Cheating when it comes to sales!

In the staffing/recruiting industry companies will sometimes provide the sales rep or recruiter with money to buy gifts or wine and dine specific customers, but only after the company becomes a paying customer. Up to that point it seems sales reps and recruiters are expected to cold call to generate new business.

Cold calling does work, but isn’t there a faster way, a short cut?

Suppose John wants to find a girlfriend for himself. And he starts buying flowers for every girl he sees that he might be interested in. Sure, some girls might think he is crazy for buying them flowers when he does not know them. But many girls might at least smile, and appreciate the fact he went that far to show he is interested.

What if John never sent flowers to any girl? What if he basically cold called them, by walking up and starting a conversation.

Suppose John does this with 50 girls. Which approach do you think will lead to more girls being willing to talk to John?

I am willing to bet that by sending flowers first, he is going to do far better at getting girls to open up and talk to him then randomly walking up to them and cold calling on them.

What separates sales people in the staffing industry is their personality, how well do customers like one sales person over others. So the likeability factor is often what separates top producers from marginal producers. Customers always give the business to the sales reps and recruiters whom they personally like.

But the hard part is getting people to talk you in the first place! So why not spend some money sending some sort of gift to get their attention and break the ice so they will at least take your call when you follow up?

It’s interesting. Staffing companies will spend big bucks on fancy brochures that get thrown in the trash by customers. But they will not spend money buying gifts or other things to help sales people and recruiters break the ice to get conversations going with potential customers.

Whenever business got slow for me, I would buy tins of cookies and spend $100 here and there packaging the gifts and shipping them along with a letter of introduction to the Decision Makers I was targeting at maybe ten companies at a time.

By sending the gift first, I significantly increased the odds the Decision Makers would talk to me. And once I got them on the phone, my credibility and personality took over to where I was able to generate new business far quicker than if I relied purely on cold calls.

The lesson to learn is if your company will not allocate money to help you break the ice to win more customers, then spend some of your own money, as that investment will make your job easier.