The CRAP Report

Here’s the story – a Vietnam Vet comes to a small town to visit one of his former unit members only to find out that he’s passed away.  The Vet makes his way through the next town where he meets that town’s Sherriff, who does not like the look of the Vet and drives him to the town’s border and tells him not to come back.  The Vet comes back, gets arrested by said Sherriff and mayhem ensues with a manhunt in the mountains.  You’ve got to know that the Vet I’m talking about is the one and only John J. Rambo, played by Sylvester Stallone, from First Blood (and its sequels).  How the hell does this relate to teleprospecting!?  Rambo was as inventive a movie character as ever, and believe me when I tell you, you want BDR’s who are as resourceful as Rambo.

Okay, so I’m obviously not stating that your BDR’s need to be ex-Special Forces members who have been awarded Medal’s of Honor (though that would be awesome), or am I saying that they have to be ruthless killers (okay, that would be bad).  What I am saying is that they need to be as imaginative as Rambo was when he was being hunted down by the Hope Town police department in the mountains.  Rambo used what he had with him after escaping the police department, his hunting knife, and created a series of traps to incapacitate his pursuers.  Whether you’ve got a team of BDR’s qualifying sales opportunities for you in-house, or you’ve partnered with a vendor to provide you with sales qualified leads, you want those BDR’s to be as capable as they can be.  I can think of a few ways that they need to be as resourceful as Rambo, and they are: 

1. They need to know how to get around “gate-keepers.”
2. They need to know how to find contact information.
3. They need to recognize and know where to go to get help when they need it.

First, your BDR’s need to know how to get around “gate-keepers.”  The gate-keeper is that special type of administrative assistant that does not believe in helping anybody.  The majority of admins that I’ve spoken with over the course of my career have typically been a helpful bunch.  Would they let me speak to their boss?  Most of the time, no, but they would help me determine that I could probably get better information from someone else who worked for their boss.  They understood that part of their job was to assist; granted, they were assisting me, but still, they were helping!  Seriously, though, the gate-keeper is that administrative assistant who is not willing to offer any help at all.  Resourceful BDR’s know how to get around that.  They know that there are other ways to that executive aside from speaking that the gate-keeper and they stop at nothing to get there.  They know that old tricks like calling early in the morning or calling after hours…actually works sometimes, so they do it.

Second, your BDR’s need to know how to find contact information.  It’s a little easier to do this one today, than say, even two years ago.  With organizations like Jigsaw and ZoomInfo, finding someone’s direct line or their email address is much simpler.  There are times, however, when contact databases (God forbid!) have the wrong contact information.  A resourceful BDR needs to know where to go to find that information.  They know how to use search engines to find email matrices and how to find direct dials.  When I was making teleprospecting calls, that was a fun part of my job – trying to find someone’s email address or direct dial after I was told by a gate-keeper or an operator that I wasn’t allowed to have that information.  I used to love calling the operator and saying something like, “I just spoke with so-and-so’s admin, and he/she was very helpful.  I’d like to let so-and-so know that their admin is doing a great job without the admin knowing.  Can I have so-and-so’s email address to let them know?”  It wouldn’t work all the time, but I loved it when I did.  It was like the heavens opened up for a brief moment and said, “Well played my son – well played.”  Really, though, the point here is that BDR’s need to get that type of basic contact information when no one else will give it to them.  They have to be resourceful!

Finally, a resourceful BDR needs to recognize and know where to go to get help when they need it.  If you’re BDR is not generating leads for you at the amount that you’re expecting them to, a resourceful BDR recognizes this and comes to you for help.  If they’re stymied by a gate-keeper and none of their teleprospecting tricks are getting them any closer to passing a lead with Company X, they’re smart enough to know that they need help, and they also know who to talk to.  Maybe its your training department, maybe its you, I don’t know – but your BDR should.  The last thing you want is a BDR who has fallen into the grind of “smilin’ and dialin’.”  You know folks like that; you’ve either worked with them or have had them work with you.  They’re burned out and know that they’re just running their teleprospecting career into the ground because they just don’t have it in them to get help.  Resourceful BDR’s make sure that they don’t get to that point by getting all of the help (and training, I should add) that they can get.

There are plenty of other ways that BDR’s can be resourceful, the above are just but a few.  The deal is, though, they need to be like John J. Rambo and make the most with what they’ve got.  Train them right, and you can echo Col. Trautman’s (Rambo’s Commanding Officer) sentiment in this exchange with the town Sherriff: 

Sherriff: Whatever possessed God in heaven to make a man like Rambo?
Trautman: God didn’t make Rambo. I made him!

 I love that!  When prospects think, “God, who made a teleprospector like that,” you can sit back and think, “God didn’t make that BDR.  I made them!”