On a recent episode of The Sales Hunter Podcast, Mark Hunter sat down with Art Sobczak, author of Smart Calling, to break down what’s really working in prospecting today, and why so much of the sales world is getting it wrong.
Stop Apologizing for Prospecting
Prospecting isn’t something to apologize for. Art Sobczak says too many reps use permission-based openers or weak apologetic language, begging for time instead of owning their value. Calling a stranger doesn’t mean you owe them an apology.
“Let’s know something about the people who we’re calling. Then when we do that, let’s modify our message so that it is relevant and about the other person so that they’ll lean in and be curious, because now they feel like there’s potentially something in it for them,” Art Sobczak explained.
Sales people should approach every call knowing the difference they can make for a prospect, not feeling like an unwelcome interruption.
The Basics Still Win…Not Shortcut Tactics
The fundamentals of human psychology haven’t changed, even if sales tactics have. Modern sales teams get distracted chasing automation, hacks, or the next shiny outreach tool. As Art Sobczak pointed out, real success starts with doing the actual work: knowing your audience, personalizing outreach, and sticking to a proven process.
The temptation to “just make more calls” or rely on numbers is ever-present. But, as both Art and Mark agreed, the idea that more activity alone equals more results is a myth. Quality is what gets results.
“You can hand a script or some messaging or email templates or AI or whatever to somebody and say, here, use this. But chances are it’s going to fail miserably,” Art Sobczak cautioned.
Identity Drives Success in Prospecting
The best reps operate from a strong sense of identity and integrity. If a salesperson doesn’t believe in what they’re selling, pretending otherwise harms both the rep and the customer. Unethical tactics and insincerity create the negative perceptions that plague sales today.
“If you’re selling something you don’t believe in, you’re lying to two people, you’re lying to yourself, and you’re lying to a prospect or customer.” —Art Sobczak.
Successful prospecting starts with the belief that the product or service genuinely helps people and that time spent with the rep will be valuable for the prospect.
How to Open the Call and Win Attention
The first 20 seconds of any sales call makes or breaks the conversation. Wasting that real estate with apologies or generic pitches is the fastest way to become forgettable.
Instead, Art Sobczak recommends structuring a call opener with these steps:
- Introduction: State who you are and where you’re from.
- Connection Phrase: Reference something specific and relevant about the prospect or their company.
- Possible Value Proposition (PVP): Make an educated hypothesis about the potential value you offer.
- Conversation Question: Invite participation by asking if you can ask a couple of questions relevant to their situation.
This approach shifts the dynamic. Rather than triggering resistance with “this is a cold call,” a rep signals that they’ve done their homework and that the conversation could be worthwhile.
“Would you rather have somebody in a positive, receptive, curious, leaning in frame of mind, or the person’s going, okay, here comes another call and they’re rolling their eyes?” —Art Sobczak
Quality Over Quantity Every Time
Leaders who demand more dials without focusing on the quality of calls are missing the point. Ten personalized, intentional calls will always outperform 50 irrelevant, automated ones. It’s not about just reaching people, but about achieving real objectives—starting worthwhile conversations and building momentum.
“Are you trying to just reach out to people? Or are you trying to accomplish objectives?” —Art Sobczak
Appointment Setting Needs a Rethink
Some sales models still reward reps for simply booking meetings, regardless of quality. That’s a broken process. The real goal is to set great appointments where prospects are genuinely interested, engaged, and bringing others into the conversation.
The handoff between sales roles should be a “handoff of momentum,” not just another calendar invite for another demo. Otherwise, both the prospect and the next sales rep are set up for frustration and disappointment.
Takeaways for Sales Pros
- Stop apologizing for prospecting. Bring value and believe in your message.
- Put in the research to personalize every call.
- Master your opening to spark curiosity, not resistance.
- Focus on quality conversations, not call volume.
- Always operate from a place of integrity.
Prospecting isn’t just a numbers game. It’s about building relationships one intentional, value-driven conversation at a time. That’s what sets great salespeople apart.
