I was recently contacted by a sales representative who had been attempting to reach me about purchasing her services. Unfortunately, her letter had not gotten to me prior to her phone call. As a consequence, when she called to follow-up on the correspondence I wasn’t aware of who she was.

It was very obvious that she was excited about the possibility of selling me her services (that’s good), but was so enthusiastic that she made a 21st century error. What is it?

In order to “speed up” the process, during the conversation she told me to “go to her website” where I would learn all I needed to know about the great benefits she could provide. And I was supposed to do that during our phone conversation?

It is easy to direct someone to your website, isn’t it? Perhaps too easy? Getting someone to actually do that is quite another issue. I simply informed her that I was not going to go directly to her website and that she should send more materials, include her website address, and that she should call me again in a week or so to pursue the possibilities. I would tell her that I would check her website if I had the time.

Here is the proverbial bottom line to this whole issue. You are the salesperson.

It is important for you to be proactive, make calls (don’t expect prospects to call you back – you are the salesperson), download and print pages from your website and get them to the prospect to ensure that they are viewed. Don’t make your prospect do the work! It is extremely interesting that salespeople sometimes need to be reminded that technology is a tool to be used as a support and backup for their sales effort. It doesn’t replace their personal sales activity. It never will.

Sales will always require a “high touch” mentality. Even highly successful on-linesales efforts have buttons to call for help and ask to talk with a human being!

And, they always will, too. Let’s take a look at three specific situations and activities where salespeople need to be more proactive than reactive and rely on themselves rather than technology to do the sales work.

• Don’t say “Go to our ‘website’.” It is presumptuous and appears to be an easy way out of the hard work of sales.
• Don’t expect prospects to call you “on your cell” and leave a message. If you are going to be difficult to contact, make the effort to use your cell phone to call the prospect – don’t expect them to call you.
• Check your voice mail as often as you can. When I am on the road I will check it 4-6 times per day! Why is that? You need to actively return phone calls – and to do that in a timely, urgent way. Prospects wait for no one – including you or me. Simply because your phone system will store messages is no excuse not to return calls.

Your most important job is to place yourself in front of qualified prospects. Not to rely on prospects to “call you back” or for you to hide behind technology to deliver your sales message. It also doesn’t mean that you urge them to learn about your message themselves (“go to my website”). The other essential ingredient is to avoid using this technology as a substitute for hard work, difficult discussions, effective presentations, or your knowledge. It isn’t designed for that. Perhaps the easiest thing to remember is the phrase “personal proactivity.” What does that mean? Simply this. It is important for you to be (a) the one who delivers the phone call, sales message or presentation, and (b) to do this in a positive way that doesn’t expect your prospect to do the work. After all, aren’t you the one making the sale, being paid to do it and reaping the rewards? The last time I checked salespeople sell and prospects buy. Who should do the work? The answer to that is real simple, isn’t it?