The Worst Advice I Ever Heard On Making New Business Calls

About eight years ago, a car dealer in my home town of Portland decided to open up on Christmas Day.

sales advice: don't sit by the laptop. make calls

Photo by pathdoc/Adobe Stock

THREE SALES ON THE
“WORST SALES DAY OF THE YEAR”

The dealer was on pace to hit his December number, but it was going to be close. So he came into the store on Christmas Day with his finance manager and one salesperson.

If my memory serves me correctly, the finance manager was estranged from his family, and the salesperson was Jewish.

The store didn’t advertise this anywhere — the dealer and his employees just showed up to see what would happen.

They spent most of the day watching movies in the dealership conference room. But the phone rang seven times — customers wondering if the store was open.

Five of them came in for test drives. On Christmas Day.

Two of them bought cars that day. This, for the salesperson, was the single best day of the month.

Another came back and bought a car a few days later.

I was reminded of this car dealer last year, when I was preparing to work with a TV station in the Midwest. Our week for CNA’s was the week leading into a major holiday weekend.

When he realized that he’d scheduled my arrival for the week before a holiday, the Sales Manager suggested that perhaps I should go home early, because he wasn’t sure there’d be any clients willing to meet with me on Friday.

I suggested that we have the AE’s try to make appointments for Friday, just to see what would happen.

It turned out that the staff scheduled three meetings for me that day, and one of those turned out to be the biggest-dollar sale of our project.

The Worst Sales Advice I’ve Ever Heard
Variations On a Theme

Don’t bother to make new business calls …

  • Monday morning
  • Friday afternoon
  • At lunchtime
  • After 5p,
  • Before 8am
  • The Friday before a holiday weekend
  • The last two weeks of December

It’s possible that there are fewer people at their desks at those times… but there are also fewer of your competitors making calls at those times.

If you’re willing to make the calls, you’ve got a better chance of turning those calls into meetings, and turning those meetings into sales.

The best time to make new business calls is whenever you make the calls.

Question: What’s the most unusual time you’ve ever had a sales call? You can leave a comment by clicking here.

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Categories: Phil Bernstein, Sales
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