Mark Hunter :
Prospecting is not something you need to apologize for. Hey, it’s time that we talk about what prospecting is and really about how to do it. With me today, Art Subject, he’s the author of Smart Calling. Nobody smarter than he to talk about prospecting. And the show begins right now.
Art Sobczak :
You’re listening to the Sales Hunter podcast with Mark Hunter, where the focus is to help you as a salesman, sell with confidence and integrity. And now here’s your. Your heads.
Mark Hunter :
Nobody has talked to, has really listened in on more sales calls, talked to more salespeople than this gentleman. Art Subject, welcome to the show.
Art Sobczak :
Mark. Thank you so much for having me on. And actually, I might rebut what you just said there, because there probably are people out there that have listened to more sales calls, and there may be people more qualified than me. And actually, unlike some people out there, I don’t claim to have invented prospecting, but I did come up with and modify a methodology that’s helped a lot of people do it.
Mark Hunter :
Well, hey, let’s cut to the chase right now. You modified. You truly did. You got some really strong feelings regarding prospecting. So jump in. Why don’t you share one of them, and we’ll just see how long this podcast goes.
Art Sobczak :
Well, how many hours do we have?
Mark Hunter :
I don’t know. It’s up to the listening audience to tell us.
Art Sobczak :
Well, I mean, we’ve had numerous discussions about this, and you mentioned my book, Smart Calling. Thank you for. For that. I first wrote that, and it actually first came out in 2011, hit number one on Amazon, stayed there for about a month or so. And basically the premise is, for anybody not familiar, is let’s know something about the people who were calling. And then when we do that, let’s modify our message so that it is relevant and about the other person so that they’ll lean in and be curious, because now they feel like there’s potentially something in it for them. I know. Minds are exploding right now, right? What a novel concept.
Mark Hunter :
It is a novel concept because so many people just throw out so many emails. How many emails, how many messages can they send out? Zero. Zero personalization, zero knowledge about anybody. And yet they do it. And they wonder why they don’t get anybody to respond. So let’s start breaking this down. Where have we, the sales community, gone wrong? And how will Art Subject bring us back to the promised land of making prospecting what it can be?
Art Sobczak :
Well, I don’t know if I’m going to bring us back to the. To the promised land, but maybe get Back to the basics, the fundamentals of what has always worked and what will continue to work because let’s face it, the human brain really hasn’t changed for I don’t know how many thousands of years. Right? But yet I guess there’s people out there that think that now we need to do something new and different and automate things and look for the next new shiny object. When bottom line, I mentioned when I first wrote the book, it was based on that very simple premise which I had been teaching actually for years, but then finally agreed to do a book with a publishing company with whole nother story there because I had self published for about 20 years, but thought this would be a great way to get the message out to more people. And that certainly worked. And then since then, we revised. They wanted me to do new book and I said, let’s just revise this one with more updated examples. I mean, the message itself really hasn’t changed, but now we even have more examples from people that are doing it.
Art Sobczak :
And I think what we’re seeing today, Mark, not. I think I know what we’re seeing today is what we both have seen over our entire career. And that’s people looking for shortcuts, looking for the next shiny object, looking for the next hack or trick or easy button or magic phrase that is going to somehow be a shortcut to doing the actual work. And the actual work is following a proven framework and process, knowing something about the people that we’re calling so that we can make our messaging relevant and then refining our skills. Our skills being how are we going to actually execute our performance? Because as, as anybody who’s been doing this for a while well knows that sales is part science. So we got the psychology and we got the brain science and all those things, and then it’s part art, no pun intended, it’s part performance. And we go ahead.
Mark Hunter :
No, no, I want you to keep breaking this down. You, you were on a roll. Go.
Art Sobczak :
And. And really anybody who is truly great at this works on both of those. I mean, there’s so many different disciplines that are required to be excellent at in order to be excellent at the entire craft. And I mean, words are one thing and we do need to have the right words. And we can go off, and I can go off on a rant on a lot of the messaging and words that are being used right now, the many of which are just laughable. But then also the very, very important part is the delivery and our tone. And all of that actually comes from something that you have written about a couple different times, your mind for sales book and your integrity book. And it gets to the essence of really what is most important for us as salespeople, and that is our, our identity.
