The Good, The Bad, The Gatekeeper
At some point in your sales call you will have to deal with a gatekeeper. Unless you have a contact for this particular company, you will come into contact with someone other than the decision maker will be dealing with in your sales process. Whether you stop into the business or are cold calling, you’ll most likely run into the receptionist. Hitting it off with the gatekeeper is very important. If you piss off the gatekeeper, your message may not make it to the decision maker.
Let’s think about this for a moment. You’re an outsider, they know the decision maker and work with them every day… who is the decision maker going to believe? Take some time to build rapport with the gatekeeper. I don’t know how many times having a strong relationship with the gatekeeper has paid off. There are even a few customers where the gatekeeper and I talk more than the decision maker.
I know, you’re asking how do I do this? Well there’s no one way to do it and it’s more of a combination of things in order to accomplish this.
- Make them feel important! - There job isn’t always just answering the phone and blowing off everyone who calls for the decision maker. Even when their only job is to answer the phone, make their job important. Treat them with respect as if they were the person making the decision. Get to know them if you will be calling to talk with the decision maker a lot.
- Gatekeeper to Hero - They hear the decision maker talking all day about complaints. One day a complaint about something you can provide a solution for may come up. If you haven’t spent time with the gatekeeper explaining what you can do, they wouldn’t be able to bring your service up. The gatekeeper may be able to present your service better than you can as they know what is top priority for the company better than you do.
- Distinguish yourself - Don’t be like every other sales person that calls asking for the decision maker. Make yourself stand out. When you state your name and company, you want them to respond like you’re a friend who they haven’t talked to in a while. Use humor and creativity to accomplish this. I have a co-worker who does this very well by talking about things non-related to our business or theirs.
- Turn them into your assistant - No, don’t have them do your job for you. Use the gatekeeper to get information about the company, decision maker, how things work around there. The better you understand the company, the easier to realize what is important to the. The gatekeeper can assist you with this greatly.
Now there are a lot of other ways to turn the gatekeeper into an ally rather than an adversary. With the gatekeeper on your side, you are a lot better off than the other way around. Feel free to share a technique that has worked for you in the past by posting a comment.
Gatekeeper Says:
I like to empower the gate keeper (like option 1 above). They are used to being treated like a door mat and when you begin to treat them like a human and get them somewhat involved, a lot of time they will open up and help you out. This of course doesn’t work always, but it’s one of my favorites.
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Posted on December 11th, 2008 at 9:31 pm