Gatekeepers At Guard
Be it salespeople, jobhunters or whoever else, people have to first face a gatekeeper when trying to contact a person of interest at a company. How frequently do you succeed in actually passing through, especially if you are first-time caller?
I understand that people too busy taking calls, and having a gatekeeper is an inevitable solution in majority of cases. But what are the objectives of having one? Is it that you need them to do a thorough screening and decide on whether the caller is worth talking to, or do an initial screening to pass further on to the necessary person? I would opt for the latter.
One of our partners (prospective, of course) were very close to losing us - just because their secretary deemed our service absolutely stupid and irrelevant (she needed 5 seconds to make that decision). Thank to me being stubborn enough, and to Internet community sites, I could find a contact of a decision maker at that company. Naturally, he found the service very interesting and timely. I didn’t tell him the story of a gatekeeper at that time 
Another role of a gatekeeper here in Russia is helping the manager avoid the partners. It’s so comfy - you make smb else answer the phone and say you are out of office.
What is the role of your gatekeeper?
Communications in Russia. How Patient Can You Be? | Musings Of A Marketer Said,
March 25, 2008 @ 10:42 pm
[...] I was posting about the problems one is likely to face when trying to contact for a prospective parter. A couple of months ago I was approached by Jon Lunetta of MyWaves Inc. He was exploring opportunities for oppportunities of connecting to Russian mobile service providers to arrange partnership programmes for their clients, with MyWaves’ technology platform. Since our TeriMobile company was already preparing for a shutdown, I compiled a small list of the industry players who had been most active by that time. [...]