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Sales Question:
“The Gatekeeper Won’t Give Out My Prospects Email Address… What Do I Do?”
Gatekeeper: We Don't Give Out Our CEO's EMAIL Address!
Answer:
For starters, it’s all in the approach. What we say, how we say it and why we say it has at least 90% to do with the results / response we get back. And that’s good news because we control what we say!
So let’s back up… did you call and ask the gatekeeper “Who’s in charge of ______?” or some version of that? If so, why? In less than 90-seconds (once you get good at it) you can in most cases discover the person whom you need to speak with before picking up the phone by simply doing a quick search on their ABOUT US page, or LinkedIn or Google (simply search Google like this “TITLE + @COMPANY-NAME.com”
Example: Google: CEO + @SALESBUZZ.COM
Not only can you find the name of the person whom you should speak with but in a lot of cases, you will also find their email address; Thus avoiding ever having to ask the gatekeeper for it! (My favorite way to handle any sales objection is to make it disappear before it ever comes up)
When Research FAILS…
What I have found to work best to get a prospects email address if a quick search comes up empty (Besides having them contact me! Again, I like to prevent sales objections from happening rather than try and overcome them after the fact) is to do this…
Once I call on a prospect and the gatekeeper answers (I have a very specific “play” that I run based on this scenario that works very well for me) and I get put through but get the prospects voicemail, I leave my voicemail (again, I also have a specific voicemail play that works extremely well for me) and then I simply hang up and call back and get the gatekeeper again and then I say this:
“Hi Yes (gatekeepers name) It’s (my name and company) again. Wanted to let you know I just left (prospects name) a voicemail but then I got to thinking that maybe it would be best if I simply emailed him/her the documents so that he/she could review them on his/her own time and then if he/she had any questions he/she could just get back with me later and was wondering if you could confirm his/her email address for me? (or you can simply say “what’s the best email address for me to send this to?”)
TEMPORARY SOLUTION
Keep in mind that this is a temporary solution. I mean I guess you could keep it as a long-term solution if you wanted to but you eventually want to get to a place where you (or someone within your company) has learned how to generate an abundance of “hand raisers” (warm leads) but that’s a different subject all together.
In the mean time, I hope this helps.
Michael Pedone
CSS: Chief Sales Scientist
SalesBuzz.com (A 2011 Sales Training Company Watch List Award Winner!)
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