John Linton
I can't remember the last Christmas time that so many people I only vaguely know in business have contacted me with 'best wishes' type excuses and 'hope to be in touch shortly' emails, invitations and Christmas cards. I'm pretty sure there never was any such time as I've never been very good at maintaining casual business relationships and despise "networking" and everything that word seems to entail in its mis-use in describing constantly attending events/meetings for the sole purpose of developing "useful contacts". Despite my best endeavours to eliminate any sort of continuing 'relationship' with people I have briefly done business with or had some sort of other business relationship over the time I have been involved in commercial aspects of Australian life they appear to have been unsuccessful.
While I always try to avoid rudeness in dealing with anyone, personal or business, I'm finding it very difficult over the past 2 - 3 months to avoid being more brusque than I would wish to be in not agreeing to "meetings" or "catch ups" and, quite frankly, I'm amazed at hearing from people I barely know who speak so enthusiastically about our past (almost completely forgotten, and in some cases completely forgotten, on my part) dealings and associations. I assume from the recent tidal rise in attempted contact that Exetel has some how appeared on these dimly remembered people's 'horizon' for reasons that are unclear and my name has been associated with Exetel's in such 'appearances'.
I'm also assuming that it's one further sign of many companies usual sources of business drying up and demanding a more frantic grasping at straws in terms of finding new sources of revenue - I can't imagine why else I or Exetel would be considered as reasonable 'prospects'. Over 80% of all of our monthly expenditures are with four major suppliers and the rest of our expenditures are split over a dozen or so minor suppliers and our business is such that it could never be anything else. While it's, definitely, not for me to begin to understand how other companies see their best interests in being served in conducting their 'sales' activities, I seem to detect traces of that tired and discredited sales mis-belief that you should always "sell at the top" in the stupidity of so many of the approaches I have received over the last 3 months and particularly in the last 2 - 3 weeks. (mind you, the "top" and "bottom" of Exetel are so close together as to indistinguishable).
In my time in sales I have sold some fairly large ticket items and major contracts but I never believed, and therefore never encouraged in any way any sales personnel for whom I was responsible to believe, that they should attempt to waste their time (and the time of a prospective buyers top management) to contact the CEO or any other senior manager within a prospective buyer's organisation but ALWAYS aim first contacts at the IT/MIS manager level and ASK at that level who the appropriate contact would be should they wish to listen to what you have to offer. Maybe it's one more sign that I truly am totally out of touch with modern selling techniques - but I'm actually offended by the approaches I've received recently as being completely inappropriate - and I'm old enough to regard the casual use of my given name by people I hardly know (and in some cases never knew) as not only inappropriate but offensive.
As we consider using outbound sales I've paid more attention to this strange increase in direct telephone contact and, while I realise I'm not a good example, I have to say that it still does nothing for me and it still seems to be the wrong approach to selling anything - to call up an apparently senior executive within a 'target' prospective organisation and attempt to make a sales pitch. I thought that approach had died a thousand deaths back in the 1970s but apparently it has had a revival and at least some companies have reverted to the cold calling over the telephone time wasting regimes of the commercial stone age. I wouldn't have believed that was possible but it seems to be the case based on my experiences over the past few weeks.
I've raised this issue with some long term business acquaintances who have some knowledge of how their companies generate their sales revenues and none of them use 'cold calling by telephone' processes. Also none of them make attempts to contact very senior managers via sales personnel below Sales Director level - pretty much as I have always understood and operated. So where does this "start at the top" and do it by telephone 'cold' call come from that appears to be becoming pervasive? Desperation? I can't think of any other reason even contacting a small company like Exetel whose decision making, like many other small companies, is likely to be highly 'concentrated'.
Since I was a very, very, inexperienced sales rep I have never made a 'cold' telephone call to generate interest in the product or service I was selling - despite having some of the most incompetent and stupid sales managers who were ever mis-issued with that title. Even in my first sales job I could see how pointless such an approach would be and I've never changed my mind about the pointlessness and wastefulness involved in such an approach to selling. So I'm fascinated by what I now see is happening in some areas of the technology industries and am seriously wondering what has changed that could make companies that are involved in direct selling do telephone cold calling when every thing about that method seems obviously doomed to failure.
Does telephone cold calling actually produce a financially viable end sales result? I have never seen it work in several decades of selling. Easily the most effective 'lead generation' process I have ever come across has been direct mail and easily the most cost effective version of direct mail has been WINFAX which has built businesses for me consistently since I first used it in the UK in 2000 to build a business in that country but doing all the 'mailing' from Australia. At around 2 cents a 'mail shot' it is hard to beat for cost and the effectiveness seems to be as high today as it was almost ten years ago.
If Exetel goes ahead with setting up one or more sales operations I don't think, for a moment, that I would include telephone cold calling in the approaches to the different marketplaces. That's based on almost a business life time in selling both directly by myself and in managing sales teams, branches and country wide sales forces and achieving better results than anyone I've ever competed with. Of course - all that's in the past and today may very well be a different era with different 'interest creating' acceptable methodologies.
I would welcome any proof to the contrary.