this huddle today just because of some other stuff going on for him personally, but we were just having a huddle this morning for our first one and having a conversation about, you know, sales calls, how we don’t make them and doing all that.
05:45 | Do Local Presence Numbers Help or Hurt?
Rob: But one of the things he brought up that he’s seen that’s a trend is that he’ll make a phone call to certain city and state, and about 10 minutes later, he’s getting a phone call from that city and state that happens to be a caller. Now, I don’t know if your software does that of being able to make sure it’s a local phone number when they’re dialing into those areas or anything. Have you seen that being a trend, and are they tracking what phone calls are being made out there? He opened the whole entire conspiracy theory piece, and I was just thinking about that as we were talking. So what’s your opinion on that?
Aidan: Yeah, that was a trend. I would say kind of opened back up, I would say like 2022, 2021. It’s this thing, it’s called local presence call dialing, and essentially the idea is you call from the exact same area code. I don’t think it’s really as effective. In fact, we have a lot of data to back this—it actually hurts you to be calling from the same number nowadays. If you’re getting a number called from the exact same area code, a lot of people just assume that’s a robocall.
06:45 | The Spam Score Problem with Area Codes
Aidan: And so what we’ve noticed is that actually decreases the pickup rate by like around 60% if you happen to have the exact same area code, because people just associate that with spam. And if someone from the local area code is calling me, I probably already have their number saved in my phone.
Rob: Well, you know, from business owners I talk to, a lot of times they are like, “Well, I have to pick it up, it’s that local area code,” and it ends up being somebody that’s not a customer because, you know, that’s what I’m looking for inside of there. And then it creates a bunch of frustration to the end user. So especially for anybody doing it, they’re like, “Well, damn it, I thought it was someone important to be able to call me.”
Rob: So it’s almost—I guess my opinion for that type of marketing, it’s basically it would increase your spam score. So people would think you’re spam the minute you start trying to pitch them. The other piece I would say ends up doing is it causes that confusion piece, which then also discounts you at the very beginning of that call as well.
Aidan: So I’m glad our software doesn’t do that because—
Rob: Yeah, plus they can’t return the phone call to it because it’s not your number.
Aidan: Exactly, and the thing about it is, it starts to call out in my opinion a very dishonest fashion, pretending like you’re a local person, and that’s no way to kind of start any sales deal. The first thing you got to do to them is lie to them? Does not seem like a good way to start out any type of business deal. So we don’t associate with that, and it’s not effective on top of it.
08:04 | Signs You Need a Better Calling System
Rob: So, what do you think—if you were to say that, you know, the top five things that are for sure signs that someone needs to put a system like yours in for calling out, what would you say those five things are?
Aidan: Well, I would say if they’re not already maxed out on leads, that’s probably the main thing. Because this is just primarily like a lead generation tool. If you have the people and you also have the capacity to take out more leads, and your current systems in place are not generating like enough leads for you, like there’s no easy way to scale them, that you’re just looking for an alternative. Because there’s a lot of people who have systems which may be working for them, whether it’s Facebook ads, whether it’s Google ads, whether it’s, you know, cold email and stuff like that.
Aidan: But the issue with all these systems right is that Facebook ads could change tomorrow and change up all their rules in terms of like, you know, what types of ads they allow. You know, cold email, Microsoft or Google come out tomorrow, make a new rule and stuff. But the cool thing about cold calling is, well, there are changes occasionally, there aren’t that many changes. So you can more or less get a guaranteed source of leads.
09:24 | Cold Calling as a Backup Lead Source
Aidan: And I would say especially now that’s almost a necessity for most businesses that they need to have like a backup. Because you got to look at, like, this—what’s the cost of having no leads for you? Like how much money are you losing? So that’s the way I look at it. So if you’re able to take on more leads and you want an alternative to your current setup as like a backup, which I highly recommend, because if you don’t have it, you’re essentially losing out on money.
Rob: Well, I think call—I think making phone calls in there fits into the organic piece. We push organic marketing all the time with our systems at Simply Be Found. It’s the biggest thing we do.
10:11 | How Calling Fits into Organic Marketing
Rob: We describe everything as being inside of a tree kind of concept. I don’t know if you’ve watched any of our videos as far as the tree concept goes, but you have your organic piece, which is give you all your listings, your citations, everywhere that you can be found as a root base. Your website’s going to be that tree trunk, and that’s going to be just your basis of where you can send somebody to, what’s going to be kind of that core. So you have that root structure that’s going to stabilize everything. Your website’s going to be the core, that’s what’s going to drive traffic to the website because I see a lot of people that don’t drive traffic to their sites. And then you have branches at the top, and a lot of times we talk about those branches being your blog, being your social media, being your video marketing. It might be your, you know, your pay-per-click campaigns, which I think are dying faster than they’re surviving.
