Sales: What to Do About Apple's New Call Screening

iOS 26 just put Siri between you and every prospect.

At WWDC, Apple announced Call Screening is rolling out this Fall.

Whenever you receive a call from an unknown number, they have to state who they are and why they’re calling. You see the transcript and decide whether to answer or not.

What Apple's Call Screening Means for Sales

1. Parallel dialing is dead. Call 100 numbers and all 100 of their Call Screeners pick up and ask you to leave a note.
2. Cold calling as a whole gets tougher and needs a new strategy. A lot of people answer calls from unknown numbers because they were expecting a call from someone - their doctor’s office, a Doordash delivery person, maybe it’s their kid’s school and there’s an emergency. You catch them by surprise and they give you a chance.
3. You need to diversify from the phones. Cold calling has probably seen it’s peak, like email did many years ago. More on this later. 

Now cold calls are playing at the same level as email - the sender and subject line/reason for calling matters.
The flip side of this is that if you have a REALLY good reason to reach and have done your research, they might want to answer and talk to you.

Tactical Playbook to Respond 

1. Research Before You Ring. 

If you don’t say something of real value during your 15 sec screening, your prospect is going to decline. They might decline even if you do have something valuable to say on principle, just like email.

Research both your prospect and public company info to reduce the likelihood of getting declined.

• Company signals: 10-Ks, earnings calls, press releases, funding rounds, product launch PR.
• Personal cues: buyer’s LinkedIn posts & comments (Letterdrop can scan LinkedIn for valuable nuggets and plug them directly into your CRM), podcasts they appear on, recent job-change updates. 

Example Call Script

Here’s an example of how to structure a script:

[Name + Company] — [Trigger-based observation] ; [Value tease] + [Soft CTA]

“Hey John, Parthi from Letterdrop here. Found a CFO churning from your competitors. Wanted to show you a workflow for your BDRs to find these every week. Let me know.”

2. Diversify Your Channels

If you’re just relying on calls to hit your targets today, I’d strongly recommend you consider diversifying into other channels like in-person events and LinkedIn.

What happened to email is happening to calls and the channel is going to get harder quick. This was bound to happen.

Our belief at Letterdrop getting buyers to know you and building relationships with them is your best hedge. If you haven’t explored activating your reps on LinkedIn better to social sell, would strongly consider it.

With tools like Letterdrop, it can be largely automated and isn’t a huge departure from current process.

3. Build Familiarity Daily

It’s a fact that the more familiar a prospect might be with you, the more likely they’ll pick up the phone. 

You should be showing up online daily, posting stuff, or otherwise engaging with folks via comments and threads. Takes 10 minutes a day max.

Triggers an immediate, “Oh yeah, saw you on LinkedIn last week” or “one of our AEs follows you”.

As for what you should be posting:

• Common prospect Qs (you get these daily on calls)
• Customer stories and quick demos
• Industry takes or “did you know?” posts
• Anything your buyer would send to a teammate

* We can help you automate defensible posts like this in under 4 mins directly from calls.

I booked a demo a few months ago with a guy named Jeff. He ghosted. Weeks later, Jeff posted on LinkedIn. I dropped a casual comment.

Two members of his team immediately try to sign up for Letterdrop.

This is clearly because he was reminded of me and brought us up internally.

This is the kind of recognition you want.

The Verdict: More Value Up Front

The only way to win against AI gatekeeping is to make sure you’re providing more value up front than ever.

And if you want to talk about building trust on autopilot, let us know.