Art Sobczak :
Who are we as salespeople? Because let’s face it, you can hand a script or some messaging or email templates or AI or whatever to somebody and say, here, use this. But chances are it’s going to fail miserably. It’s like handing a gym membership to somebody who is overweight, eats horribly and really doesn’t care about their health because they’re not the person who’s going to do what it takes in order to get the results that they probably want. But we got to be that person first. So there’s, there’s so many things that, that are involved in this. And I think what we’re seeing today, again, I can go off on so many different tangents here. A lot of this we can blame on leadership and management. And for some, I, I guess they don’t know any better because maybe they were thrust into a position where they had no experience or training at leadership.
Art Sobczak :
And maybe their manager said that, well, in order to get better results, make more calls, we need more numbers. Right? It’s a numbers game. For every, every no you get, you’re that much closer to a yes. Which is absolutely ridiculous by the way. I mean that, that just roll my eyes when I hear that. It’s like telling a basketball player, hey, just every time you get the ball, take a shot. I don’t care where you are on the floor because the more shots you put up, the more you’re going to make. Coach, what if we never get across a half court line? I don’t care.
Art Sobczak :
Just give me more shots. I can see you laughing over there.
Mark Hunter :
You have visually disturbed quite a few people there because again, it is. So many people say it’s just a numbers game. Got to make more calls, got to make more calls. But I want to break this down because what happens if you’re selling something that you really just don’t believe in? Can you be successful?
Art Sobczak :
Well, you probably can, but I would suggest that you get another job.
Mark Hunter :
Oh, thank you for, thank you for just saying it right there. I thank you because again, that’s what I tell people. Look it. But, but isn’t it about helping people?
Art Sobczak :
Yeah. Well, if you’re selling something you don’t believe in, you’re lying to two people, you’re lying to yourself, and you’re lying to a prospect or customer. So where’s the win in that. I mean, and there are people who know that what they’re doing is not correct or ethical or in the best in, in it’s, it’s not the best interest for the customer, but yet they’re doing it anyway because there’s a commission check at the end. And again, you wrote an entire book about that. That is no way to sell. And to me, if there’s anything that’s in the gray area in any aspect of selling, you shouldn’t be doing it. And there’s so many places where that is applicable.
Art Sobczak :
Like for example, using the phone, not giving complete information to an assistant. Some people call them a screener, which I think that is negative gatekeeper. I like to call them assistants. But when they ask what the call’s in reference to, if we’re not giving them a value oriented answer and instead we’re being deceptive or evasive or not giving complete information, I mean, that to me is no way to sell. And that’s actually part of the reason why unfortunately, sales has a stigma attached to it because the people that are pulling our profession down instead of bringing us up, and don’t get me wrong, there are, we both in our careers have met some tremendous salespeople who have delivered so much value to their customers and have lifted up our profession. But on the other side, there are still people out there who are doing the sleazy, slimy or uninformed things that are giving salespeople a bad name. I mean, just go look at LinkedIn and I can barely, I can, I can barely handle going on there anymore because to me, it’s just so frustrating with the, with the, all the, all the garbage and, and what, what is turned into is basically turned into Facebook. But I mean, there are people who are actually suggesting some of these shady tactics.
Art Sobczak :
But then on the other hand, you have prosp saying I will never respond to a cold outreach or a salesperson. And you know, part of me is, yeah, I’m mad at that, but I’m also mad that salespeople have created that because they just haven’t done the work to do what it takes in order to get the result that they’re looking for. And really it’s not that hard to do things right. Right.
Mark Hunter :
Yeah. Okay, let’s start giving the audience what are some of those things that they need to do. Right? Because again, we’ve created a cesspool. I mean, unfortunately we, the sales committee. And you’re right, there’s a lot of bad tactics, A lot of bad Strategies. And you know what’s funny? You bring up the, the person who’s selling for the pro, you know, selling the product that they don’t believe in. Chances are they’re surrounded by people in that company who also don’t believe in it. And they’re, they’re, they’re the shady people.
