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Dec 06The Art of the Cold Call
by in Feature Articles on 2007-01-30
Cold calling ain't easy. First, you have to find the right person (the "Decision Maker") at an organization to talk to. Then, you have to briefly convince the Decision Maker (who is hardened to such Cold Calls) why she should even listen to you. And finally, you have to briefly give your sales pitch and hope that the Decision Maker is half-paying attention. Any mistake along the way runs the risk of not only losing the potential client, but tarnishing the brand and its reputation amongst the Decision Maker's peers, who generally are Decision Makers as well.
That said, it's pretty impressive to see someone strike out on all three aspects of the cold call. Shawn Miller experienced this first hand when he got a call from I---, an account executive at PCMall. With I---'s broken English, it took Shawn a little while to figure out why he was being called in the first place. I--- wanted Shawn to setup an account with PCMall to purchase hardware and software.
After fifteen minutes of politely trying to explain that he wasn't the Decision Maker and that now was a very bad time to call, Shawn had no choice but to had to hang up on I---. Several minutes later, the following email popped-up in Shawn's inbox:
I'd imagine that there's a lot involved with bringing a new person into this world. No, no -- I don't mean that part, I mean the whole paperwork side of things. There's Social Security to set up, a .name domain to register, birth certificate, insurance -- especially insurance. With all those people feigning pregnancy and labor just to get a stay at the hospital and a complimentary "It's a Boy!" balloon, insurers need to be extra certain that childbirth claim resulted in a real child. 
Take-Your-Child-To-Work Day never made much sense to me. Unless you're someone cool like Tony Hawk or Batman, showing kids the reality of the workplace just seems outright cruel. Cubicles, meetings, TPS reports -- I mean really, while you're at it, why not just crush all of their hopes and dreams and tell them that Santa Claus died in a mid-air collision with the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny was run over while trying to save the world's last candy factory, and that there would never be any birthday parties ever again. It's practically the same thing. 
Good software is constantly under attack on several fronts. First, there are The Amateurs who somehow manage to land that hefty contract despite having only finished "Programming for Dummies" the night before. Then there are The Career Amateurs who, having found success after that first contract (read: taking the client's money and not being sued for developing a useless product), actually manage to make a career out of repeating that experience. And then there are The Complicators, the side that tempts the best of us to join their ranks, even if only for project or two. 
"Wait a sec," Ove N. said, "your current network support guy charges a monthly retainer and hourly fees? You know, it's supposed to be one or the other; not both." 
One of the most important aspects of being a hosting company is keeping track of bandwidth usage. As a lowly UNIX admin, Jay never really knew how they did that until it had broken a year back. It turned out that bandwidth monitoring was done with a creaky, end-of-life Sun system that sat near the routers and constantly polled them, adding up the bandwidth usage, generating log files, and then mailing those up the chain to the financial people. It had been set up so long ago that the tech that did it became a senior tech, and then a leading tech, and then a chief tech, and finally, a CTO at another firm. 
Development Manager. Yeah, it was a Pointy-Haired-Boss title, but Jamie was ready for that. He had put in his years as a developer and knew it was the right time to move on to management. Besides, the team he'd be managing was fairly small, and he could always jump in to help out with some coding if needed. The offer was just right and, like that, Jamie became a manager.
It all began on the first interview, the moment I entered their building. I was asked to sign a four-page Non-Disclosure Agreement and was sternly warned that no recording devices of any kind were allowed in the building. It didn't seem that unheard of, so I assured them that I had no intention of recording the interview and signed the agreement, thereby swearing on my life that I would never describe to another living soul what I saw on the premises that day. To this day, I cannot reveal which motivational poster I saw framed in the only room I was allowed to see: the conference room off the entrance.