SMU Data and Models
The Truth About Selling Steel: You Gotta Love Voice Mail
Written by John Packard
November 7, 2014
The Truth About Selling Steel is a series of articles written by John Packard (with help from some of his friends), founder and publisher of Steel Market Update. You can find a number of the previous articles about the sales process under the resources tab in our website.
Steel Market Update is in the middle of producing a custom workshop for a service center on sales. As I worked on the project I elicited the help of Mario Briccetti of Briccetti Associates and his experience as the head of purchasing at Metal Sales, Nordyne and elsewhere. Sales people have a tendency to associate with other sales folks and I wanted to look at the steel sales process from an opposing viewpoint.
Now, I have been involved in sales for most of my life. Thirty-one years in direct steel sales, six years with Steel Market Update and prior to my steel career I sold a few burgers along the way. We’ll skip the burger stories (although McDonalds may have invented the, “do you want fries with that burger”) and concentrate on what I learned recently that probably would have helped me a great deal during my sales career.
Mario told me that as the head buyer he would not take cold calls from salespeople. It was not that he wanted to be intentionally rude, the goal was to see if the salesperson had enough confidence to leave a quality voice mail message and then, secondly, the persistence to try again.
OK, so all of this time I thought it would be better to hang up and keep trying rather than leaving a voice mail…
The voice mail message does provide you an opportunity to get some important points across. So, what are some of the key things that the purchasing manager who will be listening to the voice mail needs to learn about you, your company and your product? Here is a buyer’s call response checklist:
• Is this someone I know (and how many degrees of separation)?
• Is the call worth my time?
• Does the call answer any problems I have right now?
• Could the call answer problems I might have in the future?
• Could the call inform me of something I need to know?
• Am I really interested? Will I be honest about that?
Before being confronted with your next voice mail monster spend a few minutes thinking about leaving something other than your name, company and phone number.
John Packard
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