Sales Calls - An Inconvenience or an Opportunity to save Money?
Hints and tips
Increasingly as businesses experience more and more unsolicited sales calls from external providers or Call Centres the inbound teams, in many cases receptionists, have been instructed to prevent access to decision makers. From a decision makers perspective, this is a positive step, their time management can be planned and orchestrated in line with changing priorities, and they are no longer exposed to re-active tasks driven by these unplanned calls. It is difficult to argue against this rationale because as individuals, we are increasingly exposed to this issue within our home environment.
However, a counter-argument would be that businesses are often missing out on new opportunities, many of which would be fiscally beneficial to them. A blanket approach to the way these calls are treated does not allow for a common sense approach. Would it not be better for these “gatekeepers” to be taught better questioning techniques to weed out the callers who have offerings that are neither appropriate or relevant. The stock answer that “he or she is in a meeting” only leads to a repeat call, which perpetuates the problem.
However, if the questioning revealed that in actual fact, the call highlighted something that would potentially be of benefit, then the Email address of the decision maker or a generic inbox could be made available for future structured review.
If you look at this from the external callers’ point of view, the way that their call is dealt with can create a very poor impression of the company. If the reception is abrupt, rude or unhelpful, this does little to enhance corporate image and could indicate that the company is closed to new ideas or initiatives.
It would be good to hear from others with your views, opinions or ideas, perhaps there are ways that this can be handled better…..
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