I don't post about it a lot, but I do enjoy my job and take it seriously. When I started, we were a company with about a hundred people and one location. My job was to maintain all the computers and "help establish an Internet presence." Now we have twenty-six sites, four hundred desktops, multiple network services, and three full time IT peeps.

Anyhoo, one of the unfortunate factors of my job is that I get all the incoming sales calls. I've posted about them before; those are probably my more entertaining episodes, apart from all the bestiality. What gets me about these people is they're so inept, so shoddy, that it's like they're determined to scare sales away. For the record, here are some ways to piss off potential buyers before you even get a chance to finish your initial pitch:

• Have an unintelligible accent. Enough said.
• Have a speech impediment. I have a minor stutter myself, but you don't see me making cold calls.
• Start throwing buzzwords around. "We leverage market research to maximize your target potential." "We specialize in warehousing paradigms." "We utilize CRM endpoints." "We're data sourcing optimizers." You know what? Who gives a shit? You're making me think too hard to interpret what it is you're trying to sell me, and that just makes me irritable. Don't make the customer do your work for you.
  
• Talk about yourself a lot. I don't care. I really don't. Get a customer's interest first, then start talking about your qualifications or what you do. When I pick up the phone, I'm worried about a lab manager telling me he's got an account he needs deactivated in a hurry, or that their Internet connection is down. It pisses me off no end to have to hear a stranger talking about himself, as if it carries any importance in my busy day.

Seriously, this one is the worst offense, in my book. What kind of egotistical sales strategy assumes that starting off an unwanted conversation by talking about yourself is going to make the person on the other end of the phone more receptive? These are the ones I'm rudest to. The conversations go something like this:

• "Hi, we're an Oracle-certified SBS partner.." "That's nice." *click*
• "Hi, I'm calling from Cisco..." "I'm happy for you." *click*
• "Hi, we do  project management for Fortune 500 companies...." "That's lovely." *click*
• "Hi, we're data integration specialists..." "Don't call again." *click*

• Be arrogant. I get voicemails like, "I'm calling from Microsoft. You can reach me at..." I get phone calls that start, "I sent you a promotional mailing last week and I'm calling now to schedule an appointment in person to discuss my products. Is Thursday good for you?" This kind of call always makes me envision the caller as someone wearing a plaid blazer with greasy hair, selling used autos of dodgy quality. A related call is the one where the caller wants to know if I'm "ready" to move to their product line. Really.
  
• Don't pay attention. I answer the phone with my full name (unless I know it's a transfer), so immediately asking to speak to me doesn't win any points. Also, if I answer the phone, hear a few seconds of silence, and then someone on the other end say, "Hello? Hello?" it becomes clear to me that I am speaking to a drone at a call center with automated calling and I mutter something derogatory about their parentage as I slam the phone down.
• Be unnecessarily pushy or nosy, especially if you haven't come to the point yet. I've told all the admins at the main numbers where I work that they can transfer all IT-related sales calls to me, so they don't have to worry about whether or not a call is legit. Their job isn't to screen calls, anyway. The result is that I get a lot of transferred calls where the conversation goes something like this:

"Hello."
"Hello?"
"Yes, hello."
"Hello, is this the IT department?"
"Yes, can I help you?"
"Are you the head of IT?"
"Yes."
"Are you authorized to make purchases for IT equipment?"
"Uh, yeah. Can I help you with anything?"
"Are you responsible for selecting buyers and standard parts for..."
"Go the fuck away." *click*

Of course, a sales droid wants to make sure he's dealing with the right person, but this brash probing style is too much like an interrogation. It's almost as creepy as the conversation, which I get about once a month, where the caller wants me to describe our network structure and assets so that he can "recommend" products that would suit us. Fuck off, pal. That's like asking a woman how old she is.

Believe it or not, I'm not horribly rude to all callers. I don't often buy from cold calls, but I at least give them a polite "no, thanks, have a nice day" before hanging up on them if they don't violate the rules above.

So how should a sales team arrange their calls? I got thinking about this the other day when Jim/Seamus called me up to bounce some ideas off me. This is one of the smartest things he's ever done; not because I have any good ideas, per se, but because I'm surly enough on the phone that I can weed out all the ideas of his that make me cranky. Jim, see, has a new job where he's more or less putting together the sales strategy. These are some of the things I told him:

• Do not depend on an educated customer. Somebody who already knows the buzzwords probably has done the research himself, and probably already has a vendor of choice.
• Don't talk about yourself. You don't matter right away. Talk about the customer; more accurately, the customer's needs, and how you can help them.
• Make it condensed and quick. You have limited time before someone grumpy hangs up on you, so get to the point.
• Identify first the itch you can scratch, then how you can scratch it. If you supply IT widgets, say so. If you deliver customer software, say so. Identify the customer's needs, not the little niche that you see yourself in. It's about the customer, not you. If you can, in a few words, work in a reason why you're better than your competitors with a few words, do so; just beware the buzzword trap.
• Upsell your clients. I don't mean spam your customer base; this is the mistake a lot of suppliers use, and leads to me never using them again. But do take the time to follow up on recent orders to see how the situation is, and take the opportunity to make suggestions for additional sales if warranted. I'm relatively cheap as a buyer, and yet my Dell rep upsells me all time because his suggestions make sense. He knows when to leave well enough alone if I know what I'm talking about, but his suggestions for seriously increasing the firepower of what I'm buying for a small incremental cost make too much sense for me to ignore.
• This probably belongs in a completely separate post about good product management, but since it has to do with sales, I'll include it here: give a direct feedback line from your sales team to your production team. Sales people are hired to be personable and persistent and are often the most consistent human contact customers have with your company. The feedback they get from customers is the most honest and unfiltered; that is an invaluable resource.