One of the biggest mistakes salespeople make is pitching the gatekeeper. Most salespeople think the gatekeeper is the person they have to present their pitch to, in order to get to pitch the decision maker.
If you’re not sure what a gatekeeper is, it’s the assistant, secretary, or admin of the person in a company who makes buying decisions. For example, if you are pitching the CFO of a company, their gatekeeper is their secretary.
The gatekeeper is always busy. They are the personal assistant to a high-level executive. Regular employees don’t have assistants and secretaries. The gatekeeper is put in place to buy the executive time by doing work and screening calls and pop-bys for them.
No matter how many times you pitch the gatekeeper, and no matter how good your pitch is, they can’t make the decision to buy, so you wasted their time and yours. On top of that, if your pitch is long-winded, you’ll only piss the gatekeeper off more because they got better shit to do than listen to something they can’t do anything about.
Most salespeople think that if the gatekeeper likes the pitch, they will let them get in front of the gatekeeper. The truth is, most gatekeepers don’t even know what a good pitch is. That’s not their job to know.
The goal of a B2B sales call is to get the gatekeeper to pass you through to the decision-maker. So what’s the best way to make that happen?
I’m about to teach you a very strategic way to get past the gatekeeper 100% of the time, but I already know that 99% of you won’t even attempt to do it. Most of you will write off what you’re about to read as if it’s stupid and impossible. But as a guy who’s closing in on half a billion in sales, I’m telling you this shit works.
I’m going to give you 2 ways to get the gatekeeper on your side and get your calls and pop-bys passed on to the decision-maker.
The first and most effective way is by starting a podcast. Yes, a podcast. You call the gatekeeper and tell them you want to interview the decision-maker on your podcast. Tell the gatekeeper you’re a huge fan of the decision-maker and you want to help them get more exposure to your audience.
It’s free to set up a podcast too! You can use blogtalkradio.com or libsyn.com to easily get your audio recordings on iTunes. You can also video it and put the “podcast” on youtube.
The second way to get past the gatekeeper is to send a gift to the decision-maker. You send a book or something like that to the decision-maker. You call a few days after you know it’s arrived and ask the gatekeeper if they got it. Then ask to speak with the decision-maker about the gift.
This doesn’t work as well as the podcast interview strategy, but it’s a close second. In this instance, you never even tell the gatekeeper what you sell. You just tell them you sent a gift and would like to talk to the decision-maker to see if they liked it. This works really well if you send something unique, then follow up to show them how it works.
If you pitch the gatekeeper, the whole process ends right there. Doing the above methods I mention not only gets you in the door of the decision-maker, it makes you look like a professional or a person who’s a giver.
So do yourself a favor and stop giving your best pitch to the worst person you can pitch. Instead, go the routes I just shared with you and watch you pass by gatekeepers like they don’t even exist.
Rise Above 👊🏾
