How to Build Your First Cold Call Script (That Doesn’t Sound Scripted)
Cold calling gets a bad rap - and with good reason.
Most cold calls are awkward, robotic, and completely disconnected from the person on the other end. But done right, a cold call can be one of the fastest paths to revenue - especially for early - stage founders trying to generate pipeline without an established brand.
At Foundations, we built a free tool to help founders create their first cold call script, based on their company’s real positioning and buyer pain points. You can try it at the bottom of this post - but first, let’s walk through how to do it right.
Start with Your ICP: Who Are You Really Calling?
Before you even think about writing a line of script, you need to get hyper - clear on your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).
Ask yourself:
What industry is your best customer in?
What’s their company size? (SMB, mid - market, enterprise?)Who is the buyer? (Head of Sales? RevOps? CTO?)
Knowing who you're calling changes everything - your language, your tone, and most importantly, your value prop.
📌 Pro tip: Your first cold call script is only as good as your targeting. Start with your best customer and reverse - engineer it from there.
Understand Their Pain - Then Press on It
The best cold calls don’t lead with features. They lead with pain - the kind that makes your prospect nod their head or even laugh in recognition.
Ask yourself:
What problem is this person struggling with right now?
What do they hate about the way things work today?
What keeps them from hitting their own goals?
You want to hit on a frustration that makes them say:
“Yep. That’s me.”
But don’t stop at pain. Also consider goals and incentives. What does this person want to achieve? What are they trying to prove internally? When you speak to both pain and ambition, you create real emotional relevance.
Your Unique Value Prop: Why You?
Once you've established you understand their world, you need to articulate why your solution is different - without turning it into a feature list.
Your value prop should speak to:
What you do better than competitors
A unique approach or capability
A differentiator that actually matters to the person you're calling
Keep it simple. Don’t lean on buzzwords or technical jargon. Instead, ask yourself:
What do we actually do that others don’t - and why does that help my buyer?
Your Solution: What You Solve and How
Next comes the connective tissue: How does your product or service solve their pain?
Keep this tight and tied directly to the problem you highlighted earlier. This is where you bring it all together with what we call an Impact Statement.
The Impact Statement: Tie It All Together
The Impact Statement is the distilled, 2–3 sentence pitch that rolls together:
Who you help
What you help them solve
How you do it differently
Why it matters
We often describe this as a company’s 3 or 4 layers:
Who the solution is for
What problem it solves
How it solves it
What makes it impactful
📌 It needs to be digestible.
You’re not writing for a whitepaper - you’re speaking to a human. The best scripts feel like conversations, not presentations. If you can’t say your Impact Statement out loud comfortably, it needs work.
Practice. Then Practice Some More.
Once you’ve built your cold call script using our tool (👇), it’s time to practice. A lot.
Here’s how:
Say your Impact Statement 10–20 times until it feels natural.
Try it out on real calls, and take note of where you stumble.
Resist the urge to over - edit after just a few calls - this is your starting point, not the finished product.
Most cold call scripts don’t fail because they’re bad - they fail because the rep hasn’t mastered the delivery.
If someone picks up and says, “I’ve got 30 seconds - what do you do?”, you should be able to hit your Impact Statement without hesitation.
Iterate Only After Reps
Don’t overhaul your script after a few no - shows or rejections. Cold calling is a skill - your results will improve with volume and confidence. Make 100+ calls before making any major script changes.
Once you’ve logged enough conversations, you can start analyzing:
Where do people drop off?
Are you losing them at the opener?
Are objections popping up after your pitch?
That’s when it’s time to iterate with purpose - and if needed, bring us in to help you fine - tune based on real data.
Try the Cold Call Script Builder
Ready to get started?
Use our free Cold Call Script Builder to generate your first script in under 5 minutes. Just drop in your:
Company name
Website
LinkedIn company URL
The tool will extract your positioning, pain points, and audience data to create a tailored script you can start using immediately.
Final Thought
Your first cold call script isn’t supposed to be perfect. It’s supposed to get you going.
From there, you refine, you adapt, and you improve - not because the tool is magic, but because you’re putting in the reps.
Start strong. Keep it simple. Say it like a human.
And when you’re ready to take it to the next level - we’ll be here to help.