“If you put enough monkeys on typewriters,” said one of my consulting clients in a seminar with me, “sooner or later, one of them will present WAR AND PEACE.”
I was predicting that with so many people engaged in telemarketing, telemarketing, lead generation, appointment setting, telesales, phone solicitation, inside sales or whatever you want to call it; at least one of them would give me a run for my money and become a formidable competitor.
My techniques, popularized in a dozen books, including the bestsellers REACH AND SELL SOMEBODY and YOU CAN SELL ANYTHING OVER THE PHONE, would be cloned, eliminated, and with the opportunity to buy fairly decent knockoffs, the market would be gone for a while. Great master.
Just as he finished making this statement, his partner said, “That will never happen. Gary is light years ahead of the market and always will be.”
Despite the rise of the phone factory, or as it is better known, the call center or contact center, I have never found anyone with my gifts. Specifically, no one has cracked the code of persuading people to buy over the phone like I have.
Scripts are everywhere, as are trained chimpanzees who talk them with their teeth, but they’re nearly impossible to use in a way that sounds like real, spontaneous, heartfelt conversation.
To this day, telephone and “fake” go hand in hand, inseparable in the minds of most call recipients.
This disconcerting lack of authenticity led to the draconian DO NOT CALL REGISTRY, where nearly 100 million consumers opted not to be contacted. Never, in history, has there been such an uprising of consumers against a communication METHODOLOGY.
One would think that the industry would take note and invest in more sophisticated techniques. He hasn’t.
If you compare my early books with the current state of practice, you’ll find terribly few among the millions on phones who have nearly the sophistication some of us manifested in the 1980s.
Computers have improved, long-distance rates have dropped dramatically, and there are more MBAs in call center management than ever, but the quality of conversations has gone sideways at best, not upwards.
Peter F. Drucker, the famous management guru and my teacher, made a few comments that are relevant:
(1) People fail in areas they don’t respect; Y
(2) You can judge the health and trajectory of an industry based on its “brain formation” rate.
To this day, cold calling, telemarketing, outbound sales, appointment setting, lead generation, phone solicitation, inside sales, telesales or whatever you want to call it; generates disrespect. Mention it, in a business or private setting, and most people will recoil and whistle.
And where are the other working communication theorists who go to undergraduate and graduate schools in telephone sales management and telemarketing? Where are those well-informed “brains”?
They can not be found.
I wish I wasn’t light years away from the market.
I would much rather be on time with products and services that grateful customers will respect and pay value for.