Rob: And I would almost—and it’s something I haven’t brought up inside of any of our pretty much any of our huddles yet—is that phone piece. Because if you have, for one, if you have a sales team, you have to keep them full, and phone calls is definitely a part of that. And sometimes it’s a matter of, you know, your follow-up calls, it could be your cold calls, it could be everything mixed into that. That’s a very organic approach, and it’s an old school approach.
11:27 | From Yellow Pages to AI: The Cold Call Journey
Rob: I come from an era of doing those types of things and working in a phone room for that. I did for a little bit and training people how to do those sales calls is—I mean, we were using yellow pages back in the day. That was our lead source. We literally would go page by page by page and cross them off as we call them, because the data points didn’t exist back in the 90s like they do now. I think it’s gotten a lot smarter. What do you think the biggest changes that have come from where it was, say, in the 90s or early 2000s to where it is now? How has AI kind of changed that call area?
Aidan: Major differences. So the first one is like back in 1990, the average pickup rate was anywhere from like 30 to 40% typically. Like people would just pick up numbers typically.
12:05 | Decline in Pickup Rates & Spam Labeling
Aidan: Now, now you’re down to way lower numbers. So if you’re calling a landline, you’re getting like anywhere from 1 to 2% on average for pickup rate. So like massive difference there. Mobile numbers are sort of the new landline in a way, in terms like you get higher pickup rates, but even then you’re only getting like a 10% pickup rate.
Aidan: And there’s these all these new factors which didn’t exist back then. For example, there’s new things like Truecaller. Like there’s ways you can actually—I don’t know if you’ve ever gotten a phone call which is like “spam likely”—there’s all these new types of things that didn’t exist back then. There was no such thing as a “spam likely.” Every single number is a potential prospect or whatever. But now there’s all these different providers like checking, “Is this number spam?” And it’s much, much easier than in the past to be even labeled as spam. So like even over like the last few years, it’s like you got to be more careful with your numbers. You can’t just dial a thousand people with your single phone. You will be labeled as spam, and no one’s going to answer your phone calls after that point.
Rob: Well, it is. And I agree with you on that. I mean, I come from—I go all the way back to the world of when I first started.
13:14 | Mobile Numbers vs Landlines
Rob: You know, if I go back to the very beginning and where I kind of did some of that, I mean, heck, we didn’t even really have Caller ID. And then Caller ID came out, and you had to pay extra for it. But you also had, you know, 10-10-220 and all these different numbers you had to call because you had to pay for long distance. When I worked for AOL and HP, you still had to make a long-distance phone call into them, or you had to pay per minute. And I think you still took credit cards to where you had to pay for support. And the world of all of that has changed for the whole entire, you know, telecom world.
Rob: When you are making phone calls with your software, do you give them a number, or can they use their existing number? How does that work?
Aidan: So we have access to like hundreds of different numbers. So the way it has to be done now is we have like a bunch of different numbers which are essentially rotating.
14:01 | How the Rotating Number System Works
Aidan: Meaning that if someone were to hypothetically call back, let’s say they didn’t answer the phone, you get what’s called an inbound call. And the cool thing is about our system is they can automatically answer that thing. So they have access to all 100 of those numbers, which are basically just rotating. We use 14 numbers at a time in order to not burn them out, but they’re constantly switching out. We have 100 like different ones. And when someone calls back, they can answer immediately. And like they don’t have to click any, pray like special buttons or anything like that. They automatically just get connected on the phone. And I would say typically speaking, about 10% of calls with our system are actually just inbound calls and people just calling back because they think they missed the number and stuff like that. So that’s how that works.
Rob: How long does that number stay with them for being able to have that call back before it goes to someone new on the rotation?
Aidan: It never goes to someone new. Those numbers are associated with them forever.
Rob: So as long as they have an account with you, they’ll stay with them.
Aidan: Correct. Yeah. So I mean, as long as—the key thing is is about receiving inbound calls, to be very clear, is we have like a dashboard. Everything is done in like the cloud.