Mark Hunter :
I mean, again, it’s amazing how garbage attracts garbage. Ooh, it’s scary. So let’s get into it. Let’s unpack this. What are some of those tactics? What are some of those things that people should be doing if you want to be prospecting? Right.
Art Sobczak :
Well, let me, let me break down. And I don’t even know how we reach this point, but I think part of it is due to. And again, I mentioned identity before. I think there are a number of people out there who are now in sales or SDR or BDR positions that feel like what they have is not valuable enough to warrant somebody’s time. So therefore, they revert to apologetic type language. And now it has a term, permission based openers. And I’ve changed that to permission begging openers because you’re basically begging for somebody’s time. And I haven’t done this yet, but I got to find it.
Art Sobczak :
Remember the movie Wayne’s World where Wayne and Garth meets? I can’t remember. I think it was, maybe it was. Oh, it was Alice Cooper where they, they met Alice Cooper. And when they met Alice Cooper, they start going, we’re not worthy. We’re not worthy. And essentially, I think that’s what a lot of salespeople are doing when they call up and they say things like, hey, you don’ Know me. You weren’t expecting my time. I know this is an interruption.
Art Sobczak :
This is probably the last thing that you wanted today. This is a cold call. If you want to hang up in 20 seconds, go ahead. And basically, what are all those things screaming out? They’re screaming out a couple things. Number one, this is a, this is a cold call. Which, by the way, if you look at the list of things that people probably would least like to be subjected to, a cold call would be right at the top of the list. And I define a cold call as somebody calling somebody who wasn’t expecting your call and the caller knows nothing about the person they’re calling, and they’re giving everybody essentially the same pitch, and then they’re pretty much wasting the most valuable real estate of that entire call, which is the first 20 seconds where they’re apologizing for calling. So what’s already going through this person’s mind, and this is based on brain science.
Art Sobczak :
It’s not based on an anecdote. What’s. Because the brain has already made probably about 10,000 calculations in about 2 milliseconds, and now they have shifted into, okay, this is not going to be a pleasant experience. This is going to be a cold call. Even if they stay on the phone, which some people will. Right, but would you rather have somebody in a positive, receptive, curious, leaning in frame of mind, or the person’s going, okay, here comes another call and they’re rolling their eyes. Right. So all of that is.
Art Sobczak :
They’re unforced errors, to use some sports terminology here, because you’re basically creating the resistance in the first couple seconds. So what should we be doing? Well, I firmly believe that the first 10 seconds, first 20 seconds of a call you’re opening has two objectives. Number one, let’s put somebody in a positive, receptive state of mind. Because if you think about it again from a brain science perspective, a call comes in, I don’t know who it is. I don’t recognize caller id, what frame of mind is somebody in? They’re probably starting to drift already towards negative. Right. Or maybe at the very best, neutral, because we could probably rule out positive. Because very few are probably saying, oh, boy, somebody I don’t know.
Art Sobczak :
This is going to be great new experiences for me. Probably not. So let’s put them in a positive receptive state of mind. Then. The only other objective, what we’re trying to do here with our opening is get them talking and participating from that positive, receptive state of mind so that they’re leaning in as opposed to trying to push you away. So if we spend the first 10 or 15 seconds apologizing and saying, this is a cold call, you can hang up on me. You weren’t expecting my call. Which, by the way, is Captain Obvious, isn’t it? Again, I just have to shake my head.
Art Sobczak :
And how did we get to this point? Well, I guess if somebody repeats something often enough, then it just kind of becomes more accepted. And in studying this a little bit more, I also believe that it makes the caller feel safe because they can say, okay, it’s a cold call. I’m just getting it out there now. I feel, you know, like I got my warm, cozy blanket here and it’s a cold call. Okay. As opposed to coming in from a peer level, knowing in your mind that based on what I know about my ideal customer profile and who I’m calling and the research I’ve done on this prospect that there’s a possibility I may be able to help them, but I’m not going to be able to tell them exactly how I’m going to help them because they’re not to that point yet. Plus, I don’t know what to say because I haven’t asked my questions yet. So in order to earn the right to ask those questions, we want to make sure we get them in that positive, receptive frame of mind and get them leaning in so that they’re saying, oh, okay, yeah, sure, what do you want to know? And basically my process, the smart calling process for that hasn’t changed much.
