Nobody Answers Their Phone Anymore!

Have you noticed? No one will just pick up the phone! I work selling cars, as some of you know, but I have sold a variety of things over the years, and in the last maybe ten years, I have found that my marketing efforts when it comes to the telephone have dwindled over the years. It used to work fairly well, when I sold Lincolns, around 2014, that if I made about 100 calls I would get 70 people who would answer, 50 that would listen and talk, and maybe 10 appointments to show my cars to someone. Then, over the years the same skills and “scripts” slowed to a grind. Now no one will answer the phone at all, out of 100 phone calls, I can only talk to maybe 10 people at best. Mostly I just get voicemail, and that gets ignored. Nobody ever calls back, if they do, I am so shocked, that I don’t hardly know what to say.

We the sales professional have “trained” people that they shouldn’t answer the phone, or we will badger them, or worse, actually sell them something. I used to ask my wife, if people don’t answer the phone, how do they know I don’t have something great for them? She told me that folks are getting tired of being scammed, tricked, “sold”, or having their time wasted. She was right, but so was I!

These days I make the calls I am supposed to but to no avail. My best source of sales of cars is the “fresh up” I have about a 30% closing ratio, which is better than the average bear. So I work the “ups” and hope for “be-backs”. (the be-back bus doesn’t stop here) Most of the sales folk here use text more and more, and email to a point. Texting seems ok, but it gets ignored too much also. I blame caller I.D. Not to mention it is impersonal, and cold, with no way to show emotion, other than emoticons, and that is sad also.

I hope that humanity wises up and actually starts to talk to each other again, instead of an impersonal screen that is easily ignored. I am not sure we will, as we are heading into a time when people don’t seem to want to interact personally. Everyone seems afraid of other people, and that is sad in my book.

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