Becky Says...

April 2003

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April 30

How to lose a sale to a law firm? Piss off the administrative assistant.

You may recall that just yesterday I mentioned we were stressed. A fact you may not know is that I have a fairly deep voice. Those two things will come into play, so I thought I'd point them out now.

A technology group's sales representative called the firm today, and happened to hit at a time when I was covering the phone. His opening gambit sounded promising---in the back of my mind, I was thinking his company, which does work with telephones as well as computer equipment, might be the backup for our telephone supplier, should that supplier ever have to go out of business.

He asked how we bought our computers. Upon being told that we had several computer-savvy people in the firm, and that we brainstormed when we were in need of new equipment, then usually bought from a certain source, he made a mistake. He responded he could do it better, because his group had a way to always get discounts from the computer company. I don't want a search engine hit about this so I won't name the company, but if you think it rhymes with bell you'd be right. Umm, we know how to get discounts from them, too; it's really easy to find the discounts they offer.

I told him at that point that we weren't in the market for anything his group had to offer at the moment, but I'd be willing to keep them in mind if he would provide written information. He said they were in the process of rewriting their information, and he'd be glad to send it to me when it was ready, but in the meantime he wanted ten minutes of my time in person next week. I said no, that we were a firm that really preferred getting information in writing to having sales calls when we hadn't requested such. That stopped him momentarily, but I could hear the gears switching in his brain as he searched for the next gambit.

Which he never really found. By that time, I was tired of the conversation, tired of being interrupted, and ready to get back to what I had been doing before the call came. I asked if they had a website. I got an affirmative response and the URL, but with the warning that I might find dead links since they were in the process of updating that, too. I said I had several websites, so I understood about dead links. Twit was, I think, beginning to get the hint that I just might know what the technobabble he was trying to serve really meant.

So he gave me his phone number, and said he hoped I would call. He went on make a second, much larger mistake, in saying, "I know how law firms feel about technology," in a rather arrogant, patronizing tone, which flew all over me, and did some trigger-tripping.

He got a response he no doubt wasn't expecting. Without thinking about it, I dropped my already-deep voice to a rarely-used depth, and said, "No, you do not! Which I then repeated for emphasis. I'm sure he thought that some dark force had just come into the conversation. Frankly, if I hadn't known it was my voice, it would have scared me to hear it.

I do believe he realized at that point that this firm is lost to him, at least for the time being. He made a polite exit from the conversation, as did I. And I do still have his name, just in case I need to know which sales representative's calls to avoid. Unless, of course, I need to growl some more.

Text © copyright 2000-2003 Becky