On February 24th 2010, I made a phone call to “Manalo’s Restaurant”, a neighborhood Argentinean restaurant, to request an advertising partnership.
I called and when the hostess answered “hola”, I immediately knew there was a language barrier. Sure enough, I couldn’t understand the woman at all, so she had to transfer me – not a great start. The next woman answered, I repeated who I was and asked for an advertising representative, and I was transferred again.
My main problem with advertising is that I am not a very assertive person, not am I a good bargainer. I asked the next woman if she was interested in advertising with us, she immediately said no, and soon became impatient and ready to hang up. Assuming she was completely uninterested, stating they didn’t advertise and that she didn’t want to advertise, I let her hang up on me as she was anxious to do. It should be noted that with this woman, there was also a language barrier which again affected our communication. I realized afterward that there was more I could do in attempting to convince her to advertise with us before I let her go.
I think that, for my first advertisement call ever, it went okay. Despite a shabby conclusion, I think I started out pretty well, and handled the language barrier. I was very direct, as I stated “Hi. My name is David Canfield, and I’m with the Beachcomber, official newspaper of Miami Beach Senior High, and we’re interesting in advertising with your restaurant”. I felt confident when I said it, and I knew my confidence went through the call to the hostess on the phone. Yes, she struggled to understand me, but I think my confidence was clear regardless of the differing dialects.
Although I felt good about how I introduced our newspaper, the response was negative and I didn’t handle it well. When her first response was “no”, I essentially gave up. I allowed her to hang up and end the phone call with no fight, when I could’ve asked for a time to come in, to send a copy of our paper or to offer some statistics like the fact that we have 5000+ people within school families that they could reach. I think that I told myself that there was no way that she would buy our ads, but it was wrong to think that before I even tried to convince her. I also need to remember to stay positive at all times, and ONLY tell them why they should join our newspaper, with no negatives about it.
With this as my first phone call, I think I can build on it and make some strong sales in the future. The direction I need to take is assertiveness, and the ability to refuse “no” as an answer. I need to have multiple responses to ‘no’ in the back of my mind so that I can prove to the client that I am serious and that the advertisement really is a good opportunity. My issue in normal life is parallel to my issue in selling ads, so I think that this is a perfect opportunity to overcome this, both for the future of our newspaper and for my growth.
