How to make a phone call so that no one hangs up on you: Claudie Hrušková Paldusová (#185)
- Martin Hurych
- 25. 3.
- Minut čtení: 26
Cold calling is dead? Wrong! Most people just don't know how to do it.
If you hate making phone calls, are afraid of rejection, or aren't how to engage a client or when to call, this episode will open your eyes. And if you're one of those people who use the phone every day, download the bonus "Effective Telephoning" to see what else you can improve.
How many times have you heard that the phone no longer works in B2B business? And how many times have you yourself hesitated whether it makes sense to call someone? Maybe you just don't know how to use the phone properly so you don't get hung up on and appointments come naturally.
These days, most marketers rely on email, LinkedIn and digital marketing. The phone has become a tool they fear and undervalue. But in the hands of a seasoned pro, it can be the fastest route to meetings, deals and long-term relationships.
My guest today is Claudie Paldusová, founder of Telefonická komunikace, a company that has been showing companies how to make phone calls strategically, effectively and without pressure for 14 years. Claudia and her team help companies set relevant appointments where others say they "can't".
What do you find out in this episode?
"Expand your customer base. Reactivate your contacts regularly. And if you have an in-house telephone team, nurture their quality. It's like in the restaurant. If the waiter is bad, you won't come again."
Claudie Hrušková Paldusová | CEO @ Telefonická komunikace s.r.o
How to make a phone call without being hung up on
(Transcript)
Martin Hurych
I'm Martin Hurych and this is another Ignition. Before I introduce you to today's lady 've invited here to the studio, I have a traditional request for you. If you're interested in the latest in B2B business and in B2B strategy, innovation or working with people, consider signing up for my newsletter list. Like the 1,300 owners and CEOs of engineering, technology and manufacturing companies, you won't miss 100% of what I do for you. Today it's going to be about making phone calls, and if it's going to be about making phone calls, it's going to be with none other than Ms. Claudia Hruskova Paldus. Hello, Claudia.
Claudia Paldus
Hello, Martin, hello.
Introducing the guest and what she enjoys about motorcycles?
Martin Hurych
Claudia is the founder and owner of Telephone Communications. So when I was browsing LinkedIn for a while, I found out that you are an avid biker. What in the world is up with that?
Claudia Paldus
I came to motorbikes in the beginning by being a backpacker and it was an incredible adrenaline rush. I like cars, sports cars, so I thought it would be cool to try driving a motorcycle. I like the speed, the acceleration, and there's totally different possibilities than in a car. It's obviously more adrenaline because you don't have any metal around you.
Martin Hurych
We'll get with the acceleration, not so with the engine. You probably don't like backpacking in life, do you?
Claudia Paldus
I'm about 50% there, because my husband also rides a motorcycle, he has a beautiful bike, and maybe when we have occasional trips together, I'm open to riding as a backpacker. I enjoy it because there you have a different experience of the ride again because you're looking, you're enjoying and the bike is so sporty, amazing, a little bit more powerful than mine, so it's a powerful experience for me. But the most fulfilling rides for me are the ones that we have together, whether it's with the business group or when everyone has their own bike.
Martin Hurych
So if you ever want to network on a motorcycle, go to Claudia.
Claudia Paldus
It's . There should be three events next year, but I'll only be joining the last one because I need to take a little break.
Martin Hurych
It's probably fair to note that by the time you're listening to this, in addition to Claudia, we already have little Claudia or Claudio.
Claudia Paldus.
We have Richard.
How was Telefonická komunikace s.r.o. established?
Martin Hurych
Congratulations. Telephone communication, both a company and something I think a lot of marketers are afraid of, so let's start with the company first. How did you even conceive the idea of combining your professional career with the telephone and what lured you into the business?
Claudia Paldus
I have been in the business of acquiring, telephoning and reactivating leads for over 14 years and have had the opportunity to go into various companies, from small, medium to very large , as part of my employment, self-employed. There I've seen how it works, doesn't work, and I've seen a hole in the market in that that telephone contact is often neglected or feared exactly. But when it's done right, the principles are followed, it has a strategy, it can increase that company's turnover. Telephone communication is now in its 5th year in the market.
