This week, two new call center agents joined the team. Welcome Alicia and Angela!

One of the first things we chatted about was their names. You see, most professional call center agents don't use their real names. I thought this was a bit odd when I first hired an offshore call center agent several years ago, but I shrugged it off. We were too busy training for me to pause and ask.

This week I took the time to ask. "What do you call the name you use when you are working?" I asked. The answers I got back included: screen name, pseudoname, stage name and call center name.

All are women, so my assumption was that they didn't want any creepy guys they called while at work to be able to track them down after work. Not necessarily so, as male agents I've worked with also use a different name while on the job.

Today I met with Kevin.  Our paths crossed a few weeks ago at a business networking function. 

I routinely send a brief email note of follow-up to the people who offer me their business cards at these events.  I do this because, after all, the events are about meeting people and exploring business opportunities.  I figure if you don't go to the trouble to at least acknowledge the person, there's not much chance of ever doing business with them.  (Can't for the life of me understand why everyone doesn't do this, but that's a topic for another book!)  Anyway, of the 15-odd personal follow-up notes I spent all night sending off to the people I met at the function, Kevin was one of a handful to respond.  He was curious about this book project and wanted to discuss how he might contribute.

This post is a bit off the wall. I've been thinking of writing it as a resource for quite some time, but until last night, I really didn't think it belonged in a blog about a book-to-be. Then it came to me that there's really not that much difference between finding a customer, finding a job or getting a date.

First, some background. I'm not looking for a job (or a date!), but I'm always looking for opportunities. Even if I was making more money than I knew what to do with and was happy as pie with my "job", I'd still make the time to speak to qualified hiring managers about opportunities. Worst case scenario, I meet an interesting person in my industry who I might be able to help, and two professional networks grow by one. Best case scenario is that I find an even better "job" and take a step up on the career ladder!

My friend David Greer recently joined a start-up. As the new VP Sales and Marketing, David's job is to sell his company's product, a software scheduling solution. Like most start-ups, David's new employer has limited human resources (as in, if you want it done, you have to do it yourself) and financial resources (as in, if you want it, you'd better sell something first so we have the money to buy it with.)

"Where do you recommend I get a list of prospects?", David asked when he called me today.

A couple of the the chapters in my book will be for David and people who are in his current situation. They have a product or service and now they are looking for people to buy it.

This chapter will be on How do I find customers-to-be? (Note, it assumes you've already read the chapter on Who is my customer-to-be!)

I'm teaching two MBA classes at the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business this fall. One class is in International Marketing, the other in Internet Marketing.

I will be requiring students in each course to complete a comprehensive study and list of recommendations for a real business or not-for-profit. I believe there will be approximately 8 plans created in each class. I'm expecting a high level of quality from the plans. I would estimate that if I were creating one of these plans professionally, it would cost the recipient between $10,000 - $15,000.

Consider the following scenarios:

1.  You want a backup of all of your customer data
2.  You want to change the software you are using to track sales

Two very reasonable requests, wouldn't you say?  Well, try to do either and you will see how easy it truly is!

CSV, Tab and Comma-Delimited Data Files

The common data exchange of most software is the CSV file.  This is
the file type that a software program will import or export.  Data
fields are separated by tabs, commas or double-quote characters. 
Usually, you get to choose which character it is.

Just for fun, try to perform a backup of your precious customer
data.  In most applications, this is as easy as pressing the "export"
or "backup" button. 

In the course of a normal business day, I find myself using a land line
telephone, a cellular telephone and a computer-based Voice Over
Internet Protocol (VOIP) application such as Skype.

The Scenario

Here's a typical scenario: 

Skype. 
Daily meeting with outbound call agent.  Vhanessa works in a call
center in Manila, Phillapines. I work in Vancouver, Canada.  Our calls
last from 30-90 minutes.  We use skype because it is decent quality and
it's free.  I have been using a Labtec C-322 headset
for skype calls.  The voice quality is good enough for business
communications.  I don't like the way I am confined to the distance of
the headset cable or how I need to take off or put on the headset when
working with one of my other phones.

Who do I sell to?

My marketing study says that my target market is roofing businesses
withing a 2-hour drive of downtown Chicago. How do I get the names of
those businesses so I can call
them?

Terminology

Before I launch into the how-to part, I thought best to clarify some terms that come up a lot when discussing sales.

Most sales folk refer to the people they sell to as their
"prospects". Those with a bit more experience in sales segment
prospects into "qualified prospects" and "suspects", where a suspect is
unqualified in terms of decision-making authority, timeframe, budget
and needs and the qualified prospect is.

I like the way my friend Pauline O'Malley of The RevenueBuilder refers to sales prospects "Customers-to-Be". It's so much more positive and personal.

My friend Kerry is a recent graduate of the University of British Columbia. He had planned to travel a bit this summer before embarking on his career, but family issues caused him to change those plans. He called me the other day and asked to meet.

 

I quickly learned that Kerry was bored. Goodness, what a convenient problem to have just as I figure it's time to start researching the options for how to publish this book to be!

Over the next week or so, Kerry is going to look into it. By about the time the sticky buns were devoured, we had come up with the following options:

• publish as an eBook
• self publish
• find a publisher

The next step, which we will discuss in a week or so, is to determine what is involved with each option. Ahhhh... where the rubber meets the road!

Yikes. I've been receiving a lot of concerned calls lately. "Have you died, Jackson?"

No. All's well. My sincerest apologies. I didn't think anyone actually read my museings and rants, so this blog has not been getting my attention.

Since my last post, I have been working very intensively on completing and cleanly wrapping up a Sales Jumpstart program for a business association. I've also been busy ramping up another for a vendor of municipal infrastructure services. There's more... but today I will assess the project for the association.