Cold calling is tough and not for the weak-hearted. When you cold call, you are often confronted with the “gatekeeper.” One of the gatekeeper’s jobs is to keep salespeople like you away from the decision-maker. They are not willing to share information with you, or they may send you into an endless loop just to avoid you communicating with the decision-maker. What should a salesperson do in this situation?
Here Are 2 Tips That Will Get You Past the Gatekeeper.
1. “Send Me Your Information & I Will Call You When There is a Need.”
Being a persistent salesperson, you call them to follow up for weeks. After weeks of calling, you are still not able to get anywhere. You likely become discouraged and move on.
There is a better way.
When the gatekeeper says “Send Me Your Information & I Will Get Back to You” your response should be something along the lines of “Okay, great! I want to give specific information to you. What is going to be important to you? Because I don’t want to dump unnecessary information on you, I just want to give what is important.”
This will help you uncover the needs of the business and possibly start a conversation that could lead to eventually closing a sale. Many times they will start to engage in needs development conversation. They will tell you about themselves, their business, their priorities, and their needs. Now, you are in the sales process.
Even if people still don’t want to communicate and just want you to send something then you should say, “Okay, I will send you something. What is the best time to follow up when you will have a few minutes to discuss further?”
That’s your best shot. They still may dump your emails or not answer any of your phone calls, but you have at least taken it to the next level.
2. “I don’t make the decisions here. I just purchase what they tell me to buy. But go ahead, send me your information and I will forward it to them.”
Once again you’ve hit a brick wall… potentially. You are going to send the information, but you are never going to hear from them. Even if they do forward the information to the decision-makers; without you to explain it and without you to go through the needs development process, it will be a waste of time.
Your response: “Awesome. But please let me know what is important to them?” Then ask technical questions that the gatekeeper probably doesn’t know. This will force the gatekeeper’s hand in setting up an appointment or at least contact the decision-maker. This is exactly what you want. You will likely still get stone walled, but this will give you better results than just accepting the first answer.
Notice that in both scenarios you redirected the gatekeeper’s response to get more information or some type of a commitment from them. All sales people face rejection, but the best salespeople have learned to refocus, redirect and move past rejection. Spending weeks of time trying to get an appointment with the decision maker can be time consuming and discouraging, so do your best to master the art of refocus and redirection. Learn to be pleasantly persistent while doing your best to get more information about the business’ needs. Once you do manage to get past a gatekeeper, it is a great feeling both emotionally and financially.