Art Sobczak :
I’ve added some more new terminology for it. And technology, by the way, has made it easier for us to do this. It’s not going to do it for us. And certainly there are tools that can help us and refine what you come up with. But it’s your introduction. Hey, Art subject here. With smart calling, step number two is your connection phrase where you’re using some intel that you know about them so that now they’re going to say, oh yeah, they know something about me. And yeah, that’s accurate.
Art Sobczak :
That’s something that we’re working on right now. Or so an example of that might be, hey, I saw that you just recently onboarded 10 new business development reps and I saw a couple of them online looking for some ideas for opening because they said that they weren’t having a whole lot of success yet. Then the third step is your, what I call your PvP, your possible value proposition. Some people call it a value prop, but values only derived out, we can’t engineer it in. So that’s why I call it possible. Then we can make an educated hypothesis, that’s a big word for me, hypothesis about what may be of value to somebody. And so I might say, so, Mark, what we do is we specialize on in helping new teams get up to speed and producing appointments more quickly and doing it confidently using a proven framework and some messaging. And then the end part is simply getting them to the questions.
Art Sobczak :
And I’ve got numerous different ways that we do that, but it’s as simple as. So I like to do is ask you a couple questions to see if a conversation might be worthwhile or like to ask you a couple questions to see how you’re handling this now and if I could provide you some information. So this is, I mean, the hardest decision I want somebody to make at this point is, oh, okay, what do you want to know? As opposed to the people that call up and say, I want to get 20 minutes on your calendar. Which you may as well say, I want to get a thousand dollars out of your wallet.
Mark Hunter :
And yet people do that. People. People do that. And. And people are still out there. I had one today. They tried to put a meeting on my calendar. It’s like, I don’t know.
Mark Hunter :
You. You are not going to get my time. Forget it. It’s not going to happen.
Art Sobczak :
Right.
Mark Hunter :
But when you just. What you just walked through was really a very simple strategy. It’s not hard to do. But here’s the question. This is the pushback I hear. Oh, it takes so long, I just don’t have time. I got to make X number of dials every day. I got to reach out to X number of people.
Mark Hunter :
I don’t have time to do this.
Art Sobczak :
That.
Mark Hunter :
What’s your response to that?
Art Sobczak :
Are you trying to just reach out to people? Are you trying to accomplish objectives?
Mark Hunter :
Bingo. Thank you for answering it. You get to come back and play the bonus round. That’s exactly right. Why don’t people see that?
Art Sobczak :
That’s pretty simple, isn’t it?
Mark Hunter :
It is.
Art Sobczak :
And I mean, you could make 50 calls with no results, or you could make 10 calls with maybe two or three where you have an opportunity with somebody who’s genuinely interested. And by the way, so for all the people out there that are just setting appointments, how many of those are good quality appointments where the person is eager to meet with you and maybe they’ve looped in other people and they’ve told these other people in their organization, hey, I spoke with this guy Mark. He’s really on the ball. I think he’s got something here. It’s really going to help us. We need to probably get Joe involved or we need to get Kathy involved. And, you know, not a lot of that happens because I gotta get the meeting, get off the phone. Because the only reason to place a prospecting call is to set a meeting.
Art Sobczak :
Nothing else. Well, here’s my feeling on that. What’s pretty much the hardest thing to do in all of prospecting? Get somebody on the phone in the first place. Right. So let me get this right. I’m gonna. I’m gonna make a phone call so I can get somebody on the phone so I can get off the phone as soon as possible and set up another meeting.
Mark Hunter :
What part of this doesn’t connect? You know, but. But it is funny how, how I mean, appointment setters. Now, fortunately, that that process is fading quickly, but it’s not fading fast enough because I still see it in too many companies.
