Tuesday, November 27, 2012

The Cold Call and Business Development — Zero Degrees of Separation

Years ago, I had a short run with a company called “Dial America.” It was essentially a magazine renewal clearinghouse where you were given a list of names, the publications to which they currently subscribed, and their respective expiration dates.

Like most call centers, you read from a prepared script and, after a short pitch, it was basically yea or nay. I struck gold on my first night there, nailing the first six calls I made. After that, I foolishly assumed that my lucky streak would continue. In the ensuing weeks, my success to call ratio was roughly 1 to 1,000.

Ever since that experience, I’ve always felt for someone forced to make cold calls to drum up business, but like they say, success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration or some similar lopsided percentage.

Case in point: The other day, I got a call on my office line from a representative from Cablevision, one of several cable and Internet providers in the tri-state area and, as it happens, the parent company to Madison Square Garden as well as the New York Knicks and the New York Rangers.
Some months before I had switched from Cablevision to the Verizon FIOS system and since then it’s been a running cold-call battle to get me to revert back.

 Hence the conversation went something like this:

“Hello this is Mohammad (I kid you not) from Cablevision. May I speak to William?”

“You’ve got him.”

“Good morning William, I wanted to tell you about our new offer.”

“Thanks but I switched to FIOS back in March.”

“I know, we want you to go back and that’s why we’re giving you this special package.”

“No thanks, I’m very happy with Verizon.”

“Okay, have a nice day.”

“That’s it? You’re not going to try and sell me? What kind of rep are you? You’re a salesman, so sell me.”

“Well, um… okay, we have for a limited time a triple play option (TV, phone and Internet) for $79.99.”

“And what channels come with that? NFL Network? NHL Network? Showtime?”

“Um… no, sorry those are extra.”

“But I get them free now with Verizon. Why would I switch?”

Silence.

The call ended quickly after that.

Now I don’t and never will know Mohammad’s success with regard to conversion rates, but later on I learned that one of my neighbors had opted to go back to Cablevision, so perhaps his day of dialing and hoping was not a total bust.

But it does illustrate a point, in that no matter how sophisticated and technologically impressive new business presentations get, sometimes there’s no substitute for the grind and grunt approach. And that philosophy extends to sectors as disparate as cable TV subscribers to professional service firms.

If you can sway buyer decisions over the phone, an in-person pitch should be gravy.

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