In a recent customer assignment we had the problem of approaching mid-size UK companies (2000-5000 employees) in a specific market segment.
After identifying the key decision makers we had a range of approaches starting with a mail and followed up by a call to the PA of the key person. As it turned out most of those companies had a policy of NOT talking to any sales people at all. We were either put on a automated voice mail saying that they take no sales or marketing type calls, or even worse they just hung up. We had a clear problem with how we could get access to them.
After having gone through this rigmarole with about 30 of the top prospects with not one single meeting, we decided to brainstorm how to change our strategy.
It was clear that we had to get at least one initial meeting and then find out how we could best position the offering and approach the others. Finally we had at least a web presentation and as that did not work due to some technical issues (firewall-related we suppose) we managed to arrange a face-to-face meeting instead.
That meeting turned out to be very helpful as we were able to find out what the proper approach should be and how to position our clients’ offerings. Armed with that know-how we could relaunch the telesales efforts and eventually get things moving with a couple of face-to-face meetings.
The explanation for the NO sales calls accepted policy was the fact that they had been harassed not only by English and European companies but on top of that by an army of US ones too, despite the time difference. So they had to start taking hard actions to keep their heads above water. Bottom line is: US telesales will have a very hard time doing remote calls, and a first hand insider view is now mandatory to get anything moving. We have BTW not seen similar type of “protectionism” in Germany or France or other European countries. Obviously what helps there a lot is if you speak German, French, Italian or Spanish - in particular in Italy and Spain, but often also in France - especially outside of Paris.
