A friend of mine was recently telling me a “story that you’ll love, Peterson”. My friend is a C-level guy at a local business – not enormous but not small, either. I assume they have annual revenue of about one billion dollars. The story was about a huge project that his company had recently awarded … and it all started with a cold call.
In his words …
“I get a million emails from salespeople today. They’re reaching out on LinkedIn and even tracking down my cell phone number. But no one calls my office line anymore. So, I’m working in my office about six months ago and my phone rings. Since no one was in the office and no one calls my office line anymore, I answered it. That might be the first time I’ve blindly answered that phone since I started working here. It was a salesperson … and here we are six months later. Her company just won the largest project in their history because she called my office line.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused an infinite number of dynamic shifts in our work behavior. Many don’t benefit salespeople. However, as this story illustrates, some do benefit us.
Your prospects are more likely to be in the office than other people. They’re the people making decisions on major systems for their facilities – they’re necessary and need to be in the office. Guess what? No one is calling them. For the rest of 2021, salespeople have a window of opportunity to use the direct office line to their advantage.
Call it early in the morning or late in the afternoon, and I bet your success ratio goes through the roof. Do it now because as people start to return to the office, this novelty will start to return to being an annoyance and your prospects will start letting your calls go to voicemail again.
