‘Hi Johnny, this is Chris from Odeko. We spoke last week about our catalog and Oatly pricing. We are a supplie--’
Click. hmmmmmmmm.
BTW, that is the sound of my dial tone and my 53rd no of the day; NOT a customer excitedly bobbing up and down while humming Eye of the Tiger. Oh boy! A Catalog!!!?? Holy moses, are you for real!? For me?? You want to send it to ME?? I cannot believe my luck!!!
Psych. Fuck-off. Click.
After I burned out of investment banking like a cub scout’s campfire, I contemplated what to do next. I do not design. I do not code. I am an excel wizard, but opening excel worksheets bring back uncontrollable memories of my old boss Harrison (not his real name) sending me 6AM emails with “just a few minor, but urgent tweaks”.
How do I put food on the table?
I joined a coffee technology startup as the first junior sales hire. Junior meaning the kid who will call 80 – 100 cafes a day. Junior meaning the kid with peeling Accutane lips who will walk 40 blocks everyday through NYC, in February, to “test out” if café baristas will hand out the owner’s contact information. (They will.) To sell, you do not need a degree, just skin tougher than Kamala-Harris-looking-into-Mike-Pence’s-soul.
I wrote on my LinkedIn headline, ‘Growth, Operations, Sales strategy’ because that sounded sexier than ‘sales rep’. As a former iNvesTMent BaNkInG analyst, I cannot have people making fun of this ‘career step-back’.
Nobody cared about my LinkedIn headline.
I began cold calling cafes. Cold calling is like walking up to people in a park, alone, asking them to take your picture, and then asking for a cupcake. You better be Leonardi Di Caprio for somebody to give you their cupcake.
The first job of any cold call is to get past, what the industry calls, the Gatekeeper (GK), so that you can talk to the Decision Maker (DM). I need to convince café baristas that I may be useful to their boss. It is like Russian hacker bots convincing Facebook and Twitter that they are normal Americans set on spewing hateful bile into the internet.
First, I need to show baristas that I am not a threat. To that end, I have perfected the art of the intentional stutter. I swear, I am not a sleezy person. Dude you just said that you fake, stutter, on cold calls… Joe Biden just got an IOU to roll over in his future grave. I am a nice person!! I eat overnight oats. I say ‘thank you, sorry about them’ to servers as I leave a restaurant with my grandparents. I fold laundry. Everybody knows you cannot be mean if you fold laundry. Have you ever tried to be angry, sorting through your warm sheets, boxers, and socks? Impossible.
Non-verbal cues like body language, pitch, inflection, and volume convey 80% or more of the information people receive. (Gosh, reflecting on how little words matter makes the writer in me feel all warm and cuddly…). With a slight, initial stutter, followed by a confident finish, I convey to the barista that I am not a threat, but a real person. (okay yikes I re-read this entire paragraph and I sound like a sociopath).
People would rather do anything than take a cold call.
Anger a hippo
Learn a new language
Turkish getups
Yoga with colleagues
Have a cough attack as you walk into a hospital
Find a mouse in your wall
Clean behind the toilet
Drive through Los Angeles at 5pm
Listen to the 3-hour podcast your high school friend made called “WEEDing Time”
Forget your anniversary
Convince your neighbor to buy another Chikwawa
Listen to Holy by Justin Bieber
Hear your oncologist give a resigned sigh as they review your chart
Eat the daily recommended servings of fruits and vegetables
Actually move the couch while vacuuming
See your partner gasp while reading ‘7 Signs Your Relationship Won't Last’
Order Jack-in-the-Box without buying curly fries
Buy condoms as a 16-year-old again (okay, 17-year-old...)
Write ‘because’ without saying b-e-c-a-u-s-e in your head
Iron your boxers
**Shocker**, nobody wants to spend their time with a sales rep. (Unless you are at Costco waiting for the NutriBullet blender woman to start making smoothies again. Then, you will let her talk about stainless steel extractor blades all day long.)
There are a lot of cold call best practices. Most teach an assertive approach.
“Hi, I’m calling for the owner.” (Aggressive, assertive, vocal inflection down)
“They are not free right now; can you call back another time?”
“Oh, really?? They said to call at 2, so I’ll hold. Tell him it is Chris”
When said with conviction, I get an owner on the phone, so often. It’s bonkers.
Another tactic is to call as if you are asking for directions.
“Hi, I’m calling because we are a supplier in New York City and I wanted to send you a catalog.”
People’s natural inclination is to help. It is like walking up to a person on the sidewalk and saying, “Hi, I’m new here, and I want to get to central park.” That person, who “doesn’t have any time” will invariably, direct you to where you want to go. Then, you can ask, "May I share your Taxi?" Once you are in the taxi, you break out your engagement ring and propose.
What is the point of this article? I started doing sales and was nervous because I did not thing I would be very good. But, I am good at sales even though I do not follow the typical rule book. I have a ton to learn and this is a scary time to do sales. Our company should be dead. We are headquartered in New York City aka the USA epicenter of Corona virus. Cafés located in dense urban areas are down ~60% in daily sales. (btwPLEASE support your local cafés, they desperately need it!!) However, thanks to product, marketing, engineering, customer support, and me (this is mostly about me baby) we are growing mid double digits a month.
For the rest of this year, I am going to spend part of each day writing the funniest, most informative, honest, Cold Calling “How To” manual of all time. It will be personal, like a memoir, and include satire about corporate life. However, it will also teach anybody how to sell. Do not worry, ‘the unfinished draft’ will still be published each week and is a main priority of mine. I love writing these articles. But, this goal of writing a book is now in writing.
This will be a fun. I think. I love writing and I love teaching. If you have any words of wisdom, please send. I have a crazy feeling in my heart that this is going to be awesome. Fuck it, lfg baby.