19 Feb
A Sale on Every Call
Posted in Lead Generation, Sales Prospecting, Tele-prospecting by Chris 3 Comments
As I perused my TweetDeck this morning, I noticed Garth Moulton’s (the world’s biggest rolodex Jigsaw’s VP of Community and co-founder) blog entry from yesterday, “Cold Calling is not even on the Endangered List.” Great blog entry where Garth concludes with the following:
“So the truly efficient organization (I’m talking B2B here) has to have at least a couple people (researching first!) braving the last matrix of hell known as cold calling to start the conversation that will eventually lead to a deal.”
I liked the article a lot, and loved the comments from Sales 2.0 big dog Nigel Edelshain, inside sales expert Trish Bertuzzi, and cold calling authority Steve Richard. Do yourself a favor and go check it out.
What really got me though, was Garth’s use of a movie clip to illustrate his point. He used a clip of Will Smith from The Pursuit of Happiness, but it wasn’t that clip that really spoke to me. After watching Will Smith’s clip, YouTube shows a bunch of other “related” clips to watch. I see one from the movie Boiler Room (an all time favorite of mine). I watch it, and there’s something that Ben Affleck, who’s playing the sales trainer in the movie, says to his new recruits that just really moved me. To set the scene, he’s mad because none of the rookies are passing enough leads. They’re being blown off their calls with rebuttal after rebuttal, rejection after rejection. He closes with this:
“A sale is made on every call you make. Either you sell the client some stock or he sells you on a reason he can’t. Either way, a sale is made. The only question is who’s going to close, you or him?”
As cheesy as some may make this movie out to be, that line is true. And as it relates to teleprospecting, we either sell a prospect a time to speak with a product specialist or they sell us on a reason they’re not interested. Either way, someone’s closing, and it’s up to teleprospecting management to do all they can to give their reps the advantage.
I don’t know, what do you think? This line has been in my head all day long, and I’m wondering what other people think about it.
Lead-gen and pop-culture aficionado all rolled into one. Now with 13% more funny!
trish bertuzzi
on February 19 2010
First, thanks for the mention. Second, LOVE the line. Thanks for that!
Garth Moulton
on February 23 2010
Hey Chris,
Thanks for noticing my blog.
Ben Affleck is no Alec Baldwin, but that is a great line. I also love the scene in Boiler Room when Giovanni Ribisi’s character critiques the NY Times subscription coll call. And of course, the fantastic response to something we deal with at Jigsaw all the time that i have been dying to use:
Man on phone: Take me off your list.
Seth Davis: Fine, fine. I’m gonna take you off my list of successful people today.
That is pure beauty.
Garth
Chris
on February 23 2010
Trish – no problem at all. I’m glad you enjoy it! Thanks for reading!
Garth – sure thing. Yeah, the NY Times scene is fantastic, but I would love to hear someone use that “successful people” line! Thanks for stopping by!