Cold calls have been on my mind again this week. There are several reasons for that. First of all, I received one a couple of days ago that had the classic “first three ways to kill a cold call.” Then, soon after, I received an email from a regular reader of the Navigator, and one of the things she said was this:
“At some time in a future weekly newsletter….would you mind talking about a sales person who won’t shut up? This guy wouldn’t allow me to get out one full sentence of response without cutting me off. Wouldn’t stop the sales pitch, even after I told him that for the most part, the services he was offering we didn’t need, but was very interested in one service. Told him to get me info on that particular service and would sit down and talk with the owner about scheduling a meeting. At that point, he went right back in to the overall sales pitch of all the services he had to offer again, and wouldn’t shut up even when I told him this wasn’t the most convenient time to talk and for a fact am on a deadline today. He simply wouldn’t SHUT UP! I finally had to abruptly end the call, of which he may have thought rude, but don’t care.”
Well, your wish is my command. Let’s go into the call I received, and then let’s talk about the call she received. We’ll figure out how to solve all of these issues together.
The call I received was a classic. I answered the phone, “Troy Harrison speaking.” If you call me, and I am able to pick up, that’s what you’ll hear. No “Dial 1 for,” or a receptionist – you’ll hear my voice ready to talk about sales. Sadly, I didn’t hear someone ready to talk about sales. Instead, I got a few seconds of silence – long enough to know that I had just been auto-dialed, and someone was about to pick up on the other end. I hate auto-dialers. If you use them, stop it.
Then, the woman on the other end said, “May I speak to Troy, please?” Good grief. Of course, since it was an auto-dialer, she didn’t hear that she was already talking to me. Now I know it’s a salesperson, and a bad one, but she was about to lock that description in. I replied, “You already are.”
“Hi, Troy. How are you today?” If you’re looking for the all-time dumb, moronic, time wasting, defense building, way to kill a cold call, this is it. There is only one type of person who says, “How are you today?” to someone they don’t know, and that’s a pesky, not well trained salesperson who can’t think of anything good to say, but thinks they are building some cheap rapport.
I sighed and said, “What can I help you with?” And she started into a spiel about some investment opportunity. I didn’t hear the end of it.
When you call someone, attempting to gain their interest in seeing you, talking to you, or buying from you, you have to give them a reason to talk to you without giving them reasons to put up their defenses. When people answer the phone, their defenses are typically down because they don’t know what the call is about. It could be a customer, a friend, a relative, or a salesperson. Your job is to give them a reason to talk to you while their defenses are down, because if you give them time and reason to put up their defenses, it’s much harder for your value message to get through. Look at the 20 seconds of the call I just described. She gave me three reasons to put up my defensese before she ever began a value message: The obvious auto-dialer, asking for me when I already said it was me (showing me that she wasn’t listening to whoever answered the phone), and then the obnoxious “How are you today?” Her call was DOA.
Now, let’s look at the different type of call that my friend wrote me to discuss. This call was not DOA. In fact, it was very much alive until the salesperson killed the call. Here are some of the things that my friend said:
“This guy wouldn’t allow me to get out one full sentence of response without cutting me off.” That’s a hallmark of a pre-scripted sales pitch. Worse, it’s the hallmark of just plain bad manners. When your customer or prospect is talking, words are coming out of their mouth – and those words could be important. Shut up and listen, even if it’s not taking you down your pre-scripted path. Sometimes customers don’t know their lines because they haven’t seen your script – but if they’re talking to you on a cold call, that’s a good thing.
“Wouldn’t stop the sales pitch, even after I told him that for the most part, the services he was offering we didn’t need, but was very interested in one service. Told him to get me info on that particular service and would sit down and talk with the owner about scheduling a meeting.” Are you banging your head on your desk right now? Me too. The salesperson was winning the call, and wasn’t capable of seeing it. She didn’t just say “interested.” She said, “Very interested.” Granted, he wasn’t talking to the decision maker – but he’s the one who called. I’m betting that this was the classic “person who” call, i.e., the salesperson asked the receptionist to speak to the “person who” handled his particular service (this is another call-killer, by the way). The salesperson had her interest. He had her commitment to attempt to set a meeting with the owner of the company. This was a WIN. And he still turned it into a loss.
“At that point, he went right back in to the overall sales pitch of all the services he had to offer again, and wouldn’t shut up even when I told him this wasn’t the most convenient time to talk and for a fact am on a deadline today. He simply wouldn’t SHUT UP! I finally had to abruptly end the call, of which he may have thought rude, but don’t care.” Amazing. Defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory, and that’s what is frustrating to me as a salesperson. My friend might have genuinely benefited from the service he was offering, but we’ll never know because he burned the call.
What this salesperson didn’t realize is that a sales call is a dialogue, not a monologue. Worse, he failed to recognize an opportunity when he saw one – likely due to poor or nonexistent training.
Don’t be that guy. Instead, open the call right (avoid the call killers that I mentioned), and remember to make the cold call a dialogue. Cold calling is still a viable way to generate new business; I have a feeling that most salespeople who think otherwise aren’t doing it right.
