When the economy headed south, many companies headed to the phones with questionable strategies, poorly crafted calls and awful results. Here's what didn’t work and why.

Strategies mismatched to the circumstances. Customer retention is easier, quicker and less costly than new customer acquisition. But instead of striving to keep present accounts to cushion the downturn, many companies went trolling (i.e., cold calling) for new leads. Rented and purchased calling lists became very popular but simply could not deliver short-term results. Not necessarily because the lists were faulty, but because in a downturn, new business development takes longer. Also, with many companies dialing from the same lists, prospects were deluged with calls and stopped accepting most of them.

Assigning freshmen and JV callers to varsity business. Quite a few companies outsourced cold calling to service bureaus. In turn, some of the bureaus staffed up with phone freshmen and “Junior Varsity” temporaries. Not good. Real prospects … those who can authorize “yes” despite budget constraints … don’t want to talk with freshmen because freshmen talk like freshmen. Real prospects don’t want to talk with the JV either … in this case, the reps who make the first-pass inquiry response and prequalify but who add little if any value. Real prospects want to talk with the varsity … your own or your service bureau’s.

Trying to short-circuit the business decision process. Business decisions take time. And because of the economy, even after “yes,” many purchases have been delayed or cancelled. Ignoring those realities, some marketers nevertheless pressured prospects and customers not only to make decisions, but to do so immediately! The result: arrogant, inappropriate lines such as: “Sure we’re in a slump, Mr. Brown. But you’re a business owner who simply can’t afford not to have this database now.” Click.

Hoping that with enough calls, opportunities would appear and business would materialize. The story: lots of identical high-intensity calls to everyone, including present customers whose account history was unknown to or ignored by the caller. The results: it didn’t work. The side effect: caller boredom, exhaustion and turnover.

Lines that stop the show. You can only generate leads and business if you can have conversations. Anything that slows down getting to a powerful and compelling “reason for the call” decreases the likelihood of conversations. Yet one company’s call opening included this nine-second yawner: “We provide products and services that help our customers maximize efficiencies and make it easier to conduct business with their customers, vendors or partners.” Click.

Fudging the lead qualification factors. When the activities described above failed to produce genuine opportunities, some marketers passed unqualified “leads” into the sales channels anyway. They will be paying for such malpractice directly and indirectly for quite some time.

Of course, not every organization fell into these poor practices. Some did phone very well and not only sustained their business, but grew it! Next time, we will explore what the successful ones have done, how they did it and how they are positioning their phone initiatives for the coming economic recovery.

Michael A. Brown is president of The Business Marketing Consultancy and Redwood Training Associates in Austin, Texas. For a free edition of Michael’s enewsletter, contact him at mabrow2@attglobal.net or 1-800-373-3966.