14:50 | Real-Time Call Queueing and Inbound Handling
Aidan: So they have to actually be logged into that dashboard to be clear and to be dialing to actually receive that call. If they are not logged into the dashboard, it’s just going to go like straight to voicemail or something like that, and they won’t be able to answer their phone. So they have to be logged into the dashboard. That’s the reason why we always recommend, you know, having like agents logged in.
Aidan: But typically people are calling back—they call back really quickly. It’s usually within like a 10 to 15 minute time frame. People rarely call back like seven, eight hours later within like a normal time frame, what the cold caller would be doing anyway.
Rob: Perfect. And so when you’re going through and you’re doing all of that, what statistics are you able to provide them inside of your reporting?
15:33 | What Call Analytics and Stats You Get
Aidan: A lot of statistics. So for one, like how many calls were actually picked up, what percentage of people were like not interested, what percentage of people were interested—all these different factors which you’d look for. And also like you could even compare. So let’s just say someone wants to come on with us like with multiple agents, you could compare them like in terms of like, “Oh, this one was only able to convert like 20% of these people into actual leads, and this other guy was able to do more.” And you can kind of look into that, and you can listen to these actual calls and figure out, “Oh, this guy is saying—he’s going completely off script. He’s not even following our structure at all.” Like things like that happen all the time.
Aidan: And there’s—we even offer a feature, like most people don’t use it, but you have technically the option to jump in and listen to like a live call of like one of your agents to see like what they’re doing. I typically don’t see that necessarily as needed because you can always just go back later on in your free time and just listen to the recordings and what’s going on.
Rob: What do you think one of the most hidden features inside of your system is—that’s not really hidden, but underused pieces that people should be taking more advantage of?
16:53 | Underused Feature: Data Quality
Aidan: I mean, I still think it goes back to like actual reports. Most people just log into our system, just start dialing. And I would say rather than necessarily a feature, I would say it kind of goes back to data. Most people don’t understand the crucial aspect of data. So they’re calling numbers, and there still isn’t—there’s still putting in landline numbers and stuff like that. So we have to come back to them later, be like, “Hey, you know, like you could be getting a way higher pickup rate, way more people talking to you if you just use cell phone numbers and stuff.”
Aidan: So that sometimes comes as a shock factor to some people. I’m starting to think like maybe we should even include that within like initial onboarding document, that like we highly recommend doing cell phone numbers because the landlines just don’t cut it anymore. It’s just going to take way longer.
Rob: Well, I mean, there’s so much that comes to data quality. Data quality is huge. We deal with that on our side.
18:00 | Why Mobile Data = Gold for Outreach
Rob: I mean, I’ve got access to billions of records as far as all that same data, and especially in the B2B world with what’s inside of there. And that data quality score, no matter how you’re using it, is everything. I would say probably data is almost like the new version of gold when it comes to running your business, because there’s so much data that can be done. No matter if you’re using that data for cold calls, if you’re using it for email marketing, social media marketing, retarget marketing, there’s so many different pieces that you can use that for.
Rob: And I think there’s a lot of businesses that don’t understand you can go out and you can get data that is good quality data. And that’s how most of these calls are happening. They’re happening from data calls, and it’s how you use that call and what you structure that call with that’s going to be able to make and break it.
19:13 | The Power of Accurate Contact Info
Rob: I see a lot of different, you know, pieces, especially in the B2B world, where people are making phone calls and they’re saying, “Hey, this isn’t being found,” but they don’t know the real data piece inside of there. Well, that’s going to hurt you because it’s that fear piece. I don’t think you necessarily have to go the fear side for phone calls and marketing, but I see a lot of businesses kind of doing that. What’s your opinion on that piece?
Aidan: Are you talking about those robocalls where they try to scare people into like buying stuff, or like what?
Rob: More like calling up and being—so I’ve seen scripts, a lot of our listeners are all about the voice search piece because we do a huge piece inside of voice search. They get a lot of calls as far as voice search goes.
20:05 | Ethics in Cold Calling: No Fear-Based Scripts
Rob: And a lot of those guys take the approach of—I refer to it as almost being almost like the guy in Vegas that’s doing the timeshare approach. But they’ll start off and they’ll be like, “Hey, you’re not being found on this kind of network.” And then I go, “Well, what business? I have multiple businesses. I don’t know that data point.” Well, it’s like—well, it’s a disconnect. Just be honest, be like, “Hey, I have your list here. I don’t know what business you are.” You don’t have to fear me into being able to buy a product because that’s going to hurt you.
