Showing posts with label research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label research. Show all posts

Friday, March 18, 2011

Hold the Phone!

http://tinyurl.com/2gyghbx

The article above heralds the telephone as the greatest, the best social network there is. The title alone got the click in me to snap. It registered. I believe it!

There is no substitute for the phone. I simply have to stay on the phone. In all of my past lives (collecting, skiptracing, accounts receivable, credit management, selling) the mantra has been: “Dial for Dollars.”

And it’s the truth.

Back to the basics. Use what works.

And now, as a telephone names sourcer searching for talented people to fill open positions my clients have, the theme is the same: “Stay on the Phone!”

It works. Most good ideas are simple. This one is powerful.

Need to network? Sure… linkedin and facebook and twitter are great! I use them. But get on the phone.

Cold calling? Lately, I have heard a lot of people say it just is not worth the time. I have heard a lot of people say lately they made good deals through cold calling. Maybe it’s a numbers game. But who is right? Well, why aren’t you on the phone?

I once collected bad debt for a funeral home conglomerate. I know, I know. The boss used to ask toward the end of the month if I was at my goal. Rhetorical. When I would answer in the negative he would chide, “Those people aren’t gonna pay from the grave! Call the signers on the note. Jason, get on the phone!”

He was right. Sending past due letters or emails is necessary, sure. I had better be employing every imaginable resource and tool. Emails work for follow-up or blind “Here I am!”  I automate those processes wherever possible and… get back on the telephone.

Once I hear the greeting, the click of the pick up, the world opens up to me. Here is where the years of experience and technique meet with art in a single moment. It really is staggering. Have I gotten so familiar with it that I gloss over it or discount it?

Here’s one. It’s the first time I was looking for a car that the borrower had not paid on in months. He had been hiding the unit. My boss simply asked, “Did you ask him where the car was?”

I didn’t ask. She schooled me, “Jason, you had him on the phone. What was he going to do to you? Hang up? Find out where our collateral is. Call him back! Now.”

Calling back was worse than calling at all. But I am a pretty quick learner and I got it. I was learning that using the phone and asking the right questions, with the right pauses, yielded the right information. That yields dollars! It worked 13 years ago when I first learned this. It worked today!

I’m putting a sign in my office: “Hold the Phone!”