The Blessing Of Gatekeepers

by Paul Grimsley

They are often mistakenly seen as speed-bumps which destroy your suspension as you speed towards the close in your slick and frictionless pitch, but your treating of them as a metaphorical barrier is indicative of the problem you have with your whole approach to sales. You do not see anyone in the process for their humanity and the relationship you might build with them — instead you see a button or series of buttons that must be pushed in a certain way in order to release the money to you.

Good luck with that method.

In doctor’s offices it used to be a common practice to sweeten up the front desk person in order to increase your chances of getting a meeting with the doctor to pitch your product. While that is now discouraged, there is still an etiquette that is important to observe, and it is to not antagonize the person who has been tasked with holding certain administrative functions, and keeping certain issues off the doctor’s plate.

The model is not dissimilar in other companies.

Now, why is it a blessing that there is a gatekeeper? Because it means that the boss isn’t answering the phone himself — not that this is necessarily a bad thing in a smaller company, but when there is a front desk person you can assume a certain degree of success.

The boss has other things that they are concerned with, or they get so many calls that they need someone else to field the calls. It doesn’t matter why they are there, but it is a good thing. They can be talked to, and if you get friendly with them, and they let you through — just think what that means.

When you ask to speak to a decision maker, or the boss, or the head of marketing without even finding out anything about who you are speaking to, you basically communicate to that person that they are unimportant and not worth speaking to. The fact that they control the flow of traffic towards the decision maker means they are very important, and you also don’t know how much influence they might have on the person you really want to speak to.

You have been impolite and unfriendly and have given them no reason to want to speak to you. If your target is to make a lot of phone calls you may get there — if your target is to speak to decision makers, and get past gatekeepers, you may find yourself striking out more often than not.

It is an interesting viewpoint shift — to take an interest in who you are speaking to, and not just hammering the phone indistinctly, like a parrot with an opposable thumb and a dialling finger. You are a human version of the robo-dialler, except in some ways even more infuriating for the person picking up the phone.