The Yellow Freight Sales Call

A while back we got a voice mail from a sales rep at Yellow Freight that was so bad in every possible way that I just had to document it here. This is a lesson on what NOT to do on a cold call.

The voice mail was about 90 seconds long. Don't do that. Nobody will listen to all that. I only listened out of morbid fascination, kind of like watching a car wreck on the highway.

He started by introducing himself as our new account manager, and then asked to be referred to whoever is in charge of shipping and receiving. If he is our account manager shouldn't he know who is in charge of shipping? If he doesn't know, there is the thing called the Internet, where he can find the company website, where he just might learn the name of this magical shipping manager. People who ask for "the person in charge of whatever" have been sent to a voice mail box nobody will ever check since voice mail boxes became cheap enough to waste on poorly trained salespeople.

Had he bothered to look at our website he would know that we are a web site design firm. We do "ship code," but we don't need a truck to do it. Our entire shipping effort is the occasional laptop to a new remote employee. Our incoming freight needs are handled by Amazon Prime.

Spray and pray cold calling barely worked back in the olden days. It's insulting and a waste of time in 2019. Even if I needed LTL freight services I would pass on Yellow. If their sales force is that badly trained, can I have confidence the freight handlers are any better trained?

This stuff is not rocket science. Have a legitimate business reason for calling before you pick up the phone. If you don't know what the person you are calling does, don't call them. Do some research first, then call only if you actually have a reason to call.