What a day on the phones today; I needed to kick it up a notch. I’ve got 16 or so opportunities that I need to move forward and most seem to be stalling out.
So, what do you do? Simple, you make more phones and or stop ins. Since, I’m backlogged with my calls, the smart choice was to clean some of those up.
I was happy with setting five appointments, however, they were spread out over the next three weeks. Arrrggh! That’s not going to help. Thus, tomorrow will be another phone day and I’m hoping that I can at least log 60 of them for the day.
Sixty phones calls for a seasoned rep is a great day. The reason why it’s great is because the seasoned rep will also have to field incoming calls from prospects and clients. In addition you may have to field urgent e-mails and answer questions from your manager and admin. It’s not easy being a seasoned rep.
On the other hand, you newbies, well all you have to do is make calls and set appointments. There is no support work that needs to be addressed.
All of the above was just a lead in to a phone cold call I had today. The phone call was the first to this potential client. I researched the client on Google and LinkedIn before I called. I got nada on both Google and LinkedIn. Thus, I made the call, and was greeted by a receptionist that seemed willing to help. I stated my name, my company, and asked if they had internal IT or if it was outsourced. The receptionist answered with “internal,” which lead me to my second question. “Does your IT department make the buying decisions for your copying and printing devices.” She stated “yes.” OK I thought, now I’m getting somewhere. My next question, “Could I please have the name of the person in IT that I need to speak with or could you transfer me please?”
The receptionist then tells me that they don’t accept soliciting phone calls and hangs up! WTH? First time for something like this.
I collected myself and then thought about the type of company that I was calling. It was a commercial real estate company. Hey, they have sales people too that make phone calls, right? They have sales people, right? Thus, they don’t accept phone calls from sales people? After thinking about this a little more, I think the receptionist was young, probably got yelled at a few times for letting sales people through. The thought of sending a letter to the owner about the phone call quickly subsided.
Hey, what can you do except move to the next cold call.
Good selling!
