Etiquette, it is not just for dinner parties anymore…

When I was six years old, my grandparents celebrated their 50^th Wedding Anniversary.  So here was a child who was used to eating nothing but cheeseburgers when dining out placed in a whole new world.  I remember being overwhelmed by the amount of silverware on the table.  There were far too many forks, knives, and spoons for any man, let alone any child to deal with.  Luckily for me, my grandmother was “Old School”, probably because she grew up in the “Old Country”.  She explained what each piece was for, and how to use them.  As a sponge of knowledge that I was quickly developing into, I caught on quickly.  Butter goes from the dish to the butter knife and finally to the plate.  You never use the butter knife to spread butter on your bread “A gentleman does not do that.”  I hope that I have helped with your dinner party etiquette, but I want to look at another form of etiquette, CRM Etiquette.

Most everyone in sales today is familiar with one form of CRM or another.  We pound away at our keyboards daily.  Updating, deleting, managing this software, but there are some of us who do the Cardinal Sin of shared CRM systems… HOARDING ACCOUNTS.

When we are new in a sales organization we go through hundreds, if not thousands, of names in our organization’s database.  We try to see buying, contact, and return trends before contacting a prospect.  You go for the first call, and note it in the system.  Maybe you get to the gate keeper, the voicemail, or even better the prospect themselves, but for the most part, this contact has been left for dead, and you are fighting an uphill battle.  

The battle is not what any of this is about.   It is about moving prospects into your sales’ ledger without actually speaking to them.  Just leaving a voicemail does not give you the right to plant your flag on the customer’s account.  Most voicemails from sales people are deleted shortly after hearing the name of the organization; your name is largely ignored.  It is nothing to take personal, but if you speak with any purchasing agent they will tell you that they get dozens of calls a day from new reps, and they could spend their entire day just listening to the messages.

What I am trying to get at is a fairly simple concept.  You should not consider the contact to be your prospect unless you actually speak to the decision maker.  Just because you have left a dozen voicemails, and know the gate keeper’s life story does not entitle you to the prospect.  Respect yourselves; respect your other sales people.  Please note the date and time that attempted to contact the prospect, but do not just move them automatically into you ledger because you tried.  It is pretty simple and will make for fewer headaches in the future.  You can have too many prospects.