Inside Sales Telesales Tips Blog

Don’t encourage receptionists to be gatekeepers by being too verbose in your opening

  

  

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This past week, I was working with an inside sales rep on some coaching calls. He was having a real challenge, because receptionists were refusing to connect him with his target prospects. Upon listening to one of his calls, it was easy to see why. He was over-introducing himself, using way too many words when he didn’t have to.

I've never liked the word “gatekeeper,” because I’ve gotten so much help from the people at my prospect companies whose job it is to field incoming phone calls. They’ve got often demanding jobs, and I like to make it easy for me by making it easy for them. In my sales training courses, we discuss the differences between receptionists, who answer a company’s main telephone line, and Executive Administrators (EAs), who are essentially executive-level people that help the given executive run his or her sphere of influence. Generally speaking, you’ll be a lot more directive with a receptionists than you will with EAs, so today’s post is about some things to do (and not to do) when opening a call with a receptionist.

So let’s first look at how Bob (my rep) was opening his calls with receptionists, along with a response I actually heard:

-  Bob: “Hi, this is Bob Brody from ABC Instruments, and I wonder if you’d be able to put me through to Sally Smith. This is in regard to introducing her to our company.”
-  Receptionist: “Have you spoken with her before?”
-  Bob: “No.”
-  Receptionist: “If you haven’t spoken with her, I can’t put you through.”

In this situation, Bob’s opening immediately identified him as a salesperson that was cold-calling, and many receptionists have been trained to avoid putting these calls through. He also used weak terms, “I wonder if,” and “introducing her to our company,” which practically begs the receptionist to drop the cal, because it doesn’t sound authoritative enough. A better way to handle the situation is to sound more direct, and take control by not providing information you really don’t need to initially provide.

Instead, try this, simple and direct: “Sally Smith, please.” 

A huge percentage of the time, Bob will get transferred immediately, because he now sounds authoritative. We made the correction during the coaching session, and he was amazed to find he got through the receptionist on every subsequent call on which we worked that day. Using this technique, he won’t get grilled by the receptionist most of the time, who, after all, has a lot of other inbound calls to process anyway. Sure, some of the time the receptionist will ask what the call’s about, but again, a short answer, like “development systems” is a whole lot better than being too wordy.

And yes, in some companies, especially smaller ones, the receptionist and EA are one and the same, so you’ll be asked one or two more questions. I’ve discussed this in previous blog posts, but if you’re making a cold call to a Director-level prospect or higher, you should at least be doing a web-search on the person’s name before the call, which can give you some terrific clues that will warm up your call, whether it’s to the prospect, or to the EA.

Will receptionists, though, keep it short and sweet, have a polite but authoritative tone to your voice, and you’ll have a lot less resistance. Add brevity with receptionists to your Best Practices Playbook.