The Actual Wolf of Wallstreet Cold Call Script

This is not the actual sales script. It's a script for the so-called canvassing call. Or so it was called back when I worked in boiler rooms cca. 2007. You hire a bunch of losers pay them no wage and all they do is telemarketing "can I call you with an opportunity?" i.e. you simply pre-qualify people for the real call. You show off some fake credibility, present yourself like a real business and says stuff like 'we only send couple of trade recommendations a year'. Then a week later the real sales guy give the prospect a hyped up call about this once in a lifetime opportunity.

Most people, about 95% making these first calls never make it higher. Either they quickly gather this job is a BS scam or they're too stupid to realize that and that stupidity often prevents them from going higher up. A few cynical ones like the manipulative aspects of it.

The job of a firm is to create illusion of excessive wealth and rockstar lifestyle of these "brokers" (strippers, cocaine, etc.) to attract some kind of talent. Most of the directors are faking the size of their wealth. E.g. coming to job on rented Bentley. They also lie about the nature of the job to hire people for "canvassing" as it doesn't matter how long you stay, if you only deliver 20 leads per first day and quit that's still a win. A bulk of the leads come from people who were tricked into the job and quit asap.

Most people who make it through are the ones cynical enough to stay around, then they harvest work of the ones who quit earlier. E.g. you collect leads, small clients etc. I have a friend who made it far, his lifestyle was just like Wolf of Wallstreet but more excessive. That movie btw. it's watered down - which is hard to believe for most as you'd expect Hollywood to overblow things.

I guess it must work, or they wouldn't keep doing it, but why would anyone entertain a cold caller to any degree? In my experience there's a 0% chance it will be useful or a good deal, and a very high likelyhood it's an outright scam.

I do think it's good to be polite to anyone who calls, but it doesn't matter what they say or ask, the answer is always a polite "Please don't call me again."

Some of the tactics in the script are explained in Never Split the Difference which I highly recommend for sales but especially negotiation (the article author also mentions the book author, Chris Voss).

The sales script doesn’t seem to have anything nefarious really. Just some tactics to keep the call going and typical early sales qualification to move a prospect to the next stage of a pipeline or out of the pipeline. Typical SDR/BDR work. I’d assume what’s said in later stages is more juicy.

The mildly interesting insight to me is how the call starts with trying to get the prospect to schedule a follow up using an incentive (the market report), before getting into the qualifying questions, which are meant to determine if the prospect is going to be a match for the offer. It makes sense from the standpoint you really want another call scheduled so you don’t get their voicemail and you might lose the opportunity to schedule that later in the call.

I wish the author added text from the actual sale past the qualification stage, but I’m guessing that wasn’t really scripted.

Cold calling is the hardest! It's probable my greatest weakness (of many!) as an entrepreneur. Not just cold sales calling but any equivalent. I don't like to get a random call so I feel I'm interrupting the person at the other end.

I am fascinated by employees I've had who love cold calling and are great at it. They are even energised by it! Most have a mirror in their cube smile on your call and the other person can hear it through the phone). One thing about all of them I've spoken with: they are certain that the person they're calling needs our product (and if not they're happy to get off the phone as quickly as possible so they can call someone else). Maybe the Stratton Oakmont sales folks thought that, though my impression was that instead they saw the callee as a sheep to be shorn.

I am astonished at people who can just make a friend or at least an interesting connection while waiting in line for the bathroom.

_Although this line is taught by many sales trainers, it’s becoming overused and immediately lets prospects know it’s a sales call._ _Instead, try opening with something like:_ _(...)_

_This opener feels less salesy, and is actually the reason why you called._

I wonder what does it feel to work in an industry where your main goal is to convince other people you are not a part of it.

I thought about it throughout my life why I am not just flipping to sales, specially when I was short on money.

Each time, I reminded myself that I lack the emotional fortitude to take the amount of rejection sales people get. I am too vested and convinced "left brain" person to be able to understand then accept rejection. The thing I am pitching makes perfect logical sense to me.

Basically, to be in sales, specially cold calling, one must have very, very thick skin, and ignore the majority rejection.

> Do we all kind of wish we worked at Stratton Oakmont for a year and made tons of money….? Probably.

Not even a little bit. I hate calling people that are expecting my call, and I could never get over selling something I knew was bogus, even for a ton of money.

I never "cold" called but I lukewarm called expired real estate listings before using scripts.

They definitely work. Listed total strangers after a phone call. Remember it's a % game. If you call 30 people might get 20 angry no's, 5 friendly no's, 3 so so leads and 2 hot leads.

I always wondered why all these sales emails use exactly the same language. Right now my inbox is filled with “quick questions”. now I have an answer: apparently people write whole books on individual word choices.

It seems the sales industry would benefit from considering the possibility of heterogeneous effects. I can see these techniques working for some, but they are off-putting for me and are a great way to get immediately blocked.

I shudder to think how people can do this as a daily and never reflect on how they're spending their time manipulating others and arguably making the world a worse place. Don't get me wrong, I used to do it myself and I was very good at it, I just don't understand how someone can keep doing it when there are more moral options.

> On average, sellers spend 23.8 hours (or 52%) of their week creating messaging.

Stuff like this is like... bait, right?

Anyone serious about stock trading at the time knew who they were and what they did. They also advertised heavily in print. So anyone who stayed on the call for more than short time had some interest. I had coworkers who "invested" with them.

the psychology of sales is fascinating and alien to me. I admire friends who are great salesmen, and really actually enjoy doing some sales myself because who doesn't like having something valuable to show and share, but there's a side to it I couldn't handle as a living.

some people, and a lot of them in corporate envs when they buy something, they like the excitement of spending the money, but they want the feel like it was taken from them, and that they aren't responsible for it going wrong. they want the excitement without the responsibility, literally to be seduced.

nobody wants the truth, the risks, details, or anything real, they want a story that lets them press the money button without judgment or blowback, and that's what most sales are. I'm too neurotic for it and make a living doing other things, and tech people bitch about sales and marketing all the time, but as an art, I respect and appreciate it.

Detail question on one of the recommendations in the article: wouldn't "are you busy?" be more effective than "do you have a second?"

Working from the hypothesis that people generally don't have seconds they are willing to give away to anyone who calls, but they are busy to varying degrees.

People saying 'well it must work, they're still using it'. Really? I am one of those people that as soon as I smell 'sales' talk I shut it down. If it is a phone call, just put the phone down. If it's first a handshake, don't reciprocate, and if it's an email... well, you know the rest. It's not rude to ignore a rude person. This attitude came from my dad at a time when door to door salesman traipsed the streets looking for suckers. George Carlin was right, salesmen are second only to clergymen, in the bullshit department.

I watched a video where a guy asked people how many moons the earth has, the person on the video said seven. I am not surprised in any way the script had huge success.

great post! very helpful.

I watched the film for the first time recently and was mostly disappointed. The best scenes focused on the sales tactics and the industry-specific insights, but at least twice in the film the main character starts explaining something and cuts himself of with "but you don't really care about all that". Then, on to more repetitive scenes about paying for sex and taking sedatives.

And was I supposed to like the main character? In any way, shape or form? I feel I can relate more to full-fledged anti-heroes like Walter White or The Wire's Omar than I can to this basic jackass.

>Do we all kind of wish we worked at Stratton Oakmont for a year and made tons of money….? Probably.

Gross.

The stock market is just a wealth or money transfer scheme from the naive rich-wannabe to the wealthy who can manipulate the market. Sure, a long-term investment might work in the meantime, until it’s no longer a “long-term” sometime in the future.