Generating Business or Landing a Job Using the Telephone

Do you need to reach key decision makers as part of your job hunt or sales strategy? Then you could benefit from the telephone techniques taught by Lydia desGroseilliers, president of LDG Associates, Inc (ldgass@tiac.net).

Lydia spoke to the BSAS on "Generating Business or Landing a Job Using the Telephone" on March 16, 2004.

Here are some of her tips:

  • Your voice is key to improving your effectiveness on the telephone. Project enthusiasm. Smile as you speak. Stand, sit leaning forward in your chair, or assume whatever position helps you to sound energetic. Speak at a pace that mirrors the pace of the person you’re talking with. In any case, don’t speak so rapidly your listener can’t follow. You can practice on your spouse or record yourself on your home answering machine.

  • Be persistent. Lydia calls her targets every day for one week at different times of day, trying to figure out the best time of day to reach them. She doesn’t leave messages, though she will ask gatekeepers to recommend a time to call back. If she doesn’t snare her prey within one week, she takes two weeks off before calling again. She has found that executives appreciate polite persistence.

  • Recommended reading: How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling by Frank Bettger. Available in paperback.

Summary written by Susan B. Weiner, CFA, specializing in communications about investments