Reaching The Unreachable

Was in a customer near Shakespeare’s birthplace and met a decent chap called Richard now selling the best drinks dispense systems into the pub retail trade for the past seven months.  One of the sales teams aim is to talk business issues with senior execs rather than delivery ones with technical managers.  But how do you grab the attention of the Top Brass?

It’s an age-old sales conundrum.  He jokingly suggested calling up reception and saying “I’ve had a mobile message from (person’s name) but they must have been out of signal, can you give me their full number please…”

Such people often (although slightly less so each year) have ‘gatekeepers’.  One old-school tactic is to talk abut a specific technically-orientated product they offer.  For instance, find a complicated sounding offering they sell or use, and make a note of the full description.  Then call and when challenged say something like “it’s about your XYZ AB super123.89”.