Cold Caller Karma
Have you ever tried to sell to a cold caller?
For the last couple of weeks we have been interviewing people to join WalkInto engineering team. In the past we had great success with HasJob. It is a startup run by Kiran Jonnalagadda and team. I knew him personally for many years. That aside the simplicity of the platform and quality of applications we got through it helped to keep the trust. So, right away we fired off a posting.
What can WalkInto do? Whatever you want WalkInto to do for you. For starters,
About 30 minutes after the post went live I got the first call from Shibir. He called about the job. Great! My happiness was short lived because he called me to sell me a $200 recruitment package with Monster. Not so nice, I noted to self, while posting I had mentioned that no calls from recruiters.
MonsterBut it’s okay with me. Strictly speaking he was not a recruiter. More importantly over the last 4 years of running golocl & walkinto I have learned to respect cold callers a lot. It’s a tough job and they (we) are doing their (our) job. May this Karma work out for me on my next cold call!. So we talked and politely I explained to Shibir that I may not go with monster yet since I like to recruit off LinkedIn or Hasjob. He understood.
Few days later, probably next week, he called back — follow up. By then I had put up a second paid ad with Linked In. Both these channels together had produced many great applications and we were very busy interviewing (might add — in the middle of a very busy cold calling schedule!). So I explained to Shibir the situation and told him that I might not after all go with Monster. This in cold calling protocol is a pretty clear ‘closed lost’ opportunity.
No, not for Shibir! He called me back 4 days later. Same time in the morning. But this time he was different. He had done his thorough research on WalkInto and had a question for me — he wanted to know whether he can apply to a business development position!
I was like “Wow! This dude is going to do great in his career”. he is innovative and in my experience so far this was totally new. I played along.
He asked many intelligent question on WalkInto and then suggested that wouldn’t it be super awesome if WalkInto runs a banner ad on monster targeting tech companies. He had a lucid logic.
“Tech companies want to show their offices to prospective hires. I can see Walkinto is a great platform. With Ads on monster, you are talking to right audience at the right moment”
It was a good pitch and I got to agree with his reasoning. So I asked him to share the banner ad pricing so that I could review with my partner.
We continued our conversation.
“Shibir, your idea is great. Do you know what will make it an irresistible offer to recruiters?”
“No, sir, tell me”
“Walkinto is a good choice for a virtual tour platform. What if it is part of the monster listing itself? As an embedded tour? Wouldn’t it be a perfect premium listing option you could sell to recruiters? As you rightly said, HR really wants to show great office spaces. Give them a place right in company profile to include it. Can you make it happen?”
“That sounds great sir, I can discuss this with the product team. I think it will be a great enhancement to the product”
“You know what Shibir, with a global photographer network and a solid platform to build tours on you will be making the right recommendation. Probably not just for Monster India but for the globe!”
“Yes sir, agree, I have seen tours from all parts of the world on WalkInto gallery”
[Which is 100% true : https://walkinto.in#gallery]
“Connect me with the head of product team. I will discuss a proposal and I am sure this will work out great for all of us. Don’t you agree?”
“Yes, sir. let me do that right away…”
I will keep you posted on how Shibir sold it internally. And in a few months time when you see a WalkInto on monster, don’t forget to thank Shibir.
