Kamikaze Salesmen

You know that times must be tough when the cold calling salesman get really tricky in order to get a few minutes to sell their wares. Business owners and executives are bombarded daily with phone calls, personal visits, and junk mail from crafty salespeople wanting to get their business. If you have ever tried to get a hold of a business owner or executive for a legitimate reason but experienced having to run a gauntlet to get through, then you have probably fallen victim to the elaborate web of safeguards put into place to make sure the fly by night sales people don’t get through and take up the boss’s precious time. My personal friends have been surprised at how difficult it is to get me on the phone at my place of business. My call screeners are that good.

But the shady salespeople are not easily deterred. One of the oldest tricks in the book is to pretend they are the good buddy of the guy they are trying to call on the phone. They will use only first names and shorten them. Steven is Steve, William is Bill or Bob, David is Dave, etc. This is to trick the secretary into thinking it is one of the boss’s golf buddies looking to change their tee time. Good secretaries or administrative assistants learn quickly the names of the boss’s real friends and sniff out the imposters.

When the sales person does get through to the boss they then proceed to tell you the first bald face lie. They say they are going to be in your town meeting other business owners about whatever they are trying to sell and ask if they could meet with you also. I know this is a bald face lie because in our town there is our business, the volunteer fire station, the auto parts store, and a couple mini marts. You cannot even buy gasoline here. At this point I generally like to ask which businesses in our town they have appointments with. This is when they will usually give you some bull about their clients wanting to remain confidential.

The really bold ones though will research your competitors and say that they are going to be in your area meeting with companies X, Y, and Z about their product or service and that they would like to set up an appointment to also meet with you. At which point I will ask them who they are meeting with at Company X because I know the management at all three of those companies. Then they either pull the lie that they don’t have their complete list with them right then or the really brazen ones actually know the name of the owner and throw that out there. I like to tell them that I will call that person and see what they think about the product or service. This generally chases them away.

But for some the tough economic times have forced them into what I like to term as Kamikaze Sales Calls. Basically the sales person shows up claiming they have an appointment with the boss. The secretary checks the calendar and tells them that she does not show an appointment. The Kamikaze Sales Person tells the secretary that his head office set up the appointment. The next thing he says is also an outright lie but it gets your sympathy. They like to say that they drove from (insert popular town at least three hour drive away). This way you feel bad for them wasting a total of six hours driving on a wild goose chase. The secretary will usually call the boss in his office at this point and tell him about the guy. The boss will come out and also claim that no appointment was made. The sales guy then offers his sob story about traveling so far and ask if he could possibly have just five minutes to run through his abbreviated presentation so that he can at least report back to his boss that he didn’t completely waste the day.

Once again it is all a lie because that five minutes turns into about half an hour. They got their sales pitch in without an appointment and were able to bypass all the gatekeepers the boss set up to make sure that these sales people didn’t bother him all day. The really brazen liars will actually get their own sales manager on the phone during the five minute mini presentation. He will explain the alleged snafu with the appointment to the boss and then the sales manager will get in on the action of also trying to sell to the unsuspecting business owner or executive.

I think in most cases the Kamikaze Salesman would get away with this if the business only saw this scam every few years. But in these desperate times we have seen it happen twice in the last couple months. The second salesman was incensed that we were accusing her of not really having an appointment. Her false indignation was almost laughable. She then had the nerve to call back a few days later to follow up on her “meeting” with the boss. When she was told by the secretary that the meeting never happened she claimed she had the notes to prove that it did happen!

I know that being in sales is tough especially when they are trying to get in to see the decision maker but this sort of aggressive tactic does nothing to help them make a sale unless the person they are talking to is a complete idiot. Most people can sense when something isn’t right about the salesman’s story.

The real way to break them of the lie is to ask them for business references from your area, real people that you can contact and ask what their experience was. Usually they will say something about protecting their clients’ anonymity. Then ask them if they seriously are saying they have no clients in the area that are willing to be used as a reference. Realizing their mistake they quickly say that they will get the list faxed or emailed over. Surprise! The list never arrives.

So to all you sales people out there that insist on telling lies to get my business, realize that you will never get one penny from me. If you are willing to lie to get in the door, then I can only assume you are willing to lie to complete the sale and lie even after I am one of your clients.