What do you do when the gatekeeper says:

“I will forward this to the appropriate person. They will be back in touch with you directly if there is interest.”

“I will forward this to the appropriate person” leads me to believe you either sent a blind email OR you called and asked the gatekeeper something along the lines of “Who’s the person in charge of X?”

No matter which, none of those are on my preferred sales strategy list. If you are making outbound cold calls (or cold emails), you should know the top 3 titles of your targeted prospects that are almost always involved in the decision-making process.

I guarantee that you will not have 30 different “titles” involved in the decision-making process.

Sure, each company has its own purchasing process, but if you list out the last ten deals your company closed and wrote out all the different titles that had an actual VOTE in the decision-making process for each deal, you will see two to three titles start to be consistent. Contacts that have those titles are the ones you want to focus on.

Example:

I have never spoken with the CEO of my Fortune 500 clients. It’s almost always the Director of Sales or VP of Sales.

If, however, the prospect is a small business, it’s almost always the CEO / OWNER (and not the sales manager).

That is “MY” industry. You should know all the titles of who is most routinely involved in your “space” so you can target them and start the conversation.

It’s too easy with today’s sales tools to find the prospect’s name and too damaging to go in blind.

When you send an email or make a sales call and ask for the person in charge of XYZ, you let the person on the other end know right up front that you are an uninvited guest. They respond the same way you would if the shoe were on the other foot.

My advice is for you to take 30 seconds and use Google and/or LinkedIn to find the person’s name at the company you are targeting before picking up the phone or hitting the send button on that email.

– Michael Pedone

Michael Pedone is the founder of SalesBuzz.com – a turnkey on-demand skills-building program for inside sales teams. Try a free class today.