Nearly every living being has been cold called. Which means I don’t have to tell you how annoying, frustrating, and awful these can be. But there’s nothing more awkward than getting cold called by your competitor. This poor kid on the phone trying to establish if I was the elusive communications buyer he was looking for: I felt bad for him. I could practically hear the sound of broken processes at his company during the nervous pauses he took throughout his pitch. Because either the lead from marketing from the webcast the other day—me—didn't include my title and company’s name; or it did, and he didn't even know he was calling to pitch a competitor.

It’s a good thing I'm honest. It would have been really nice to have duped him into sending me his rate card. But sincerity and a healthy amount of respect for my company’s ethics policies compelled me to tell the truth: “Jeff, I'm going to stop you right there. I appreciate the follow up call today, but I was watching the event because I work for another webcast vendor.” (Just one of the world’s largest webcast vendors. NBD.)

Now, it’s fairly obvious this guy’s company has a lead generation process in place — otherwise my contact information wouldn't have gotten to him (or wouldn't even have been collected in the first place). And while it’s highly likely someone at that same company works on compiling competitive information for market strategy and planning purposes, clearly those two processes are completely disconnected. I'm sure poor Jeff wasn't the first sales guy to ring up a competitor by mistake. But it got me thinking that maybe he could be (among) the last if companies spent a bit more time connecting the dots between their processes.

• Get Better at Internal Meetings. If you’re like most people, you view internal company meetings with a mix of disdain and boredom, coupled with healthy amounts of eye rolling. But meeting regularly with your colleagues — in sales, in marketing, in operations — is crucial if you want to appear as a united front to your customers (and competitors). And they’re downright essential if you want to actually be a united front. Turn routine, arguably useless internal catch ups into something meaningful and productive by ensuring you always have an agenda, that you’re meeting more often but for less time, and that you've got the right stakeholders on your call. Once you’re not wasting anyone’s time, you’ll be amazed how much more productive and collaborative internal/multi-department meetings can be.
• Centralize Information. Even the most A-Type among us struggle to keep track of the myriad links and “I’ll read that later” pages we come across in our day to day lives on the Internet. Many companies consider a central wiki, social intranet, or sharing site to be a “nice to have” but when carefully chosen and updated frequently, these platforms and sites can become the “one stop shop” your team needs not just to do their jobs, but to be awesome at them. Save your sales team a ton of heartache (and in Jeff’s case, embarrassment) by centralizing information about current and upcoming marketing and lead generation in the same place you store your carefully curated competitive intelligence.
• Email is Never Enough. When it comes to internal emails, I will be the first to admit I am totally part of the problem here, not the solution. As riveting as I'm sure my emails are, even I have to admit that in reality they are likely read by exactly 0.2% of recipients. Knowing this, it’s critical not to “bury the lead” and launch key initiatives (“Guys, our Competitive Intel Wiki is now live!”) via email alone. If you've got info important enough to send to everyone via email, it’s important enough to add to your central content location, add to your email signature, and even make a quick video update about it. If your teams and processes are aligned but you’re not seeing that reflected externally, consider how you’re communicating, as it may just be a message getting lost in the noise of our working lives.

It’s as easy to spot a company whose departments aren't communicating as it is to slack on communication when the calendar fills up and things get busy. But putting an emphasis on improving your internal meeting experience, carefully curating a central location to help your teams connect, and incorporating communication outside of the dreaded all-company email are all critical to getting — and staying — aligned as a business. Time and energy spent getting better at being a team is never out of order — and it can go along way to ensure the Jeffs of the world never make a faux-pas competitor cold call again.