One of my firm’s newest clients is a project management outfit that provides move-management services. I knew, positively, that XYZ Corp was planning a large move because a mover with whom I network had a meeting scheduled on June 20th to provide them with a bid. When I reached an admin at the company and asked who was in charge of overseeing the project (so I could book a meeting), she told me, “all of our vendors have already been chosen, thank you for contacting us but it’s all a done deal.” I very politely but firmly said to her, “Listen, I happen to know for a fact that a moving company was at your offices TODAY to discuss submitting a bid so I don’t think that that is the case.” To my complete amazement, she replied, “Then you must know something that I don’t know. The person handling the project is Bill Donnelly. Here is his direct number and his email address is ________”. This proves a point that I have made time and again: underlings are told to lie to vendors that call so their bosses don’t have to field dozens of sales calls a day. Know your facts and don’t be deterred by people in the lower ranks that are trained to mislead you. Keep your eye on the ball. And oh yes, I got my client the meeting.

Not getting the answer you want? Sometimes getting the right person on the horn is all you need to do to close the deal. Booking high quality sales appointments is, like so much in life, about persistence; being unwilling to take “no” for an answer. This is not an arena for the shy and retiring. This story will illustrate how applying the principles I’ve outlined in many of my previous posts leads to success.

The client: an office and industrial relocation company.

The prospect: a manufacturing company with offices, labs, clean rooms, warehouse, and inventory.

On my first call I spoke to a very pleasant chap named Mark. Mark told me that I needed to contact Leslie in the purchasing department. I spoke to Leslie and booked an appointment for a site tour and job walk. Simple enough, I thought, but the fun was just starting. A day later I got an email from Leslie that read, “I need to cancel this meeting until next week. I need to follow-up and see if this service is needed.” Now I knew perfectly well the service was needed—they were planning to move! I waited a few days and called Leslie who told me, “I’m going to check with Marcus and see what’s going on.” Up til now, I had thought that Leslie was the head honchette.The following day, Leslie left me a voicemail saying, “Marcus has already chosen our moving company.” I asked Leslie to speak to Marcus but she said that he was already swamped with dealing with the move. So I waited a day and called the reception desk, asked for Marcus and he picked up right away.  When I pitched him and requested and appointment he said, “sure, I can use one more bid. I haven’t been very impressed with the ones I’ve received”. I scheduled the walk-through.

The truth is that I was a bit worried that, when my client showed up, he would be referred back to Leslie, who might have gotten pissed off that I shot a curve around her to reach Marcus. As it turned out, Marcus met directly with my client and was impressed with their credentials.

The result: approximately two weeks after the job walk, Marcus informed my client that they had been awarded the bid.

The Takeaway: don’t be dissuaded, discouraged or deflected. Get the decision-maker on the phone at all costs and close them!

Is this your prospect talking?

Can you blame them? It’s analogous to the hot girl who gets hit on so much that she tells you that she has a boyfriend or gives you a fake number. It’s just the easiest thing to do to get you off their backs. So how do you, the wannabe Ace Prospector, sniff out those lies and know when there is a real opportunity that you shouldn’t stop pursuing? Read on…
The Client: an international office furniture manufacturing firm
The Prospect: a food manufacturing company with a huge new plant under construction with a brand new state-of-the-art office to be outfitted (a top-notch opportunity)
When I first contacted the client, I was told that they were taking bids from interior designers. A couple of months later, the operations manager told me, “the company president has already selected furniture”. This was in February 2010. Since I knew that they weren’t occupying the new building until 2011 this seemed very doubtful to me. I tried reaching the president directly but his phone was very well defended.
In August I contacted the operations manager again. This time I was told that the interior designer would be assisting with the furniture selection (contradicting his earlier obfuscation). I asked who the interior designer was but he refused to give me the information. He said that if I sent my client’s company info via email that he would forward it to the design firm, so I complied and sent an introductory email. I followed that up with an email detailing a Design Excellence award that my client had recently received for a large well-known office project. He confirmed receipt and said he would forward the information (because of spam filters I always ask prospects to confirm receipt of my emails).
After another week, I sent a follow up asking the operations manager if there had been a response from the interior design firm.
He wrote back and said he had forwarded my latest inquiry. Later the same day, a principal with the design firm emailed saying, “I understand you are eager to work with us on this project. When are you available to meet?”
After my client met with the prospect I was told that no other furniture vendors had gotten in the door to date. No surprise there.
The Takeaway? Learn to distinguish when a prospect is simply trying to blow you off. Listen for inconsistencies in what they tell you. In this case, the prospect tried to tell me that the owner had selected furniture when the company had only just selected a GC. Persistence wins the day every time. You might get a different answer in March than you did in January. Never accept the first response you get as an honest answer. Particularly if you know that the prospect has been getting bombarded with vendors’ inquiries.

Nowadays life for the cold-caller has been made exponentially simpler. I have found, on more than one occasion, that simply typing “facilities manager, XYZ Corp, Tucson” will bring up not only the contact’s name, but also an email and sometimes a direct phone number. But if not there are plenty of other ways to leverage the power of the web.
I was working a lead—a company had a 300 employee relocation planned—and all I had was the name of the company and the info “45k move planned”.
So I went to Jigsaw and got some names but none of them were handling the relocation. Finally, I got a receptionist to give me the name of the operations manager who was handling the move.
I got him on the phone and was told (and I quote), ” I can‘t make any promises as I have several vendors already interested but I will keep you posted”. I’m not a fan of hoping and praying when concrete action is possible, and so…
I went on Linkedin and typed in this person’s name. Lo and behold he had held a position at Jones Lang, a firm that my client has done lots of business with.
I called my client and got the name of his Jones Lang contact whom, it turns out, this operations manager knew very well. I called him and asked if he would call the prospect and put in a good word for my client. He did and later told me, “If he hires another mover I’ll be very surprised,”—evidently he laid it on pretty thick. The next day I got an email from the prospect requesting a meeting and now my client has a strong shot at the job. Based on the former colleague’s recommendation, I’d say it’s very likely that he will book the business.
The takeaway? Use all the resources that the wondrous web provides you.