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| | The Marketing, Channels/Partnership & Sales Execs Network is not currently active and cannot accept new posts | | About taking inbound sales calls | Views: 768 | | Feb 17, 2005 7:46 pm | | About taking inbound sales calls | # | 
Mark Buckshon | | Last fall, upon reading one of marketing guru Jeffrey Gitomer's books, I decided to follow his advice -- to accept all inbound sales calls, and treat the callers with courtesy. (I am the president of a company that publishes rregional trade newspapers for the construction industry.) The result of the experiment, a net gain of about $50,000 for one hour's work; clearly a very profitable return on investment!
Previously, our receptionist had strict orders to screen all 'sales calls'....broker dealers selling investment scams, telemarketers pitching credit card or phone savings plans, printers, and of course those invevitable "support this charity or that by buying tickets or advertisements in some obscure publication". "Nuicances", I thought, breathing true insensitivity, since our team of eight sales representatives in four cities spend a lot of their time each day making the kind of phone calls I was screening out!
I instructed the receptionist to keep a log of each inbound call, and for her to put through all calls unless I was on the phone or in an obviously important meeting. She also was told to tell all callers who she could not 'connect' that I would return any voice message within one business day.
A month later, we assessed the results. Despite all my 'anxiety' about wasting time with these calls, there really weren't that many of them -- say, 25 in the month. Most were, indeed, junk. With the exception of the obvious scam artists (people selling 'investment opportunities' in obscure over the counter stocks), I treated all the callers with respect -- most offered stuff I could not use or of dubious value. But the calls were brief; after listening to the offer, I simply made a polite 'decline'.
But two calls led to something more interesting. In one, I struck a contra-trade arrangement with an ethical sales training organization, and thus we are boosting our own salespeople's knowledge.
The other was from an agency working on behalf of a government job creation program. On reviewing the proposal, we found we could obtain the services of an IT specialist for six months, full time, for a fee of $2,500. The government would pay the workers' salary. We have had our new contractor work on implementing a CRM system that would, we estimate, have cost at least $50,000 -- and possibly much more -- to set up if we had done it conventionally.
(Interestingly, virtually no one left messages, even though they would have received a return call. Seems dumb to me -- while I agree most voice mails go unanswered, you certainly cannot expect a response if you don't leave a message!)
The policy of accepting all inbound calls of course now remains in place. My salespeople, of course, wish other companies had the same policy.
Private Reply to Mark Buckshon | | Feb 24, 2005 2:40 am | | re: About taking inbound sales calls | # | 
Gary Dale Cearley | | Mark,
I agree with your approach. I often found that sales people who are seriously calling on you are good to add to your network of people who in the future can help funnel business my way. I have seen this much more than once.
Best regards,
Gary Dale Private Reply to Gary Dale Cearley | | |
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