Aidan: Exactly. Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, one of the cool things is about like what we do is you get access to all those data points. So hypothetically speaking, if someone wants to go down that route, they would actually have access to all of that data at like their fingertips because you can upload the list with like their first name, last name, company name, website, LinkedIn, all that details you already have. You could upload a CSV and see all those details already, so you wouldn’t necessarily have to guess.
21:00 | Overcoming Objections and “Send Me an Email”
Aidan: But if you don’t have access to that data, I would definitely not make up stuff. Because I’ve seen people call like, “Hey, there’s something wrong with your Google My Business listing,” when you actually have no idea that there’s something wrong with the Google My Business listing. And that actually just causes a distrust factor and just ticks people off unnecessarily. And then people start asking like, “Who are you?” and like all this like questions like, “How did you get my number?” All those like standard questions. “Just send me an email.”
Aidan: There’s so many different things which people shoot back at them. I think a lot of these, a lot of especially new cold callers give up on these objections very easily. Like they actually—it blows my mind, but they actually take the time and send these people an email, and they’re never going to respond back to these emails. And we have the statistics to back that up. Like 90%, 95% of emails sent to people who say, “Send me an email,” do not reply. So it’s simply not even worth your time.
Rob: I would see that. I haven’t seen any numbers on that, but I would probably be guessing at that for numbers.
22:12 | Reducing No-Show Rates on Sales Calls
Rob: What do you recommend for someone to use in that type of scenario as a script? Do you coach people on how, what to do inside of their script or do any of that?
Aidan: Yeah, definitely. I mean, what we typically advise when people say like “send me an email” is we’re like, “Well, I mean, John” or whatever their name is, “typically what we see is if we send out an email, no one’s going to really respond back. So if this is something you’re really interested in, what I’d recommend just doing is getting on a short 10, 15 minute Zoom call so that way we can kind of go through this more stuff.” And that usually just kind of avoids objection. Sometimes people say something like, “Well, just send me an email. I’m busy.” Like, “I understand you’re busy, but if this is something you’re serious about doing, it’s just a 10 to 15 minute conversation. There’s no cost involved. You just need to go on the call.”
Aidan: And if someone still insists like, “Hey, like just send me an email,” I would just kind of move on. It’s really just not worth it at that point. But most people, most people at this point will usually just set up the time. And then usually, and another key factor which I’ve seen is like the no-show factor, right? Like what percentage of people actually show up to these calls?
23:10 | Prequalifying and Setting Genuine Appointments
Aidan: And a key fact to show they actually show up to the call is like, if once you give a time, is like asking them like, “Is this 100% like a time which you can make it? Like, is there anything which could come up which could prevent you from showing up to this call?” and getting their yes to that. Because otherwise you’re just a random guy who just happened to cold call them, and they don’t really feel like any need to actually show up at this random time.
Rob: You got to build rapport.
Aidan: Exactly, exactly. You need to build some rapport, and it needs to be something which is actually of interest. Like sometimes people will agree to be on calls—we’ve noticed just to get someone off the phone—they have actually have zero intent of actually showing up to the call. So making sure that there’s like a genuine interest. And typically speaking, again, this depends on the offer, but it helps sometimes to even give like a price quote or qualify them to a certain extent to make sure that they even are fit and someone even wants to be on an actual call.
23:56 | Can You Handoff Calls Between Agents?
Rob: Now, do you guys inside of your system do handoffs as well? So if someone pre-qualifies somebody, they can hand them off to the next person, or does your system do that?
Aidan: I mean, yes, we can do that. Yeah, we could also do like the handoff system and stuff, but that requires like an additional fee if someone wants to be able to do that. But yes, we do have those capabilities.
Rob: Okay. And it’s one of those things to where I find it interesting to where everything has kind of went inside of that cold call area and where everything is. I think AI is going to make some big changes in that area. I don’t even think we’ve even hit the top of the iceberg when it comes to that. So what’s your opinion on AI doing the phone call and being the person on the other side?
24:42 | AI in Cold Calling: What’s Legal, What’s Not
Aidan: Yeah, right now—what’s your prediction there? I don’t think anything’s going to happen because it’s illegal. It’s like around like last year it was outlawed. And it’s because there was a time where robocalls were happening all the time, and people getting sick of them. Like me personally, I was getting like 10 plus AI robocall calls like every single day. And they made it illegal. I find very substantial, and I don’t find that likely to go back because I find people like to talk to people, and they don’t want to talk to another AI on the phone.
