Just say no…
A small but significant portion of my working week is wasted fielding telephone calls from call centre cold calling droids who want to sell me IT or communications products and services. Or, more accurately, they want me to agree to attend a short presentation with one of their “technical experts” here in
“Hello Ian, how are you today?”
Advice, in no particular order:
- Take control of the conversation, it is your time they are wasting.
- Suggest another time if you are busy, but mean it- they will call back.
- Expect the caller to twist any rebuttal into an opportunity.
- Tell them you are not interested. After repeating this a few times, you will derail the script.
- “So what?” will faze all but the most experienced. It might appear terribly rude, but it is much ruder to launch into a spiel without permission.
- Callers will try to weasel names of decision makers out of you. Whilst it may be their job, it is none of their business.
- Tell them to write to you with further information, make it clear that if you are interested, YOU will contact THEM.
- It is far too easy to suggest they ring back in 3/6/12 months as a stalling tactic. If you aren’t interested, tell them so
- If you might be interested, ask them what their unique selling point is. If they haven’t got one, you probably aren’t interested.
- Beware of vendor sponsored events, they are often rather one sided and sometimes predatory. (I once had someone introduce himself as my account manager, despite not being a customer. This bloke was a bit scary, he sat next me and followed me round throughout the event, taking notes. Fortunately I knew much more about his Company than he did & turned it into a joke, introducing him to people as my personal Clueless & Witless Stalker)
- Be prepared to hang up at any time. You didn’t ask to be called.
I’m sure others will have more to add.
Well, that how I started in Sales.
Good old blooding in cold calling.
Open quesion, open question, closed question. Boom.
Comment by Crushed by Ingsoc — November 5, 2007 @ 7:35 pm
Careful Crushed, if you give too much away they will come and get you.
Remember the solemn oath of the Sacred Order of Deal Closers;
“…binding myself under no less penalty than to have my throat cut across, my tongue torn out by the roots, and my body buried in the rough sands of the sea at low water-mark, where the tide ebbs and flows twice in twenty-four hours; so help me God, and keep me steadfast in the due performance of the same.”
I sometimes hit people back with off the wall questions. A few good ones are:
-Have you heard how successful you can be with Amway products?
-Lose weight now, I’ll tell you now!
-Do you believe that God is your Saviour?
Comment by Shades — November 5, 2007 @ 8:07 pm
I quite like the idea of “So what ?”. L’ll have to try that sometime.
When I was going through one of my twisted and bitter phases, my favourite tactic was to say “You’ve got the wrong person. The guy you want is…” and then insert the name of the person who had most recently annoyed me. I always found that quite theraputic.
Comment by Womble On Tour — November 7, 2007 @ 12:12 pm
That’s good advice. I always say, ‘the person who deals with that isn’t in at the moment.’
And she never is. She only pops in and out of the office so they’d be very lucky to catch her. But I prefer some of your ruses and will have to try them.
Comment by Liz — November 7, 2007 @ 8:52 pm
Womble- I give your name out regularly, for much the same reasons
Liz- Have fun…
Comment by Shades — November 7, 2007 @ 9:14 pm