Surreptitious Sales Techniques

I often take sales calls simply because that is my business and I look for experiences - of all kinds. Today I received this call and the sales person said that he wanted to talk to the person in charge of the merchant accounts for credit card payments for my firm. His demeanor was as if he was calling from the firm that handled our firms accounts. He went all the way about how MasterCard and Visa had lowered their rates and he wanted me to sign some documents. Then he said that the person will visit me in the office to get this done. Only then did I realize that this was actually a sales call and not a service call from my merchant account service provider. You can guess the outcome.

Cold calling is not easy. Sales people have to use ingenious ways to get their message across. They have to tread a path that is well trodden and talk to those who place a very low priority on such calls simply because the probability of extracting value out of such calls is very low for the prospect. The expected value is extremely low because of the huge quantity of no value or low value calls they receive. Just like junk emails… well not that bad but often close enough. Especially, if the cold calls are made to executive management. There are over 300,000 software products alone that are being pitched.

For the sales person the easiest thing to do is to be deceptive. At least you will get the chance to get the message across. If the person is looking then you have a chance at success.  It playing the numbers game but burning bridges.  However, for the firm they represent this milking practice is detrimental to long term growth and survival, besides being unethical. 

Over all, it seems like such firms have a poor leadership.