Aug
25
Written by:
Dave Neal
8/25/2010 4:41 AM
While working with a client at their sale's meeting a sales professional said he was getting frustrated because the prospect would not return his email and voice mails, and wondered if he should stop trying.
The sales professional met the prospect at a trade show and he had agreed to subsequent contacts.The account was appealing and targeted by management and was considered a very desirable client.
During the discussion by his fellow sales professionals ideas were offered as potential solutions:
- Call the receptionist seeking help looking for a more effective way to contact the person.
- Stop by the prospects office and inquire about the best way to contact him, sighting your efforts to date.
- Send a registered letter to the person asking for a meeting to follow up on the trade show introduction.
- Send a registered letter with a memory stick containing information and a compelling reason to meet with you.
- Call the company seeking another person higher in the food chain that can help you or refer you to the right person.
- Find out who the ultimate decision maker is and solicit their help.
- Be creative!
One team member made a very profound statement:: he said, "if the prospective account was important to the company, then the sales professional could not be put off by rejection on a few email and voice mails to one person, but needed to aggressively seek other entry points."
An interesting side bar was the relative level of comfort each sales professional on the team had with different strategies to over come the obstacle or the non-responsive objection. Additionally, the subject of over reliance on email and voice mail as the primary contact mechanism by most sales people was posed as an underlying problem.
Statistically most people are very busy and get 100's of emails and voice mails everyday, thus begging the question, which ones do I answer? Sales professionals must use multiple creative approaches to engage prospects.
The end of the story was the sales professional used suggestion 1 & 5 and found out the contact was being reassigned to another position and someone else had been promoted to the position and contact was made.