Black Buck(28)

“I will!” he said, straightening out his apron. “You’re the best, Darren!”

With everything under control, I bid my soldiers farewell and checked the time. 7:55 a.m. Shit.

I jogged into the elevator bay and saw one closing. “Hold it, please!”

But no one held it open. And as the doors inched closer, I saw Clyde inside, pointing to his watch with a smirk on his face.

Motherfucker.



* * *





I joined the circle at 7:59 a.m. Clyde gave the same pump-up speech, made the same threats, and fostered the same tension as the day before. Afterward, I was the first one through the door of Bhagavad Gita. I sat in a chair at the short wooden table, and my knee jumped up and down like it contained an automatic spring. Today is my day. Be the man Ma needs you to be. Clyde walked in trailed by Frodo and the Duchess, and went straight to the whiteboard.

He laid out what he called the “anatomy of a cold call”—intro, rapport, discovery, presentation, objection handling, qualification, and handoff. “If you do each of these seven things well, you’ll succeed. If not, your career at Sumwun will die a quick death.”

Then he told us about what our entire week of training would come down to: a formal role-play on Friday. “But it’s nothing big. It’ll just be me, Rhett, and Charlie, who’s going to manage you once training is over. If you pass, you’ll get on the phones on Monday. If you don’t, you’re out the door.” He mimed kicking someone out the door with his shiny loafer.

Reader: This is important. If you can master the following, you’ll be able to call any stranger up and get what you want. I guarantee it.



For the remainder of the session, Clyde explained the steps one by one. A good intro, he said, is based on simplicity. You say who you are and kick the call off on an upbeat. With rapport, you’re looking to quickly establish a connection between you and the prospect. To do this, ask how they are, what their plans for the weekend are, if they caught a popular TV show the night before, etc.

“But,” he said, “for God’s sake, never bring up the weather. Everyone and their mother brings up the goddamn weather. The point here is to make yourself familiar to them ASAP. The quicker you do that, the more likely someone will let their guard down. And once their guard is down, you can make them do anything you want.”

The Duchess perked up at that, asking the best way to get someone to let their guard down.

“By your confidence and tone,” Clyde replied. “You never want someone to feel like they’re being sold to. Instead, they should view you as a friend, relative, or trusted advisor. Not someone looking to get something from them. So while you don’t need to give a fuck after the call is done, you need to deeply care for the ten, twenty, or thirty minutes you’re on the phone with them. If their dog just died, you console them. If they’re excited about some geeky Renaissance fair, you ask them if they’re dressing up as an elf or a knight. Get it?”

Everyone nodded.

Frodo raised his hand, then quickly dropped it. “How do we, uh, get paid?”

“By generating sales-qualified leads, aka SQLs. If you pass the prospect off to an AE and the AE says it’s good, you get paid. Same works for if those SQLs turn into deals. Other questions?”

Not a word. All of the acronyms and steps made my head spin. Frodo was writing down as much as possible, literally sweating. And the Duchess was, no lie, filing her nails.

“Good,” Clyde said, smiling. “Let’s begin.”



* * *





“Frodo, I’m Jack Durft, director of HR at Cold Stone Creamery,” Clyde said. “Give me a ring.”

“Uh, who’s Jack Durft?” he asked, turning to the Duchess and me.

Clyde pinched the bridge of his nose and took a long breath. “Frodo, I just told you. He’s director of HR at Cold Stone Creamery, fuck. Call me.”

“Okay, um, hello?”

Clyde slammed his hands on the table. I jumped. “Ring the fucking phone, you idiot!”

“Oh, right,” Frodo said. He formed his hand into the “hang loose” sign, and brought it to his ear. “Ring ring.”

“This is Jack.”

“Uh, yes, Mr. Jack, this is—”

“Click! Why are you calling him Mr. Jack? Be familiar. Would you call your friend Mr. Alex?”

Frodo shrugged. “I guess it depends on if he wanted to be called Mr. Alex.”

“You must have some weird fucking friends,” Clyde said, shaking his head. “But for the purpose of this, let’s assume your friends didn’t ride the short bus. Call me again.”

“Ring ring.”

“Good morning, this is Anna.”

“Anna? I thought you just said you were Jack?” Frodo asked, getting red.

Clyde swooped down on Frodo so viciously that I thought he was going to punch him in the face. Instead, he got real close to his ear, and whispered, “Do not ever, under any circumstances, break character. Understand?”

Frodo gulped loud enough for us to hear and nodded into his lap.

Clyde stood. “What? You think you’re always going to get the person you’re calling? You’ll have days where you make two hundred calls without ever speaking to someone. And if you do get through, you might speak with Anna the secretary, a gatekeeper whose job it is to keep incompetent salespeople like you from taking up their boss’s precious time. It’s your job to plow through them like a gang of starstruck groupies.”