Zak Slayback, a millennial entrepreneur and communicator who focuses on issues of education, innovation and social change, says phone calls in business are used too willy-nilly (our term, not his), particularly by millennials who are still developing a sense of proper and effective business protocol.
“Scheduling a call (or much worse, calling unsolicited) is the equivalent of calling a meeting in the workplace. If it is used intelligently and only when necessary, it can be a powerful tool to transfer information, increase productivity and boost morale. If used liberally and too often, it can waste time, decrease productivity, and tank morale,” says Slayback, author of “The End of School: Reclaiming Education from the Classroom.”
“Chances are, if you’re a young person in the workplace, nobody has ever sat you down and explained the conventions of how to use phone calls effectively. If you’re particularly unfortunate, you’ve been trained to use them for everything by a manager who himself doesn’t know how to ask, ‘Do I need to request a phone call or can this just be an email?’ ”
In a recent blog post on the subject, Slayback offers a set of questions to ask before sending an email or requesting a phone call. He cautions that his guidelines do not apply to sales calls and emails, but some seem perfectly relevant for sales reps to ask before they dial or hit send:
Do I know what I want to talk about? Reps should write what they want to talk about in a bulleted list. Don’t leave it to memory to recall. You don’t want to get into the conversation and stutter around and waste the other person’s time. If a salesperson can’t develop specific talking points, they should shoot the prospect an email giving a general outline of what they want to discuss, using bullet points and paragraphs, and including a clear request for feedback.
Is a call the logical next step? Too often, people (including salespeople) equate a phone call to making progress. “Chances are you feel this way because throughout your school-life and career-life thus far, meetings and busy-ness are indicators of progress. This emphasis on process over substance can get you far in a bureaucracy, but doesn’t carry much weight in a world where pay and profits are measured by the value added by the organization,” says Slayback.
What is the desired outcome?
This one is not Slayback’s. Rather, it comes from a blog post on sales call planning by Mike Schultz of the Rain Group, a sales training company. “This question sounds simple enough, but it is often overlooked by professionals before they meet with customers or prospects. Our advice: if you don’t know what you want to get out of your meeting with them, don’t get out of the (proverbial) car (credit to Mack Hannan and his book “If You Don’t Have a Plan, Stay in the Car”).
What are my strengths and vulnerabilities? This question comes from the same Schultz post. Every sales situation includes various forces that will work in the rep’s favor. Knowing what these forces are for any particular customer or prospect allows the salesperson to leverage them to help make the customer more successful and, in turn, increase the odds of winning the deal. Conversely, if your sales reps know what their relative vulnerabilities are, it helps them prepare in advance to either turn them into advantages or at least diminish them as vulnerabilities.
“Know that requesting calls is like crying wolf,” says Slayback. “If you do it too many times without any real need, eventually people are going to stop taking you seriously. Having good judgement for when a call is necessary is an extremely valuable skill that very few young people appreciate. Cultivate it and with it your professional judgment. There are times that call for one-on-one conversations — that just happens more rarely than most young people think.”
