I normally don’t answer my cell phone if I don’t know who it is (do you?) Anyway, one day last week I had a moment of weakness and I accidently answered the phone because I thought it was my wife.
It was a salesman trying to pitch me to sell me setting up a line of credit for my business secured against my building.
Wha…? My first thought was “who still does cold calls?” I haven’t done cold calls since I was a telemarketer while working through college (come to think of it, maybe that explains my disdain for cold calls…).
Anyway, realizing that it was not my wife, I politely said no thanks. However, that must have been code for “keep talking” since she started to explain why I should be interested. The thing is, we don’t own a building, so we’re not a fit, even if I were looking for business financing (which I was not). Bottom line: I’m not a fit. He didn’t target us properly, or at all.
I eventually just hung up.
This reminded me that of something a podcast listener said during a Podcast Feedback session: “Not targeting is a disservice to the customer.”
That was an elegant way of saying that prospecting (and sales in general) is not about US. It’s about the customer. The point of prospecting (which is something all businesses should do, all the time) is to not to find leads for us to hound. It’s for us to find people who have a problem that we solve.
When we don’t target, we risk being the loan sales woman. In the best case, we’re annoyed and hang up. In the worst case, we invest the 2 minutes it takes to figure out how to block a number on our cell phones and eliminate their access to us.
To prove my point, I am a salesman. My role as the President of Skyway is to find customers for us, and then lead the team to amaze those customers with our service. To make sure we grow Skyway in a healthy way with customers who are a great fit for our support and our team: I target ruthlessly. Our ideal market is those who have these characteristics:
- Contracting Officer Podcast Listeners
- Are part of a company (not an individual)
- Have a government contract or subcontract (or have a specific goal and plan to get one)
- Are active on LinkedIn
Do you have a similar list for your ideal government customer? If you do, share it with your team (and our team so we can keep an eye out for you). If you do not, create one. It will liberate you from having to wonder which opportunities are gold, and which ones are gold plated.
If you want our help finding, or refining, your ideal target, contact me. Ruthlessly targeting is kind of my specialty.
This tickled me – despite registering in the Do Not Call registry I still get these calls. It’s not worth the effort to keep trying to figure out who and why and how to get them to stop forever. So I now just cut them short at the beginning of the call telling them I’m about to enter a secure facility, and can I get their home phone number so I can call them back at 8pm. They never give me their number.
Steve, that is hilarious.
When I sold magazine subscriptions over the phone in college (back in the mid 90s when cold calling still worked), I had people who were annoyed with my calling them ask for my home phone number. Back then (before cell phones and when caller-ID was paid add-on!), I actually gave it to a few people to see if they’d call. They did not.
People have hated cold calls for decades, yet people still use them. I suppose they work in some narrow niche of the market, but they sure don’t work in complex sales…and they are very unlikely to work with on a contracting officer – they probably have called ID :-)