By Larry Prevost

Back a few years ago, I was spending much of my sales time in the Call Center dialing prospects and selling them training programs. Typically, we had our scheduled calls to make, which were the prospects that we had already called and left a message stating that we were going to call back at a certain time and day. In addition to the scheduled calls, we also had calls to new clients that had never been contacted before. Usually, we called from a list with a mix of past clients and totally new prospects.

On this particular day, I had performed some quick preliminary research on a new prospect, discovered the name and title of the decision-maker and discovered something about the services that the company provided.

Armed with this knowledge, I made the initial call.

I got the receptionist, sometimes called the gatekeeper. Typically a receptionist will answer with the company name. Sometimes, if you are lucky, they may even give their name, but you can't count on it.

She didn't, so I asked her. The call went something like this:

Receptionist: "ABC Company"

Me: "Hi, my name is Larry Prevost and I work with TEM Corp. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with today?"

Receptionist: "This is Bobbi."

Me: "Hi Bobbi. Hey I know they keep you guys pretty busy over there so I don't want to take up too much of your time today. I'm looking to get a hold of 'Bob Roberts.' I understand that he's the General Manager there. Is that correct?"

Bobbi: "Well, I think so."

At this point, it would be pretty easy to say something like, "Could you let him know that I'm on the line? I'll hold -- Thanks."

That's the usual path. The typical sales rep will have their "pitch" memorized and replaying in their head, cycling round-and-round like clothes in a washing machine's spin cycle. They will rush through the gatekeeper in an attempt to get to their target and not pay attention to what was just said. If you believe that the game of sales is a game of numbers, then that is what you do.

This statement, however, was just too good to pass up. So I responded a little differently.

Me: "Bobbi, you sound like you've worked there for quite a while. And you don't even know who is leading your company? What's up with that?

I said it with an obviously playful quality in my voice, but it pulled her attention towards an explanation.

Bobbi: "Well, I'm not really sure of his title yet.

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