Decision makers do communicate with their gatekeepers, you know.
I was recently at an event with other CEOs and business owners. Most of the attendees know what my company does so they love to regale me with stories of sales professionals who attempt to get an appointment with them. It is a great way for me to hear the target’s side of what works and what doesn’t.
This past week the subject came up of a ‘technique’ a sales professional (and in this case, I use the term lightly) had used to try to set an appointment with him. He said his regular administrative assistant was on vacation so it worked—for a moment anyway.
This particular seller told the gatekeeper that he had recently met the CEO at a conference and that her boss had asked him to call to set up an appointment. Now there was potentially a grain of truth in this story as the CEO told me that he was at the same event. However, he said he had never even met the person, let alone told him to call for an appointment.
The good news for our intrepid seller—he got through. He proceeded to attempt to set an appointment never mentioning the ruse he had employed to get through. The even better news was that the CEO had some interest in what he was selling. The best news of all was that he got the appointment.
Now for the bad news: About an hour later, the CEO calls his temporary administrative assistant and asked her to set up a conference room for him for this appointment as well as to ask one of his direct reports to attend as well. It is at this time that the administrative assistant innocently asked if this was for the guy who called saying they had met at the conference.
Want to know how the seller found out his appointment was cancelled? From his sales manager, who got the cancellation call directly from the CEO.
Wouldn’t you have loved to be a fly on the wall when this seller got the news from his sales manager?
If you’d like more information on working with gatekeepers, here are a couple of other blogs on the topic:
- Tips for handling gatekeepers
- How to make a gatekeeper work for you
If you’d like more information on handling gatekeepers or why no team of sales professionals has ever failed to at least double the number of Initial Appointments they were setting after going through one of our programs, give us a call or drop us a line. We love talking about the challenges of appointment making!
Caponi Performance Group and Contact Science jointly market the telephone prospecting and cold calling solution called Coldcalling101™. It is the only comprehensive solution to solving the biggest barrier to success in most selling organizations—the inability to secure enough Initial Appointments to begin the selling process. We accomplish that through simultaneously addressing both the efficiency and effectiveness of the process. We can be reached at 817 224-9900 or at bcaponi@caponipg.com. You can also find answers to many of your challenges in our books: Contrary to Popular Belief, Cold Calling DOES Work! Volume I: Effectiveness, The Art of Appointment Making and Volume II: Efficiency, the Science of Appointment Making.
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