Well, you can't say I don't practice what I preach: I've been putting aside at least two half-days every week recently to get some prospecting and target calling done. And that means spending a few hours relentlessy dialling numbers and making a concerted effort to make contact with the right people in the right organisations, and then have a conversation with them that leads to a next action. We all know how tough it can be to stick at this kind of work and achieve a result, and the major challenge is often overcoming one's own reluctance and fear. But each small success drives you onwards.
Anyway, the point of this post is to wonder aloud whether if some of the companies I am calling, far from needing sales skills training, ought perhaps to go back to very first principles of operating a business at all - because the level of basic human communication at the very first point of contact for any customer, potential customer or partner is in many cases utterly, incredibly awful.
I have half a mind to name & shame a few of these (in all cases, large, often technology) companies: what happens is, you call their main switchboard number and either a) it simply rings for ever and no one picks up or b) it goes straight to a voicemail message to the effect that we can't be bothered to answer the phone, please call back, or leave us a message or c) there isn't even a coherent welcome message , just a standard fob-off generated by an answer machine. One such company, when you call them, routinely answers its main switchboard with the message "This is the general delivery mailbox. Please call back." and hangs you up!
You would think that this kind of thing happens in very rare circumstances, perhaps when the receptionist is in the loo, or the company is about to go bust and they've given up entirely. But no - I made about 40 calls this morning and a good 8-10 of these were to comapnies unable or unwilling to do the most basic thing - answer their phone. The unavoidable impression is that these are organisations so incompetent, so dreadfully dead-beat, that they must be staffed and managed by morons. I just keep thinking, what if were a customer? What if I actually wanted to buy something? I'd be running a mile by now - and we are in tough times, when you'd think every outfit in the land would at least be trying to do its best with the in-bound enquiries through it main phone number. I can only assume that a lot of these companies have simply fired their receptionist, but Jesus, for £50 per week, you can get a virtual PA service to do the job professionally and with minimum setup aggro.
If you are a Sales Director or an MD reading this, I strongly advise you, every so often, to anonymously call your main switchboard number and see what happens. Then call through to your main Sales number. Go on, depress yourself. It is THE most basic thing to get right, and you don't need a training course to know how to do it either.
Right, rant over, I'm off to call up some more companies who think they are so successful they don't even need to answer their phones.
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