#1
C: Hello, Sharon? Joe from Mimeo calling. How you doin’ today? [I assume he was attempting to be intimate, not knowing that anyone intimate with me would never call me ‘Sharon.’]
SDM: Do you know if that’s my correct name?
C: I do know. It’s your name.
SDM: Really? Are you absolutely certain?
C: I am.
SDM: How can you be so certain?
C: Wait. Aren’t you Sharon? Is Sharon there?
Seriously. That call happened. Word for word.
#2
E: Hi. I’m calling from Ecsell. Is this Sharon?
SDM: Is this a cold call?
E: No. It might be a partnership call and I might be able to hire you as a speaker.
SDM: Cool. You should know, then, that my first name is Sharon-Drew.
E: OK. I didn’t know that. But I know you’re a sales company and want to tell you about our coaching products. [And the reason she doesn’t want to collaboratively figure out if our solutions would blend is….?]
SDM: Do you know who I am and what I do?
E: You’re the President of Morgen Facilitations. What else should I know? [She’s asking ME?]
SDM: So you didn’t do your homework. I’m a sales visionary, and for decades have been teaching a buy-in model I invented to sales folks and coaches to help buyers manage their off-line consensus and change.
E: That’s no reason you wouldn’t be able to use our products also, or tell your clients to use our products.
SDM: Wow. You’re still pushing without listening to what I said.
E: Oh yeah?? I’m not pushing. Just educating.
These calls really happened. Do you know how your sales folks are making their cold calls? If you ever want to teach your cold callers to enable a collaborative dialogue that’s win-win, that facilitates decision making and integrity, and teaches your buyers how to consider working with you and your solution on the first call, contact me. Buying Facilitation® is not sales, but it uses a Facilitative Questioning model that starts by opening a discussion that enables change and collaboration and buying. And you wouldn’t sound like these idiots.
Get What? Did you really say what I think I heard? , It’s free – to make sure you read it, to help you understand how and why people end up mishearing and miscommunicating. I also developed some learning tools for those who wish to recognize their communication choices. Should you wish to train your team to learn to hear clients or collegues more effectively Contact Sharon-Drew. Enjoy. Let me know how this works for you.
4 thoughts on “Two Cold Call Case Studies”
The “how are you” introduction should lead to sales teams being taken out into the parking lot and disposed of accordingly. It amazes me that people are still training their staff with that line.
Seems to me that sales folks have been trained to do ‘anything it takes’ to begin a conversation or, as they would like to call it, a ‘relationship’. The reality is that we can use our first comment as the beginning of a facilitation process, such as the question I developed for Wachovia’s small business bankers: “How are you currently adding new banking resource to the bank you are currently using to ensure you have what you need if they can’t serve you.’ If you pull that question apart, you’ll see that it teaches prospects how to mentally put together their criteria for change (and purchase) right at the very beginning, while positioning the seller as a facilitator. There is no reason whatsoever to begin cold calls with pitching, info gathering, or fake relationship building. Buyers just can’t/don’t buy that way.
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