Sales Chump

Below are links to tools that we have found that are good to use.  Feel free to add to the list by leaving a comment of useful tools or websites for sales professionals.

2009 Sales Day Calendar - This is a calendar that will show you the break down of sales days per month and quarter.  This is a general calendar and your company may differ.

What is this you ask?  Well you will be able to send us your questions regarding your pitch, how to approach a certain customer, how to peak interest, etc.  Send us your questions throughout the week and we will answer as many questions (hopefully all) as we can every Sunday evening.

We look forward to helping you out with any road blocks you run into and hope we can help you see from another perspective to a situation on what can be done. We will have more information on this later.

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.