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How Do You Respond To The Most Famous Question That A Receptionist Can Ask?
by Mr. Cold Call

One word enters the mind of a receptionist (Other commonly used names include assistants, gatekeepers and screeners.) when they ask you their most famous question: “What Is This Call Regarding?” What is this word? The word is telemarketer.

While many of us may identify with this word as a means to making an honest living, others, however, associate this word with negative meanings such as “It’s just another person trying to sell something” or “Here’s another person wasting my time!” Why are these receptionists thinking like this and what can we do about it? Would you like to hear the good or bad news first?

The bad news is the following: “As long as you are making cold calls and driving in new business you will always hear the receptionist ask you: “What Is This Call Regarding?” What is the good news? The good news is once you have accepted the fact that all receptionists use this most famous question when speaking with “people like us” then we can transfer our focus now to more creative and innovative ways to manage and even bypass these associations that are being made each and everyday.

We could just cut to the chase and list these creative and innovative ways to effectively manage and bypass these associations, but let’s briefly analyze why these associations are being made in the first place, ok?

Here are three possible reasons why receptionists are making these associations:

Too Many Assigned Tasks

In a perfect world, one would think that all receptionists do is field calls from salespeople. Unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world and the truth is that there are dozens of other tasks that are assigned to receptionists. Our cold calls impede on their time and they see us as a distraction rather than a benefit to them.

Too Many Boring Sales Calls

Where’s the excitement about your product and/or service? Are you bringing your personality to your sales call? Are youing from a read script? Do you have any idea how many sales calls these receptionists receive each day? Not only do they have to field calls for their company and/or boss, but they have to field calls from boring sales reps with absolutely no personality. So if you are boring, lack personality and reading directly from a sales script, now you can understand a few more reasons why your call might be associated with “Here’s another person wasting my time!”

The Conditioning Process

Attention all fans of Sigmund Freud, Ivan Pavlov, Carl Jung and all fans of prominent psychologists during the twentieth century, can you say conditioning process? How about the theory that people connect ideas, feelings, experiences and information by way of associations? What I mean here, is simple, the reason why these receptionists are making these associations in the first place is largely due to the conditioning process. They have learned through their array of experiences (For example, media, friends and past experiences.) to think and respond in such a way.

So now let’s move to the juicy part, How do you manage and bypass this most famous question: “What Is This Call Regarding?” The receptionist is asking you this question because they do not know who you are and they are protecting not only their boss’s time, but their time as well. Based on this, you can imagine the degree of resistance that you will encounter; some of the most obvious ways to reduce resistance includes a few of the following:

• Knowing or having some sort of relationship with your sales prospect. Either you currently do business with them, have done with them at some point in the past, you were referred to them or even have left a number of voicemails and messages f or them.

• It’s better to use the first name of your prospect as compared to saying, “Is Mr. (Or Mrs.) Jones available?”
  

• If you have to ask the receptionist who is in charge of marketing (Or any title that you are targeting.) then you have set yourself up for a lot of resistance. Make sure that you know the name of your prospect prior to your telephone call. If you do not have the name of your prospect at hand then check out the company’s website for starters. This idea may seem quite obvious, but many salespeople do not do the proper research prior to making a cold call.

How do you handle the receptionist’s most famous question if you have had no prior contact with them or the prospect at all?Humor is the key to reducing resistance and inspiring curiosity.In order to really pull this off, you need two more successful personality traits, what are they? One is confidence and the other is a positive attitude and when these three traits are collectively combined you now have increased your odds of getting past the receptionist and speaking with your sales prospect.

Below are a few creative and innovative lines that you could use when the receptionist asks, “What Is This Call Regarding?”Once you have used one of these lines to warm up your sales call then you can state the exact reason for your call and offer a benefit as to why your call should be transferred. Remember after each of these responses it’s also important that you smile on the telephone as you are saying them and then pause appropriately to hear how they respond.

• “Let me ask you a question, how would you like a raise?” (The receptionist will respond: “What you mean?” You reply that you have a brilliant idea that will save their boss a lot of money. You then explain to the receptionist that if they transfer your call to their boss and if the results of the conversation are overwhelming positive then who do you think they will thank? You!!! So why not transfer me, right?")

• I’ve been trying to reach (First name of prospect) for about one year now (Or list another time frame here.), talk about persistence!

• If you have responded to their famous question with no luck then you could try this last ditch response, “(First name of receptionist), if you were me, what would you do now?”

• "I'm sorry, it's top secret information."
  

• "Do you have a few minutes for a story?"
  

• "Would you like my Social Security Number before you transfer me?"
  

• "Look, I'm making a cold call and I've been trying to reach (First name of prospect) for (List time frame here), do I at least get an ‘A’ for persistence?"

• “This will be the most important call that you will take today!”

• "I saw (First name of prospect) in the local paper (List the exact paper) the other day, is the movie star out signing autographs?" (Use this response only if you see your prospect quoted or pictured in an online or offline medium. You can even offer to send the receptionist a copy of the article.)

Copyright 2007 MR. COLD CALL SEMINARS - All rights reserved.

Behind The Scenes With Mr. Cold Call™

Mr. Cold Call™ is a worldwide sensation and claims to have made over 80,000 cold calls to date. He has been quoted by numerous national publications such as Selling Power Magazine, Investor's Business Daily, Successful Fund Raising and Advantage Magazine. He has written over 65 articles on cold calling, developed a sales ratio calculator that automatically calculates your daily, weekly, monthly and yearly sales ratios, offers a custom sales script service called "The Script Responder" and finally, is the author of four best-selling ebooks with FREE email support and these titles include:

• 113 Common Sales Objections, 192 Clever and Savvy Responses
  
• How To Have Fun Cold Calling and get your telephone ringing off the HOOK!
• 58 Sales Openers that will WOW your sales prospects
  
• The New Business Idea Sales Generator Workbook

For more information on Mr. Cold Call™ and to sign-up for his free weekly cold calling tips visit www.mrcoldcall.com