sahil

Deepak Chopra of Sales

Notable Contributor

Celebrated Contributor

Notorious Answer

The most important cold call in human history?

When Elon Musk decided to build SpaceX, he needed rocket scientists to come work with him. But it's not like you can post the job on Indeed. 😆

So he did what any good salesperson would do: cold call rocket scientists.

He had this script that he practiced and used hundreds of times: “I’m Elon Musk, I’m an internet billionaire, I founded PayPal and X.com. I sold X.com to Compaq for 165 million dollars in cash and I could spend the rest of my life on a beach drinking Mai Tais, but I decided that humanity needs to become a multi-planetary species to survive and I want to do something with my money to show that humanity can do that and I need Russian rockets and that’s why I’m calling you.”

Not the sexiest, slickest pitch. But he did manage to convince Jim Cantrell to leave NASA and join him. And 20 years later.... it's the most important cold call in history.

👑 Sales Strategy

📞 Cold Calling

9

5 comments

Sort by:

Ace

Arsonist

4

CEO

True. But Elon had all that credibility backing him. We close deals without that! Just a useless flex lol

SADNES5

Politicker

1

down voters are marketing spies

Elon finishes his pitch...

Me a rocket scientist intellectual: "So what you're saying is you've got a metric assload of cash and you wana shoot rockets into space and hope they hit mars and get these apes onto that rock permanently? You sonofabitch I'm in."

Ace

Arsonist

1

CEO

Hahah, I bet this was the first thought of a lot of those scientists

CaneWolf

Politicker

0

Call me what you want, just sign the damn contract

Here's source material in case anybody was looking for it. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/28/elon-musk-once-cold-called-rocket-scientist-and-it-led-to-spacex.html

SADNES5

Politicker

0

down voters are marketing spies

Warning: I am an Elon fanboy.

His cold call skills. Need work, but we all know it's a numbers game. I wonder how many dials he made before he got a yes.

------------------------------------------------------------------

unrelated:

As many of us found out recently the open secret that he's on the autism spectrum made me realize how unabashedly he goes about his life trying to set the framework up for humanities success.

Yeah he tweets without thinking, but he's obviously speaking from the heart/heat of the moment. He can't pick up on social cues, which is what makes him an amazing leader. He memes, which I feel gives him a human element that Papa Bezzy is missing.

He doesn't have media handlers, to his companies detriment, but it also makes him feel accessible. Imagine if Corp or Sahil were running everything through a PR filter. Puke.

The man wants us to be an interplanetary species, can't fault him for that. His name is in the history books because of it.

Bravado is a community of trusted sales professionals endorsed by their customers.

Products

The War Room Jobs Salary Guide Tech Sales U

Company

About Us How It Works Blog Bug Bounty

Contact

© 2024 Bravado Inc. All rights reserved.

Privacy Policy Legal and Privacy Center Sales Jobs

If you are hired as a contract sales rep by a Bravado customer, we may ask you to prove access to the employee email account provided to you by that customer. This data will be shared with customers to track your sales productivity; customers can use this data to confirm you meet the minimum activity requirements to pay out your ramp stipend and commission.