I get a lot of sales calls during the course of a year. It’s just part of the deal. You get your name printed on or offline anywhere as a job title where you might just make a hiring or purchasing decision and bingo, next thing you know you are being called for the next few weeks by people who introduce themselves as if you’ve known them for years from companies you’ve never heard off.
“hi Howard. This is David. I’m from ’spandex donkey’ and we are the leading global supplier of obsolete JavaScript code to all the major agencies. Your colleague told me you were the person to speak to about this and so I think we could really work together. Tell me, where do you get your obsolete JavaScript from now?”
That kind of thing.
And normally it’s one or two a month of this type.
But something major has happened in the world of cold calling agency services of late and it’s resulted in me personally getting at least two calls a day in the last week with someone trying to sell me something or other. (I don’t think it helps we have a temp receptionist who doesn’t seem to understand call screening and just puts everyone straight through.)
I’m not saying it is 100% down to the credit crunch/recession but something has happened which means these service companies are ringing around like crazy in an attempt to get that fateful “cup of coffee some time to discuss how we can help”. I used to take those meetings once in a while. My thinking was it couldn,t hurt and maybe they did have something new to offer.
But now I don’t. If I did I’d spend all day meeting mobile/production/av/experiential service providers and not doing any work.
Maybe us on the actual agency side should take this up? I mean, everyone complains pitch process could do with a shake up, or it’s out of date, etc, etc. You know that one right? Well. Perhaps we should resort as an industry to cold calling marketing directors in potential client companies and pretending to know them.
“hey sally! This is Howard. I heard you were looking for some marketing to drive sales. I think we can help. Can I meet for a cup of coffee? No?”
It might work? It must work for recruiters and people who sell sms platforms because they all do enough of it!!!
Howard
