A Cold Call

(A Cold Call is a short story I wrote for B. Nagel’s Wake Up Writing Monster challenge to get back on the ball and start dishing out short stories again. I took the challenge to heart and will have some more stuff posting soon. Until then, here is my story.)

Fourteen or fifteen days of cold calling seemed like more than enough time to line up a few semi-steady clients. Or at least get a few potentials interested. Henry, Gina, Carlos and Grace started the small firm with only one real client anyway, PLC Communities. After running the numbers, all they realistically needed were one or two more semi-steady clients to hold the company together for the first year. Really, Gina had all the contacts, and she, Grace and Carlos were the ‘interface’ people. Between the three of them, they could definitely shore up a few more good leads. So technically it wouldn’t actually be cold-calling. After all, they had met some of these people before: at conferences, at meetings, on job sites. One client in two weeks sounded more than reasonable with all four of them firing on all cylinders.

But Henry sat at his chair for a moment and wondered what one cylinder felt like. For all his ability to manage his workload, he really didn’t know as much about ‘making a name in the industry’ as the other three. Gina had tried making him her little project, which she called “an exercise in mind over matter.” “You don’t have to know everything,” she asserted to him when he signed their articles of incorporation several months ago. “You just have to convince the client that there’s nothing you can’t do. You’re not really selling services, you’re selling yourself and your abilities.”

Still, Henry looked down to his list at exactly 8:03am on Monday morning with shaky hands and a lump in his throat. He could suddenly remember speaking up in meetings only to have the wrong answer. Or when it became very clear to clients that he couldn’t match their years of experience. He never felt any pressure to outline his qualifications to anyone in the past, never felt the need to convince anyone of his expertise, and had no reason to ‘sell’ himself in past client interactions. They would either see his skills and work ethic or they wouldn’t.

This just seemed so foreign. But now he owned a company with three of his friends.

Grace had arrived at six to call her contacts on the East Coast, and she was only three people into her list. Though there were glass partitions between their office spaces, he could hear her cheerful voice casually transition from small talk to brass tacks to nuts-and-bolts, back to small talk. There was no pressure in her voice, no pushiness, nothing that would send a red flag to someone on the other line that she wasn’t completely qualified to take on their project. She almost made them seem like her personal friends, although Henry knew they couldn’t possibly be. ‘Could they?’

‘Maybe she’ll get all five clients and I won’t have to call anyone,’ Henry mused, turning on his computer to first check email and pre-log hours into his timecard as ‘Marketing.’ And fully aware he was stalling for more time.

Carlos strolled through the front door laughing into his mobile phone to some client in San Francisco. The ease with which Carlos could somehow pick up the phone and begin chatting with a potential client visibly embarrassed Henry as he looked down to the first name on his client list. ‘Dunsmuir Developments LLC – $1.8 billion in assets – 28 developments in CA, AZ, NV  – Contact Name: John Adebanjo.’ Lifting the phone slowly while watching Carlos plop into his seat, Henry stopped breathing and brought it to his ear. Though he had searched each of the 34 clients’ backgrounds during the weekend, he unexpectedly realized that his compulsion to be thorough had turned into a detriment. Though his notes were now more thorough and his knowledge of each company now more in-depth, the prospect of actually calling these contacts, of putting a name to a voice, of letting his office down, of hurting their chances at future work, and of appearing foolish to someone who could sustain his livelihood seemed more real now than ever.

‘How could a single person over the phone have the power to determine if his company is or is not paid? How could someone else control whether they thrived or closed their doors? How could there be no system in place to evaluate their work and recommend them without the unnecessary phone pitches and forced flattery? How could it possibly be all about who you know and selling yourself?’

The dial tone filled Henry’s ear as he froze completely. ‘Why am I so nervous? Why can’t I be like Carlos, Gina or Grace?’ As Henry studied the three of them while they smiled, chatted, jotted notes, and cracked jokes to total strangers over the phone, his frustration became worse. They each had completely different styles, so there didn’t seem to be consistent traits or statements he could easily mimic. He knew that putting himself on the line only had to do with self-confidence, but the gap between ‘understanding that all he had to do was be self-confident’ and ‘actually being self-confident’ seemed to grow wider as each moment passed. He had hung up on so many cold callers in the past, he knew how easy it would be for the people on his list to do the same. Henry would go right down the list, one person at a time. The leads would politely (or impolitely) shrug him off and—if anything—their company would only be remembered as a morning nuisance to John Adebanjo, Dunsmuir Developments LLC’s corporate gatekeeper. There were no secret passwords or answers to a sacred question. There was no way to compare resumes to each other. John Adebanjo would either like him or not.

“Hello, this is John.”

“Hi John, my name’s Henry Colton. You met my colleague Gina Chan at a mixer last week and I’m just calling to follow up on our company’s services,” Henry read Gina’s script too curtly.

John paused for a moment. “I think I remember her, I must have given her my card.”

“Yes, that’s how I got your contact information. Did she speak to you about Axial Partners and our services?” Henry chuckled nervously, with an awkward, unbecomingly high pitch.

John’s voice deepened as his words came out more rapidly, “You know, she had. Would you do me a favor? I’m swamped with work right now, could you send me an email to refresh my memory?”

His hand shaking, Henry reached for a pen. “Sure! What’s your email? I can send you some information right away.”

“Well, you have my card, right? My email is there. Thanks very much for calling.”

“Oh, thank you Mister Adebanjo.”

“Great, have a good day.”

“You too,” Henry gripped his phone tightly as John disconnected. ‘Was it something I said?’  Henry wondered, his tension rapidly dissolving to frustration. ‘How do people do this?’

Henry crossed the top name off the list, disheartened. Thirteen more.