Aidan: And the issue is right now, especially with AI, let’s just say you for some weird reason be like, “Okay, I don’t care what’s illegal. I’m gonna do it anyway,” which is how some of these scammers think. Even if you had that thought process, it still wouldn’t work because of all the latency factors where if you say something and the person responds back, they’re like waiting like five seconds. And that’s not a human aspect, even if you reduce it.
Aidan: There’s always certain things which the AI says which just don’t sound normal. It just sounds weird. Like you can even ask it a question. Like sometimes people, people are smarter than you think sometimes in this regard. Like they’ll ask questions like, “Are you ChatGPT?” And the thing was like, “Yes, I’m powered by Open AI.” Doesn’t know any better.
Rob: So I’ve built AI systems, and I have a whole AI system where it’s ChatGPT, Open AI. So it’s actual ChatGPT version, then Open AI’s API, plus it has Claude, plus it has Gemini, plus it has—man, I just totally lost track of which one that one is. It’s Elon Musk’s one, but it—
Aidan: Grok.
Rob: Grok. Yes. I have them all to where they can talk to one another. So I’ll ask a question. I’ll let them defend it and start asking questions to each other. And there’s times I’ve seen it, because I can see their whole entire thinking pattern, it’ll go, “I should probably not say this, but I don’t want to lie.” And it’s like, that’s just to a whole new creepy level.
Rob: But I mean, it’s one of those things to where that is where that thought process is. And I don’t think that AI—I mean, I think the spam people are probably gonna do a ton of it to where they’re going to act like it’s a human, but it’s going to come—it’s not going to get them the results they’re looking for. But some of those spam guys, it only takes one a day, and they’re making bank because they’re over in some country that it’s so little to be able to survive.
Rob: So I mean, I think it’s going to be a kind of a change there. What do you think AI is going to bring that’s going to be good that you guys are looking at for your guys’ system?
26:42 | Future Features: Transcription & Smart Pitching
Aidan: So our system, like what we’re going to be using, for example, in the future is we’re going to be adding like AI transcription. So like when you get a recording, you’ll be able to see like an exact transcription of like what happened the call. We’re also going to be adding like further details so that way when you go on a call, it will actually give an overview of who that prospect is in terms of like, this is what we recommend on exactly how to pitch this person based on their exact ICP. And we pull that information off of like the LinkedIn.
Aidan: So that’s one way which we can see like AI being beneficial and kind of going alongside with like cold calling. But in terms of like the actual AI, like AI voice talking to people, I don’t necessarily believe that will take off necessarily because there was a time where, again, like there was this massive thing, and most of the people who are using that were complete scam artists. And they disappeared because I think even them, they have a bit of fear.
28:03 | AI and Content Repurposing Opportunities
Aidan: Because those Indian scam call centers, even though they don’t necessarily always like get taken out immediately, they do have a bit of fear because if you pinpoint the exact IP and location, you get enough people complaining, the Indian police sometimes does step in—not always, but sometimes steps in and dismantles an entire operation, forcing them to start at square one, which is something they don’t really want. And if they can have like actual people—like there’s a reason why all those scam call centers right now are still using real people. It’s because it’s too obvious, at least right now, that if you were to have like an AI calling, that they would just get too many reports. And eventually like it would just be the end for the little system.
Rob: So being able to do the AI transcription piece—I talk about content repurposing all of the time, and I think that’s a major part of your organic piece. And a lot of times there’s problems you solve that you don’t necessarily think about, but you do it so commonly, so often you don’t even think about it.
Rob: I use the example of a garage door guy that, you know, was a member of ours, and his biggest thing that he sells garage doors for and gates is mice getting into the control boxes and eating the wires. And it causes miscommunication between all the information there to open the gate and all that different stuff. Well, he never thought about this. So his whole entire aha moment was when we were coaching him to be able to, you know, look at what those calls are, start going after every job, record a video and about the job you just bidded on, and then when you get the job, go through and record, you know, just a bit about the job you did. Showcase it. Don’t even have to show your face on that one and kind of go through and just be able to use that because it’s going to give you your social media, it’s going to give you your blog content, it’s going to give you all that content.
29:34 | Using Call Data for SEO & Training
Rob: Well, you could almost do that same organic strategy based on your transcriptions of these calls as well to where if you pulled enough data points inside of there, you could almost build it to where it’s building, you know, “These are the problems, these are some blog titles you should be thinking about, and here’s some content strategies based on that data point.”
