I returned to the office last week, rather pleased that after 3.5 months out of the office there were only eight voicemail messages on my system. I didn't mention that I was on mat leave in my outgoing message--those who work closely with me know that I travel a lot and tend to reach out via email, where I left and outgoing message. Two of the calls came from someone who quickly determined I was on mat leave. One came from someone who had already reached me on my mobile phone. The remaining five came from "Phil", someone I'd never met but who spoke like we were buds.
Each voicemail was eerily similar to the one before it:
"Jory! Phil (last name) from (name of company, and said so quickly I couldn't hear it) here. Listen, hoping we can get a conversation with (name of CEO?) on calendar. Give me a call back at ..."
Each follow-up had the same friendly, slightly detached tone--no acknowledgement that I hadn't called back, nor additional information to help contextualize why I might be interested in calling back. I'm not even sure if he was in the ballpark calling me. Needless to say I never called Phil back.
At home I was receiving daily calls from a local gym, which I visited with the intention of getting my workouts started again. I was issued a week-long free-trial pass, which I used before leaving town for the holidays. I reasoned, why should I bother to call back this week? I'm still using my trial. I returned home after the holidays to multiple messages on my home and mobile phones that sounded increasingly desperate, requesting that I call back the gym sales rep. I figured, I'll go to the gym tomorrow and speak to her in person.
Unfortunately that plan was thwarted when, the night of my return, while trying to put our three-month-old down to bed, we received a call (at 9:30 p.m.) from the sales rep. H-band was less than excited to receive the call. I will only share the transcript as I could hear it on my end.
"Hello!"
(pause)
"We don't take calls at this time!" (pause)
"I don't care if she hasn't called you back. We have a screaming baby here that you just woke up!"
I started to block out the words after H-band started admonishing the person on the other line about her attitude. What a lovely way to start a relationship, I thought.
The next day I, along with three-month old and H-band, went to the gym to see the sales rep. H-band apologized for yelling at her, and we went about the business of signing us both up for memberships.
The moral of this story isn't, "See! Being persistent works!" but rather what I didn't share with the sales rep: "Your sales organization needs to think qualitatively rather than quantitatively."
During our meeting, the sales rep apologized for the frequent, post-business-hours calls.
"I have to knock out 50 a day. Once I'm done meeting with prospects in person, I often have to finish late into the night to get them all in," she said.
I suspect that her organization's sales philosophy mirrors Phil's: Sales is a numbers game. The more you call, the more you sell. On the face of it, that's true. But not if the message is untargeted, and if the follow-up lacks strategy. In Phil's case, he could call me 80 times and make his call quota, but since I have no idea what his company does I will never call back. Even if his company was in the ballpark and provided a service that could be of use, his Atari Breakout approach to telesales (in which one impersonally pings you over and over, hoping to break through to a responder) negates his chances of creating a real lead.
In my gym's case, the rep had a real lead--one who walked through the door and requested a trial, in fact. But by pummeling that lead at all times of the day, my interest (and certainly my husband's) waned. In this case, all of the follow-up calls did nothing to further the sale, they even almost thwarted it. The time that our sales rep spent knocking out her call quota would have been better spent on walking more warm sales leads through the gym and offering them free trials, or prospecting for more leads.
Note, I didn't say cold-calling, or calling other prospects who are in a cooler part of the sales cycle. I mean finding places where people who are more likely to want gym memberships are hanging out and networking with people in those places. For instance, local new moms groups (where I've been hanging, online and off, when I decided to join the gym), or aligning with physical therapists who recommend to their clients specific workout regimens.
Rather than requiring X number of calls regardless of stage in the sales cycle, the gym could reward the progress of leads from cool to warm, or entry into the sales cycle of new leads based on networking, or time spent offsite networking.
But then, what do I know? I'm just a customer.
Image: Retroist