Art Sobczak :
Well, I, hey, I get it. There are some sales models where you’ve got the BDR SDR role and their goal is to set up an appointment for somebody else. Hey, I get that. And I think what’s broken in that process is what’s going on in that process. Maybe people who aren’t trained well enough and their only goal is to set the appointment, then they hand it off and then you have somebody who is just looking at this as, oh, it’s just an appointment. I know most of these are not very good and so you’ve got a breakdown. I mean, my feeling would be ideally have people who are more well trained on the front end so that you can take the ball downfield even further so that when you do have a handoff, if that is your model, that you’ve got somebody who is really teeing it up with somebody who is interested and they know what that next meeting is for and they’re interested and eager to do it. As opposed to, oh, I got a 20 minute call on my calendar with some account executive who wants to do a demo with me.
Mark Hunter :
I love that. And what I love about it is you worked in basketball, you worked in football, and you also worked in golf, all in under 22 minutes. Art, you’re brilliant. Hey, we’ve been talking today with Art Subject. He is the author of Smart Calling and his website Smart Calling dot com. I’ll tell you what, you are literally, I think one of the top of the game when it comes to really people understanding how to make calls more effectively. So anyway, thank you for being with us today. What else can you tell us about your book Smart Calling? You’ve got some online courses, right? Got a lot of stuff happening.
Art Sobczak :
Well, actually what I did was I got so fed up with the, you know, just all the garbage that has been perpetuated out there over the last couple years with, with prospecting that I’ve taken the smart calling process and I put it into a master class. I mean a very low price master class. I could be charging a couple hundred bucks for this, but we’re not. And it’s called the first 20 seconds formula where we go into detail on how to do smart calling. So I guarantee at the end of this masterclass, it’s about, I think it’s five, five videos, maybe a couple hours total, you will have an opening that is based on this process that I just went through here with you and I just barely scratched the surface. So we go into the brain science. What works, what doesn’t work. I have some fun.
Art Sobczak :
I make some fun of some things. I give a lot of examples of things that work and word for word, things that do work. And we have actually an AI component as well that goes along with that. It’s actually an upgrade upgrade to it. But people are interested in just taking a look at it. It’s first. First. First 22.
Art Sobczak :
0 first20seconds.com first20seconds.com and I have revived the Smart Calling Report email newsletter. So way back in the day I started publishing a paper newsletter. And for years I had the largest newsletter in, in sales. We published that for almost 30 years. And I frankly got tired of, got a little tired of publishing. And so I’m, I’m coming back off the bench. So there’s another all encompassing sports analogy there. So I’m coming out off the bench and we’ve been publishing this for a few months now, putting out what I believe and other people have told me is, is some tremendous content.
Art Sobczak :
So it’s a Smart Calling report that’s free. Smartcallingreport.com smartcallingreport.com look at all the back issues there. And if you like what you see, go ahead and subscribe.
Mark Hunter :
Art, thank you so much. And of course, his book Smart Calling is in about 18th edition by now. It is. It is that good. Thank you, Art, for being on the show. Hey, you’ve been listening to the Sales Hunter podcast. We do two episodes a week, one like this, where we do a deep dive with a subject matter expert. Second episode is just me with a short single topic where I unpack it.
Mark Hunter :
Why do we do the podcast? Just for one simple reason. To help you see and achieve what you didn’t think was possible. Do me a favor. Leave me a review on your favorite podcast app. Whether it be Apple, whether it be Spotify, whatever. Leave a review because it’s the best way to tell other people about the value of the podcast. I’m Mark Hunter, the sales hunter. Art, thank you for being with us today.
Art Sobczak :
Great, Mark, thank you for having me. Always a pleasure. And thank you for all the great work that you’re doing out there combined. We’ve been doing this for probably, I don’t know, 350 years.
Mark Hunter :
Don’t go there, don’t go there. That’s not safe for everybody involved. Great selling.
Art Sobczak :
All right, thank you, Mark.
