Sasha paused. She was
breathing heavily. She collected herself
and blurted out, “What the hell am I supposed to do with these leads anyway?”
I didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Sasha was frustrated, but her last question
indicated that she finally felt as though she was missing something. I decided to let her stew in her doubt for a
bit and then see what would happen. In
turn, Sasha didn’t speak either, as she was waiting for me to respond. Silence is a great tool in a conversation,
one that I usually had absolutely no aptitude for applying properly, given my
overly verbose nature. Still, I sat
motionless at my desk, listening to Sasha’s breathing, hoping that I hadn’t
overplayed this. But I had very little
reason to fear because the tension that the silence had built had really gotten
to Sasha. Finally, she spoke, very
quietly, almost in a timid voice.
“Michael? Are you
still there?”
“Yup.”
“Jesus.”
I stayed quiet. Sasha
was still breathing heavily, but she was calming down.
“Michael?”
“Yes?”
“I can’t believe I just did that. I mean, it was so unprofessional.”
“It’s okay, you were frustrated.”
“Yeah, but I had no right to lash out at you. I was just wrong.”
“It’s okay,” I replied.
Sasha took a deep breath and in a very small voice, she said,
“I’m sorry. I’m so embarrassed.”
“It’s fine, Sasha.
This is new for all of us.”
“Does that mean that you don’t know how this works either?”
she asked with a nervous laugh.
“Actually, no. Bosco,
Pierre and I spent quite a lot of time working the prospects that came from the
site, right after it went live. So we’ve
found a bunch of different ways of taking their temperature and to get them to
tell us what they want us to do for them.”
“Like?”
“When you called the leads that left phone numbers, what did
you ask them?”
“I asked them how long they’d been losing their hair.”
“And what was the reaction?”
“Michael, they got pissed!
Really pissed! A couple of them
told me to go fuck myself and almost all the others just hung up.”
“Understandable,” I said.
I knew that this would drive Sash nuts and I didn’t have to wait long
before she did so.
“What the hell do you mean, ‘Understandable’?”
“Well, think about it.
These folks were on a Web site that offered to help them with their
problem. They left their contact info
and then waited for someone to call them back.
They want to know what their options are. They don’t want to be sold. Your first response though was to sell them.”
“All I did was ask them how long they’d been going bald!”
“Correct. What they
wanted to hear most from you was…HOW CAN I HELP YOU?”
“But if I don’t ask qualifying questions, how do I go about
figuring out what to do with them?”
“Sasha, you’re too good at this to make that mistake. Do you really learn anything helpful from
your prospect by asking them how long they’ve been going bald, how much hair
they’ve lost, where it’s fallen out…any of that? I know you can get a bit of a mental picture
of who your prospect is, but it really doesn’t matter. You can’t do a damn thing for him unless you
can get him to come in.”
“But you can’t just say, ‘Come on in baby, I can make it all
okay.’”
I laughed. So did
Sasha. It was clear that she was digging
this and that was a good thing. Now I
had to build on it.
“Sasha, do you know much about fishing?”
“I own a ’92 Proguide Flats Boat with Yamaha 150. I take it out in Little Sarasota Bay all the
time for snook!”
“Cool! Now, I’ve never
caught a snook. What do you usually use
on them?”
“Either a one eighth or a quarter ounce jig with a 3-inch
yellow Berkley Gulp grub, why?”
I had her now! “So,
you wouldn’t suggest using a topwater lure or buzzbait?”
“I don’t know. You
might. But the jig seems to be the most
productive way of getting them to strike.”
“So what you’re saying is that if the jig didn’t work, you’d
try something else, right?”
“I see where this is going, Michael. Just because I know how to work a prospect in
over the phone doesn’t mean that I can use the same strategy on these email
leads you’ve been sending me.”
“Exactly! Most of them
didn’t even expect you to call them, even if they decided to leave a
number. They made their initial contact
on the Web and so they assumed that any response will come from there.”
