In this video, we provide three tactics to use for how to get around the gatekeeper. These are practical tips that are easy to implement regardless of your level of sales experience and personality style. These do not involve any trickery, manipulation, or games. They just give you real plays that can be used to help you communicate in the most optimum way possible.

 

Educate the Gatekeeper

One way for how to get around the gatekeeper is to try to educate the gatekeeper on who you are and why the prospect would want to talk with you. When gatekeepers are blocking you out, they are either out all salespeople regardless of what they sell or say, or they are blocking you out because they think the people they work for do not need what you sell and you are going to waste their time.

If it is the latter, if you can educate the gatekeeper on who you are, how you can help, and why it would be worth the prospect’s time for them to talk with you, there is a chance that you can decrease the gatekeepers guard and persuade them to let you through.

Remember that the product you sell has value to offer to the prospects who have the pain points you can help alleviate. With that, you use your value points, pain points, and customer example building blocks to educate the gatekeeper.

 

Treat the Gatekeeper Like the Prospect

The second tip for how to get around the gatekeeper is to treat them like they are the target prospect. If the gatekeeper did not block you out and you were to connect with the target prospect, a good thing to do is ask the prospect questions to learn more about what they are doing and identify if they have pain points in the area where your product can help. If the gatekeeper is blocking you from doing that, just ask them your questions.

For example, if the gatekeeper won’t let you through, you could change gears and say something like:

OK. Well, maybe you know the answer to this. How difficult is it to get reps to know what to say and ask? How do you feel about the time it takes to get sales reps ramped up and producing? How much of a priority is it to get reps performing better?

That is an example of asking the gatekeeper pain questions. You could also respond in the same way with your current state questions.

This can help with how to get around the gatekeeper in a couple of different ways. First, the gatekeeper might have knowledge about the organization and be able to answer your question. This can be very productive because you can use them to gather information without even needing to get to the target prospect.

But another very likely scenario is the gatekeeper does not know the answer to your question. When this is the case, you can use that as a justification for getting through them and speaking with the target prospect with a response like:

Oh, I understand. Well, that is why it would make sense for me to speak with [Prospect] as they would likely know the answer to that question. What is the best way for me to get connected with [Prospect]?

 

Have Objection Responses

The third tip for how to get around the gatekeeper is to have responses ready for their objections. Gatekeepers will use objections to get rid of you and it is a fairly short list of what they well say:

  • What is this in regards to?
  • Is this a sales call?
  • We are not interested.
  • We are not making any changes.
  • We already use somebody for that.
  • We do not need that right now.
  • Send me your information.

Instead of trying to figure out how to respond in real-time when talking with the gatekeeper, have a game plan for what to say to these ahead of time. And you can use your value points, pain points, pain questions, and current state questions as objection responses to all of these objections.

 

We hope these tips help you with how to get around the gatekeeper!