Welcome Professionals…

…Every VIP needs a gatekeeper. Everyone attracting a lot of attention and unsolicited business offers needs somebody filtering out the spam. They call them reception desk, personal assistant, or deputy, let’s call them gatekeeper for now.

Many people try to get access to VIPs directly. They ignore the gatekeeper and use tools and methods to bypass them. This is a mistake. For someone who installed a gatekeeper it can be very annoying to get unfiltered messages by email, text, whatsapp, social media and so on. For the gatekeeper it is annoying to be treated like an obstacle.

Gatekeepers are usually a person of trust for VIPs. They have a lot of power to decide who is allowed to reach them, who receives a time slot and when. It is much wiser to respect their powerful role and collaborate with them. I remember a salesman that I met 12 years ago. He was from Germany and made a business trip to the US every year for two weeks. He only had these two weeks to meet his most important clients. How did he manage to meet everyone of his VIPs in only two weeks? He revealed his method to me. He had special gifts for the gatekeepers. On every trip, he brought an article of virtu – I think it was a specially designed espresso cup. The personal assistants were keen to receive the next collector’s item. This was his secret trick, he explained to me.

Actually I think the real reason for his success was something else. I do not believe in the pursuasive power of espresso cups. As a matter of fact, I perceived the salesman as someone who treated every person with the same level of respect. He was not only charmign – which he certainly was – he wholeheartedly loved to talk to people and did this with a true interest. I can imagine that he took the same interest into the lifes of the gatekeepers when he handed over his espresso cups. Honest interest and attention cannot be denied by no-one.

Treating every person with respect should be a self-evident virtue. It especially works well with gatekeepers since they get to deal with rude requests quite often.

Try it in your next call,

Malte

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