Telephone Sales & Appointments – The Gatekeeper
Appointment Vs Direct Selling
Through the Internet and emerging countries, such as China, the customer has more choice of supplier than ever before, with the need to understand what the customer wants at the forefront of today’s sales methods.
‘Consultative selling’ – providing products/services orientated to the customers specific needs – is of paramount importance, and nowhere can consultative selling be more effectively conducted than ‘face to face’ with the customer.
Asking a customer ten questions over the telephone is a high-risk strategy and is very rarely considered a benefit by the potential customer.
However, enquiring tactics when interacting with a prospect in person is easily projected as personal and responsible selling: we would all prefer to be asked what we want and not told what we need.
The Gatekeeper
The ‘gatekeeper’ is any person between you and the contact in the company that you are calling: any member of staff, an under manager, a receptionist, a secretary, a personal assistant, his wife etc. Depending on how well you have researched your telephone list you will get a certain level of response.
When you call a prospective customer you can be sure of one thing: you are not the first person to call them today to sell something. If your product/service is of a general nature, say cleaning services, you will have to be an excellent communicator to reach the decision maker. However, if you are selling batteries to a car supplier you have a good starting point.
Always assume that the gatekeeper is an important individual in the company: you will never succeed in reaching your target if you fail to offer respect to this person. That said, keep your initial introduction short. Say to the gatekeeper, ‘Hello, Bob Williams please’. By keeping it short you are displaying a degree of closeness to the target, and you give the gatekeeper nothing to work with. The gatekeeper will probably ask for your company name, and if very good, whether your call is expected.
Give your company name and say that you are following up your letter of last week: bec ause you h ave sent a mail-shot to these people, well I hope you have! If you are told that the target is unavailable ask when they will be available, ‘would you do me a favour and tell me the best time to call’. You now ‘know’ this person (the gatekeeper) and your next call will be ‘remember me, you said I should…’
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