Imagine you are at a large business event and the person closest to you politely begins a conversation. They are familiar with your company and your industry and express genuine interest in the work you are doing. Not only that, they ask intelligent questions and even share a few ideas that are worth pursuing.
How would this make you feel? Based on my own experience of attending all kinds of events, such a conversation would be a welcome highlight and add some joy to my day or evening. I’d feel honoured to have had that experience.
One of the definitions of the word “honour” is “regard with great respect”. When someone engages in conversation with us, expresses a high level of understanding of our business, our industry, our lives – and even offers thought-provoking ideas that might contribute to our success – that is an honour.
So what if such conversations were available to us more often? What if, in the comfort of our offices, we could have intelligent conversations that resulted in positive change for our business? Wouldn’t that be worthwhile?
As I finished a coaching session this week with a smart, well-informed, compassionate salesperson I realized that decision makers that don’t take her calls are really missing out. Not only is she calling them with a great solution to a common problem, but she understands their industry and with her years of experience and vast client list, she has valuable market intelligence. Whether someone chooses to become her client or not, having a conversation with her would always be incredibly valuable.
We have all taken the lowest form of phone sales – the cruise, the computer check, the mysterious new credit card – and applied it to every caller we don’t know. Yet the hundreds of salespeople I’ve now trained or coached are genuinely interested in the companies they call. They’ve done their research. They want to share their knowledge and offer possible solutions to existing problems. They are not after fast cash. Just like the person at the business event, they want to have a conversation and, if you see the value, build a relationship.
So, when our business phones ring, and it’s someone we don’t know, perhaps we should change our attitude. Perhaps we should feel honoured they’ve chosen to contact us and pay more attention to the information and intelligence they have to offer.
Do share this post and … enjoy your PhoneWork everyone!
Thanks for the great insight MJ. Your article reminds salespeople what they should aspire to as sellers and it reminds those of us who receive calls from salespeople to be gracious recipients of a seller’s interest in us.
Thank you, Peter, for your comment. And I love your language “gracious recipients” of their interest in us. I may use that in a post sometime because that is exactly how we should behave in the B2B environment.