2 min lesson
Tone carries the call
Talk this through in your own words: "Roughly what share of a good discovery-heavy cold call should the prospect be talking?" Finish with the next move.
Step 1 of 3
Tone carries the call
Engineers read pacing and tone as a signal of whether you know what you're talking about. A rushed, sing-song script reads as a vendor reading off a card. Calm, curious and unhurried reads as a peer. Slow down by about 20% from your nervous default and you'll already sound more credible.
A generic "Hi, this is Alex from Cursor, how are you today?" opener tells the buyer you could be calling anyone. Have a one-line reason for calling that only makes sense for this person - their team's recent growth, an observed tooling choice or the fact that engineers there already use Cursor. Specificity is the whole game in the first ten seconds.