Rob: I think that would be an absolute awesome area to be able to take your cold calling to the next level because now you’re gonna be able to talk about those points, and that’s going to help you on being able to drive traffic to your website with that SEO basis, because now you’re talking about what people are really experiencing.
Aidan: Exactly, and you can also—well, I have thought about it. Yes, definitely. And the cool thing is is that you can—you could take that information, right? Like once we have that, and you take that information and almost tailor your pitch accordingly.
Aidan: If you know like a certain objection is going to come up, you could potentially prevent it in your exact wording, because certain people say the exact same thing over and over, causing the exact same objection over and over. But if you could prevent that objection from happening to begin with, that’s like the best case scenario.
Rob: Well, and it brings up a whole entire training module for you guys to be able to train over to your customers, your clients, members, or whatever you call them. Because now you know what those objections are, now you can say, “Hey, here’s your top objections.” Now they can train their actual—their whole entire sales team on how to handle those objections, and they can go through their play a lot better. I agree on that. I think that’s an awesome spot that you’re headed to.
Aidan: Yeah, yeah. And we’ll also be adding some additional features like text, email, and stuff like that added to there.
30:50 | Text, Email & Add-ons—Why Most Don’t Use Them
Aidan: But what we have seen is like some of these additional features, like let’s just call them like add-ons, tend to not be used. I’ve seen this from like firsthand experience. You can add on all these like SMS, email, social media integrations and stuff. Most people, when they log into the system, they’re just going to click the dial button. It’s going to start dialing. They’re not going to use this. And I’ve had like agents who try to use like five assists, doing these things 95 or 97% just don’t touch them at all.
Aidan: So we’re going to be adding these things on just for, you know, the people who actually want to use those capabilities. But the most important thing is just to be on the phone. And I think that’s actually a scary factor for like a lot of people, like to get on the phone.
31:44 | Why Being on the Phone Improves Sales Skills
Aidan: But it actually improves sales skills quite a bit to be on cold calls because you’re used to being in uncomfortable situations. So I would say it’s a great way to bring people into your organization. It’s very, very old school. I see all these things out there talking about how like cold calling is dead. And my response to that is maybe the old ways of doing cold calling is dead.
Aidan: If you’re still calling landlines and you’re still manually picking up your phone and calling them, yeah, that might not be very profitable. Like I know a couple people still do that.
32:19 | Old School Cold Calling vs Smart Dialing
Aidan: But rather than like, so within seven hours of work, typically what I’m seeing is people are sketching like one call, not very effective. However, if they’re able to talk to like 55 people an hour, then it just becomes like a numbers game. With our software, people are able to talk to people—virtually 55, 60 people an hour, which is way faster than being able to talk to like five people or three people an hour, which is typical if you’re just manually doing it.
Rob: And do you guys have—are you guys just a desktop app or do you guys have a mobile phone app as well?
Aidan: We’re working on that right now. It’s just like, it’s a pain in the butt to do.
Rob: The mobile apps are a pain in the butt.
33:02 | Desktop App vs Mobile App Debate
Aidan: Yeah, yeah. I’m also a strong believer that the types of customers which we’re attracting, they’re usually with like a headset, and, you know, they have all their equipment set up on their computer already. And if you’re really dialed in like as an actual cold caller, you should be on your computer that way you can see all the data easily versus on a mobile device.
Aidan: I can’t imagine you could be as focused on like looking at this tiny screen. It just doesn’t scream out “optimized” for me, which is why all like the major, major callers in the world, they all like using computers. None of them are using cell phones because it just doesn’t work as well.
Rob: That makes sense. That makes sense. And if anybody wants to be able to find you and be able to, you know, looking to be able to increase their business by doing more cold calls and making it more efficient, how would they find you?
33:45 | How to Contact Aidan Sowa & Zodto
Aidan: They can find me on—well, the Zodto website I would say is the best way to just kind of reach out, to be able to find out. Like there’s the info@zodto.com. That’s the best way to reach out.
Rob: Perfect. And is there anything else you’d like to cover on today’s huddle at all?
34:05 | Final Thoughts and Thank You
Aidan: No, I mean, I think we’ve covered a lot. In terms of—I think that’s a lot. Everything I go through my brain is kind of already stuff I covered. So I’m like, all right.
Rob: But I really, I really truly appreciate you being on as a guest today, and I appreciate it.
Aidan: Yeah, no problem. Thank you so much.
