One of my sales reps, Sammy (not his real name) is a person I respect tremendously. We’ve talked shop a few times since I met him over a year ago. He’s always delighted to take a call from me. Finally, our company hired his company to do a project for us. So far, so good.
But when I call Sammy, his iPhone’s girlbot answers: “Please tell me your name and the reason for calling” (or whatever ‘she’ says). This let me know right away that, despite the great conversations we’ve had during the past year, I don’t rate a slot in Sammy’s contact list.
As a salesperson, is that really the signal you want to be sending your prospects?
If I had a little more time on my hands and didn’t mind burning up my AI tokens, what I’d do instead is create an automation so that when I called a prospect from my CRM, it feeds the prospect’s name and company name into the contacts list on my phone with “prospect” appended somewhere.
Better yet Turn off the girlbot and just decide to answer (or not answer) calls I don’t recognize. What’s the worst that can happen?
I’m not devastated Of course I’m not hurt that I didn’t make it onto Sammy’s contact list (well, not super hurt, anyway). But I do have that little flash of realization, every time I call him, that I’m just a little less important to Sammy than the drycleaner, his favorite pizza shop, and his children.
