The “I’m in a meeting” Sales Call Blow-off

Original Audio: https://www.salesbuzz.com/how-to-handle-the-im-in-a-meeting-sales-call-blow-off/ 

Transcription:

MJP: Hey everybody. It’s Michael Pedone here with SalesBuzz.com, and today I want to talk about when you’re making a sales call and right out of the gate the prospect says something like, “oh, right now’s not a good time, I’m in a meeting.” Now, as a salesperson who’s been selling as a straight commission inside sales rep for more than, more years than I want to admit to, over 25 years, I don’t know when you hear that, but for me I almost want to say like, “Yeah right, sure, if you’re in a meeting then why’d you pick up the phone?” Right? We know it’s a blow-off. Right? When we’re on the other side of that phone and we get that kind of a response, even if they technically were, I mean sometimes sure, they might actually be in a meeting, but the 99.9% of the time it’s like, “why’d you pick up the phone?” They recognize it might be a sales call, they don’t want to have a conversation with us. And the biggest problem that a lot of salespeople will make, is they, they’ll uh automatically default to, “well, when would be a better time?” And they try to set that appointment up even if the person says, “yeah, give me a call the next day” or whatever, the no-show rate is extremely high, right? Your best chances of moving the sale to that next step, wherever that next step is based on your previous or whether you’ve had no conversation or whether you had previous conversation with them, your best chance to move that next step is on the phone call that you’re on right now. So, you have to be prepared. You can’t be caught off guard if you get that response. It’s gonna happen. Let’s hope it doesn’t happen often. But when it does, you need to know how to run it. So, I have a clip here that I’m going to play. This was, I’ll set the backdrop, this was a warm lead, right? I consider it a warm lead because they contacted me through the website, they asked for some information, it sent it to them automatically, now I want to contact them. Now, notice I didn’t call it a first or a follow-up call, right? I’m technically not following up with them because I haven’t spoken to them yet. So, to me, from my sales perspective and my mindset and my objective, I’m making a first-time call even though they reached out to us and they got some information that was automatically sent to them. So, let me let you listen to this uh recording real quick, and then I’ll comment. Here we go. 

“X: Hello?

Rec: Hey! This is Michael Pedone with SalesBuzz, how are you?

X: I’m, I’m good Michael, not good time uh, I’m in a meeting in 5 minutes. 

Rec: Yeah that’s okay I just need a second or so. I just wanted to find out if you – ”

MJP: Now, okay. First of all, no, I wasn’t calling Russia. He obviously has a Russian accent, but that being said, I just know I’m going to get that in the comments. Alright so let me just get that out of the way. With that being said, notice what happened right then and there. Even though he says, “no, now’s not a good time, got a meeting in 5 minutes,” whether he does or doesn’t either way, notice how I didn’t go, “okay how about I call you later today” or “when’s a better time,” or what have you. What I ended up doing is like, “that’s okay, no worries, I just need a second” and then I go right on into an engagement question. We ended up having about a 3-5 minute conversation after that. I was able to get some more data, and was able to move the sale to the next step. This is how you’re supposed to handle those situations. Just listen to the recording again, listen to how I handled it. Notice that sounds very natural, right? It’s not scripted even though it’s a play in my playbook, when they say this, I’m going to go to this play here. Hope this helped. I’ll see you next time.

– Michael Pedone

Founder of SalesBuzzz.com – The on-demand Sales Training Program that Converts More Cold Calls to Sales.