If You Need to Find Your Contact Person..Just Ask.

A few years ago I agreed to mentor a young sales rep. He was getting very frustrated because there was a big account that used to buy from his company, but they stopped before he took over and he wanted to try to get that business going again. Here's how our conversation went:

Sales Rep: "I can't get ahold of the customer. Our main contact person moved on before I took over the account."

Me: "Have you tried contacting the new person?"

Sales Rep: "I've tried! I just can't find the right person! I've been through Salesforce and called literally every single person in our database. Most of them aren't even working there anymore! It's been all dead ends. I think maybe we need to go to one of those companies where we pay for names and contact info."

Me: "Have you tried just calling the main number and asking?"

Sales Rep: "Well...no. Do you think that would work? I figured they wouldn't want to give it to me, or it would be too hard to explain who I needed to talk to."

Me: "Call and explain that you're new, and you want to send some information about our products and ask who you should send it to. Ask for spelling of the name and see if they'll give you their email address. It'll take about two minutes."

The sales rep was skeptical. He thought it would be so much easier if someone would just give him a nice list with a bunch of accurate names, numbers, and email addresses. But you know what? Those lists don't exist. Someone might tell you they do, but they don't. He eventually tried it. It worked and it worked quickly.

It's easy to overcomplicate the sales process. Finding the contact person is pretty quick if you're willing to make the calls and put in the work.

Am I right? Let me know your thoughts; I’d love to hear them!