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Is phoning really useful?

04/05/2010 Laurent BOCHET

This question is not appropriately phrased. Since I have created CATALYHOM, I can see that phoning is quite often “inappropriately” used, i.e. we tend to use the same solutions for totally different kind of organizations.
For example, a company that sells a highly technical service, like an engineering and design service specialized in electronics, will not address the same people as company selling consumer products.
We cannot use the same speech or the same approach when we have to target the Industrial Manager or the person in charge of the administrative department.
Then why do we use the same strategies to approach all companies?
Actually, I think that we simply forgot that business aims first of all to promote the company’s know-how. And to sell this know-how, we have to understand it. But we too often tend to forget that. We forget that we sell know-how.
>All this is because we want to be able to get an appointment with a person we don’t know in less than 5 minutes!
It is true that it sometimes works: out of sheer chance, the person we get in touch with is the decision-maker. He listens to what we say and accepts an appointment with the salesman. So what?
I noticed for my part something which really annoys me: we all use the same methods as cellular telephone carriers or kitchen designers to get an appointment and promote the brand. In 5 minutes, it is bungled, we visit a prospective customer. At least the technical salesman visits a prospective customer. But we soon realize that he saw a project manager who has imprecise needs and who is not empowered anyway to take any decision.
Hence the technical salesman will have to work through the organization in order to, after 4 or 5 appointments, finally get in touch with the executive empowered to make decision.
This makes 4 superfluous appointments!!! (Imagine how much time you would gain by contacting the right person at first catch!) All this because we absolutely want to have an appointment settled on the phone in less than 5 minutes!
We are then surprised to see that our customers are disappointed, that prospective clients are fed up with receiving phone calls all the time, and so on. Thus we wonder if it would not be appropriate to use phoning and if this would be efficient.
If you implement a consistent process and if you hire the right telemarketer, the answer may be YES INDEED!