"Chuck can always see me," Gustison says. "But as a rule I hate cold calls. It's rude to think you can just come in and take time, especially if you don't know the person."
Piola chews on those words as he drives across town to Wills Eye Hospital. "Larry's right," he says. "You don't want to fight people, you want to sell them. And he's very busy, which is unusual. I think most people go to work wondering what they're going to do for lunch. So I don't buy this business that nobody can see you without an appointment."
On a good day, Piola can make 30 cold calls, do three or four presentations, and schedule an appointment or two. He operates on "the assumptive." His attitude is that people want to see him -- or would if only they knew his business. "We're talking about management of accounts receivable, which can be a nightmare."
Cold calling his way through the hospital now, leaving cards everywhere, he encounters, by chance, Ruth Humm. She's been in the medical management field for 15 years, and Piola has worked with her before. She's glad to see him. "Chuck always has some good jokes," she says.
Humm is new to her job managing an ocular-oncology practice, and assumed Piola had a contract with it already -- 70% of NCO's client base is medical. Since he's here, however, she does have one thing: a New Jersey man, already reimbursed by his insurer, has stubbornly refused to pay the eye surgeon.
Piola warms to the challenge. "After four or five months in our system he's going to get 45 or 50 attempts," he says. "We'll send letters; we'll do skip-tracing; we'll get a neighbor to tell us where he works and go after him there." Humm seems pleased. "Our secretary here is the first bulldog," she says, "but Chuck is the Great Dane with the louder bark." She hands him the file and signs a contingency contract. It's a $2,800 account.
That's small beer compared with his final quarry of the day -- Independence Blue Cross, a monster insurance company. Like most, it has unpaid premiums, overpaid claims, and the like. A few months earlier Piola had left an NCO brochure for John Foos, the chief financial officer. Now, driving over, he gets on the car phone to a secretary he met that day. It's not Foos he wants, she says. It's someone named Tom Ford, the manager of corporate cash. "Manager of corporate cash," Piola muses over the phone. "Nice title." The secretary chuckles.
Minutes later, he's on the 40th floor, executive real estate at the Blue Cross headquarters. Tom is not the guy to see, either, Piola learns, and he gets another name. He hits one blind alley and then another. Eventually, he's directed to Rosemary Park, senior VP of the risk-management division, down on 41. Yes, indeed, Park says, she is very interested in a presentation. They set a date.
What probably influenced her, Piola reflects later over a Dewar's and water, is that he had started at the top, with John Foos. "His name counts everywhere in that building. The fact that I had never even talked to him didn't matter. I'd paid my dues because I had tried to see him, and then using his name was like hard currency around there."
* * *
In the end, however, Rosemary Park canceled the meeting, saying something had come up. Rich Rizzo at the law firm kept his appointment, but nothing came of it. Oddly enough, it was Larry DeAngelis at Sun Refining and Marketing who provided the most promising breakthrough of those two days.
"Chuck is the only person who has ever made a personal call on me for that kind of service," DeAngelis says. "I was impressed."
The business he gave NCO wasn't large -- two corporate collection accounts totaling less than $10,000. But as Piola sees it, it could be the start of something big. "What turns me on is that a small company like mine was actually able to go in and do a deal with a Fortune 50 company like Sun," he says. "And it happened on a cold call."
TIPS FROM A MASTER
After 15 years of 'going in raw,' Chuck Piola shares his thoughts
The best time to reach a decision maker is early in the morning or late in the day. "Try to catch people on their way into the office, before the secretary arrives. That minimizes interference."
Piola's favorite opening line: "I wonder if you can help me out?" " Everybody likes to help," says Piola. "Put people in that posture right away."
Almost any business could successfully use cold calls. "If I had a cleaning business, I'd cold call apartment houses, industrial complexes. You don't know what won't work if you don't try it."
The multiplier effect: "Cold calling maximizes your contacts. You meet people -- in the elevator, the hallway, the reception area. Everybody you see is a resource."
Multiplier-effect corollary: "Never assume the person you're talking to isn't the decision maker."
How do you get people to see you? "If you walk in the door and are a breath of fresh air for them, you're not an infringement on their time. They'll make room for you."
Even in slow times, stay consistent. "You might cold call for three weeks with no results, but you'd better make your calls that fourth week as good as when you started. If you don't, prospects will feel it."
"You can't take rejection personally. Nothing should bother you."
"You have to come up with a reason for someone to see you, and you usually have 20 or 30 seconds to do it, so be ready to think fast. If you're getting shot down, find something that will go 'click' and get a 'yeah, maybe' response. Then ask for the appointment right away: 'Would Tuesday be OK, or would Wednesday be better?' Go on the assumptive."
