Hi, my name is James Shepherd.
Today I’m going to talk to you about getting past the gatekeeper every time.
One of my favorite sales experiences came about six months ago.
I was doing a consulting gig at a processing company.
I really wanted to get through to the sales people.
These were people that are selling merchant services over the phone.
I really wanted to get through to them kind of the power of sales and the power of being
really good at sales.
I asked their sales manager to bring me a list of specifically I wanted prospects that
had told somebody at that table, “No.”
These weren’t like good prospects.
This was like the garbage, right?
This is like people that had told somebody in this room “No,” and they put them as
not interested in the CRM.
I said, “Give me a list.
Bring me a speaker phone and I’m just going to call and try to sell people.”
I really wasn’t trying to sell them on the spot because frankly, I didn’t know enough
about that processor’s program to really do that, but I was just trying to get people
really interested and get them off to another sales person again.
The first thing that of course I faced was getting past the gatekeeper.
I really am trying to rack my brain and maybe one of these reps will watch the video and
make a comment and correct me here, but I don’t think that there was a gatekeeper
that I was not able to get past.
I probably talked to between two different visits, I probably talked to 15 different
people, maybe 12 or 15.
I never was not able to get past the gatekeeper.
I was thinking about that today and I thought, there is a lot of sales reps that really struggle
with getting past the gatekeeper.
I wanted to talk to you about how to do that, how to get past the gatekeeper.
A couple things that will really help you get past the gatekeeper.
The first thing is if you know the name of the person you are calling for then you know
you’re golden.
Let’s assume that you don’t know that to start with.
When I call up a merchant, usually the gatekeeper is more of an issue when you are calling,
then when you are walking in in person.
Let’s assume you are calling over the phone trying to schedule a appointment to come out
for instance.
I would call, “Hi, my name is James Shepherd.
How are you guys doing today?”
I always want to start off like a customer.
When you call a business, the first key to getting past the gatekeeper is to always sound
like a customer, as long as possible.
“Hi, my name is James Shepherd.
How are you guys doing today?
Good, good.”
The next thing you are going to say is you could do a couple of different things.
You could at that point say, “Yes, the reason I was calling is I’m a local business owner.
I needed to just stop by there.
I wanted to drop off a business card and just kind of introduce myself as another local
business owner.
Who would I talk to about that when I stop by?”
You first make it sound like, I don’t really want to talk to the person in charge.
I just want to know their name.
Then they are going to give me the name.
That’s kind of like the first key.
You act like a customer and then the first key is you’ve got to somehow get the name
of the person you need to speak to.
In sales, you always want to work through these things like a process and you want to
have like this is the first thing I’m trying to do.
This is the next thing I’m trying to do.
It’s got to be a process, so you can track your progress, so you know where your pitch
is falling apart so you can improve it.
The first key is getting the name of the person you are going to speak to.
Once I have that they are like, “Well, you really want to ask for Keven, but Keven is
not really ever here,” blah, blah, blah, whatever they say.
It doesn’t matter, but they give you the name.
You are like, “Oh great, so Kevin, is he in?”
Now the key to getting past the gatekeeper once you know the name of the person is short
quick statements followed by silence.
It’s short quick statements followed by total silence, that can only be broken by
them and not you.
They are like, “Well, yea, you probably want to talk to Kevin, if you stop by.”
“Is he in?”
You wait.
They’ll say, “Ah, well, he’s in the back.
I’m not sure.
I really can’t have him come to the phone right now,” whatever they are going to say.
You just kind of very nicely but confidently kind of cut them off and say, “Oh, I’ll
hold, thank you.”
That’s it.
That’s the key to getting past gatekeepers.
What you do is you just use these little short statements and they don’t know what to do
with it.
One of the key things you do is you just say, “Thank you,” at the end.
I always thank people for the thing I wish they would do, that they haven’t agreed
to do yet.
Low and behold, they will do it.
You say, “Oh, that’s fine.
I’ll hold.
Thank you.”
You just wait.
You know what will happen.
Sometimes they’ll be like, “A no, he can’t come to the phone right now.”
A lot of times you’d be surprised.
They will be like, “A, hold on a second,” and then they will actually go get them.
Why?
Because you are just being so assumptive and you are using these short statements.
Then they’ll come back to the phone and they’ll say, “Well, I talked to Kevin.
He is in the back.
He can’t talk right now.”
“Oh, that’s no problem.
Should I call back in like a half hour, or should I give him an hour to finish what he
is doing?”
Silence.
“Well, really you need to give him at least a couple hours.”
They’ll say this all the time like they are going to push me even further.
I don’t care.
They could say, “You need to wait a day.”
It doesn’t matter to me.
I’m just trying to get a contact.
They are like, “Yea, you need to wait a couple hours.”
I’m like, “No problem at all.
Let Kevin know I’ll call him back in a couple hours.
Also just tell him I really appreciate it.
I’m looking forward to introducing myself to him as a fellow local business owner.”
Then I hang up the phone.
Two hours later I call back.
Guess what I say?
“Hi, how are you doing today?
Is Kevin available yet?”
I want to sound like I just called a little bit ago and Kevin told me to call back, because
he did.
I’m going to call back and make it sound like that.
Sometimes you say calling back if I know the name.
I’ll be like, “Hey, I’m calling back for Kevin.”
Just like that.
You got to learn how to make this really short, short statements followed by silence.
You call them up.
They are like, “Hello, thank you for calling XYZ retail store.”
“Yea, just calling back for Kevin.”
“Oh, a I’m actually not sure if he is available.”
“Oh, I’ll hold.
Thank you.”
It was really funny when I did this at this table and hope some of the reps watch this
and comment.
It’s kind of funny.
The silence kind of unnerved even the sales people at the table.
Some of them were like laughing.
I had to look at them like, “Stop, you are ruining it.”
Because it was so funny, the gatekeepers were so intent about like not letting me get past
and they just can’t do anything about it, because I just kept being I was very positive.
I wasn’t like mean at all.
“That’s no problem.
I know he’s busy.
I’ll hold.
Thanks so much.”
There is like a silence for like literally like five seconds, which is a really long
time.
They are like, “Well, all right.
Hold on one second.”
Then they go get him.
Because they just literally don’t know what to do with it.
Listen to this one.
This is one of these audio or videos that you are going to have to probably listen to
three or four times and take these lines.
The lines are super easy.
They are no difficult to memorize.
They are literally like two, three, four, five words, but you’ve got to say it a certain
way in a positive upbeat way, but quick, fast.
When you get their name, “Oh, is he in?”
“Oh, is she in?”
It’s like boom, real quick.
Then you just be quiet.
Practice those techniques.
You can use them in face to face as well, with a little bit of variation.
Maybe I’ll do a video on that sometime, but you’ve got to get past those gatekeepers,
if you want to get to the decision maker.
My name is James Shepherd.
Thanks for watching and listening.