The other day while I was waiting to have my tires rotated I overhead a telephone conversation between the shop owner (Dave) and a sales rep from a tire manufacturer. During the short conversation, the telephone kept ringing and kept putting the rep on hold to deal with those calls. After several minutes Dave's frustration became evident and he finally said to the rep, "Now's not a good time; I'm just too busy."
In my neck of the woods (Greater Toronto Area), this is an extremely busy time of year for tire shops because their customers are transitioning from winter to summer tires. On an average day, my tire shop will have between 15-20 cars waiting for this service from eight in the morning until late afternoon.
Shouldn't the rep know this? After all, he is in the tire business.
Let's face it, there's no good time to make sales calls. I don't know many business owners or decision makers who aren't busy. However, certain times are worse than others and these vary from industry to industry.
For example, when I worked in the hospitality industry, I abhorred sales people who used to "drop by" during lunch because I was focused on making sure that we executed our lunch service and Monday mornings were off-limits in retail because our stores were compiling results from the previous week and preparing for the upcoming week.
Here's my question...
Are you in sync with your prospects?
Do you know the worst time to contact them and do you respect that? If you don't you could be costing yourself valuable sakes opportunities.