How to find someone within a target company to help gain helpful information about the target.
Many times acquired lists have little in terms of the information that would be helpful for us on a cold call. So where do we go to get this information prior to placing the first call to our target name?
I was reading a Blog this week by a cold caller lamenting that targets she’s calling today don’t seem to be willing to take a moment and talk with us cold callers to learn from us before determining whether we’ve got something to offer or not.
I answered her Blog with four thoughts on the topic:
- It’s going to get worse. The economy is forcing lay-offs in many companies which will force people to take on even more responsibilities. That means they’ll have even less desire to speak with us when we call, so we better have a compelling Bridge Question to get them to stop thinking about how to get us off the phone and into that open-minded conversation we want. (Search blog for more on Bridge Questions.)
- More and more people are using voicemail to screen incoming calls so our voicemails better be very compelling. Don’t wing it.
- Call first into the sales department and get a sales person to help you with a little background information such as who might be the correct person to talk with, etc. Just don’t abuse the fact that most of us sales people are likely to be willing to help a fellow sales person. They’re busy as well.
- As a Best Practice, when we start dialing the phone to make appointment making calls, we’ll be more effective if we keep our Call Blocks dedicated to setting appointments. Do that information gathering at a different time. We are more effective when we get rolling, repeating our script, etc. Interrupting that flow with information gathering calls loses that benefit.
February 12th, 2009 at 3:36 pm
This is great stuff. tyvm I’ll be back. And buy something.