“So,” she said slowly, “Does this mean that you and Bosco are
going to charge me for lessons on how to do this?”
“Probably.”
She laughed good and hard this time. “You guys are too much! I pay all of this money out to you and your
response is that I need to spend more?”
“Sasha, you don’t know how to do this. Shit, most people don’t. But we do.
We’ve given you some great leads and a way to keep getting them, but
it’s all useless unless you figure out how to approach them properly.”
“I get it, Michael. I
really do. Do me a favor though, will
you?”
“Sure.”
“Tell Bosco I want to talk with him.”
“You want me to transfer you?”
“If he’s around, yes.”
Bosco and Sasha spoke for quite a while, a good 40 minutes in
fact. At first I was a little nervous,
given that I’d brazenly told the nice lady that the solution to all of the
troubles in the world was to write yet another check to Bosco. But as it was clear that given that they were
both still talking, at least it meant that they might just be doing some
business. This would hopefully outweigh any error on my party. I spent the time fooling around on the Web,
visiting the Time On-Line Politics site, where I laid out the recent doings at
GW’s Republican Rumpus Room.
“Sounds like you screwed the pooch, Mike!” GW merrily posted
in response.
“You might be able to salvage your job,” Guy Montag
offered. “If your boss can save the
account, you’ll get off with a warning.
But you better learn to keep your mouth in check in the future,
buddy! Good luck!”
With those hopeful thoughts to hold onto, I waited for Bosco
to finish talking to Sasha. When I saw
the light on Bosco’s extension go off, I mentally began to count off what I
estimated were seconds before he summoned me on the intercom. I got to 6.
“That was a real interesting play you made back there,” Bosco
said as soon as I’d sat down in the chair across from his desk. As I’d decided to heed the advice that Guy
had given me, I said nothing. I figured that
my big mouth had gotten me into this mess and so I sure as hell couldn’t count
on it to get me out of it.
“You realize that Sasha is a major player in this business,
don’t you? The Sarasota market is the
one of the 20 largest in the country.
It’s combined with Tampa/St. Pete, so this is big.”
I remained silent, contemplating my future as one of the
latest additions to the Vermont Department of Labor’s unemployment rolls. Bosco waited for me to speak and when I
declined, he shrugged.
“Sasha told me that you said that the best way for her to
learn how to work the leads is to pay us to teach her. That right?”
“Yes, Bosco.”
“Well, you know what?
That’s exactly what we’re going to do!”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. That was what I
wanted all along.”
“Any particular reason why you didn’t tell me that?”
“I wanted to see how you handled yourself.”
“What if I’d fucked it up?”
Bosco smiled. He
started to speak, but he laughed instead.
In fact, he couldn’t stop laughing for about 10 seconds before he was
able to go on.
“Michael, when I saw you listening to Sasha chew you out like
that without opening your mouth even once, I realized that you’d finally become
one of the most dangerous and yet also most valuable people I’d ever met. You’ve trained yourself to be an exceptional
salesman. You countered a massive
objection by doing nothing when nothing was all you had to offer. It required a lot of discipline on your part
and I respect that. I hesitate to tell
you this though.”
“Why? I mean,
thanks…but why is this a problem?”
Bosco got serious now.
He leaned toward me and he spoke in a low voice.
“Because now you know how good you are. For a guy with an ego like yours, that’s a
curse. But you’ll get paid back on this,
just not by me.”
“Why? What do you mean,
Bosco?”
“Because you’re going to go to Sarasota the week after next,
Michael. Sasha wants you to go down
there for a few days to teach her and her technicians how to work these leads.”
“What?”
“I’m not kidding. Sasha also told me to tell you to pack a
couple of fishing rods.”
“Cool!”
“By the way, Michael?
There’s one thing I didn’t quite get.”
“Yes?”
The next episode of SlipNot will be published on August 11th.
If you'd like to read SlipNot in its entirety, GO HERE.
No comments:
Post a Comment