Martin Hurych
What is the domain of Telephone Communication besides holding the phone from morning to night?
Claudia Paldus
The situation is that we are a team of up to 30 people, we are growing and we have two pillars of the business. The first one is that we do bespoke call academies for mid-sized companies and the second pillar is about making our own calls and setting up meetings for sales teams. That was part of the reason those 5 years ago because I had so many enquiries that I couldn't keep with that I said, let's start a company. I was one of the best on the phone, I went for it, I started running the company, but that first year was very challenging, intense, because of course it's a completely different business, the putting together a team, managing people. But I was lucky with the people, with the project manager, who made sure that the company was running and created internally. I took charge of the business.
Why do people think telephone communication doesn't work?
Martin Hurych
How upset are you when someone writes on LinkedIn that phone communication doesn't work?
Claudia Paldus
When it's on LinkedIn, it's about me being happy to set up a meeting with that person, to call them. I'm interested in the reason why they think it's not working, what industry they're in, what kind of company they are. But what pisses me off a lot is when I'm the one making the inquiry, and it's been a situation in the past where I've made an inquiry about a car and I wanted a specific model. The gentleman responded to my inquiry with the type that they don't have that car right now, I have his number so when something changes on the website I should call him if it does. I was just driving, I had it on handsfree, so I pulled over and it felt like all the hairs on my head stood up. But then I calmed down and I was like, this situation is amazing because there's a huge space in the market. Also, calls that drive me crazy, like acquisition calls, when someone wants to set up a meeting with you and the person is pushing terribly, because that happens to me a lot too.
What are the biggest challenges in telephony?
Martin Hurych
What are the biggest challenges with telephony today?
Claudia Paldus
For individuals or for companies, how do you look at it?
Martin Hurych
That's a good question. Let's try first for the person who has to pick up the phone and make 20, 30, 50, 100 calls a day. What do they struggle with the most in terms of making phone calls?
Claudia Paldus
I would break it down into acquisition teams that are making cold calls and then teams that already have, for example, a tribe of their existing clients. I really like the acquisition side because that's where the momentum of the unknown is, it's the adrenaline rush and that's where the biggest stopper for those salespeople is that they're afraid, afraid of rejection. What we focus on a lot is technical firms, where those people are very expertly focused on selling that service or product that's sophisticated, but their typology doesn't match that anymore, that they want to be kicking down doors somewhere. It's also the reputation of making that phone call, because a lot of people feel like they need to be pushed or pushed somewhere.
But in this day and age of data strategies, information, AI, you can find out so many things about the company you want to contact and have such good preparation that the call isn't as cold as it seems. That's the first segment, and that's definitely where that fear and that reluctance plays a role.
For the retention teams, we have experience with the banking sector, where we go to Slovakia to train over 500 traders, and we are now in our second year there, and again it is about the attitude of those people. We need to reinforce them to feel comfortable and relaxed on the phone. What is a big key for us in that collaboration is personality typology, identifying in 3-10 seconds who you have on the other side and communicating with them on that level.
Martin Hurych
You also mentioned problems from the business side, so since we're shooting this primarily for medium-sized business owners, from the business position, how is potential telephone communication tricky?
Claudia Paldus
A lot of people underestimate it and take it to mean that they hire people who are not relevant to do the job. First of all, there's a business overlap that that person doesn't make maybe that given amount of appointments or we often struggle with the fact that they're not relevant. It's about the lady outsmarted me, I sent a salesperson, but the target audience that is listening now knows how much the salesperson costs and how much their time is worth. The second issue is the marketing overlap, because if you put that person who is supposed to represent your company on that front line and they call in there unselfishly or very forcefully, it really spoils the marketing brand that a lot of effort and money is being put into.
But the benefits can come in that, just like an inside salesperson, if that salesperson is good, they're bringing in business and representing that company, but it's that consultative selling. The same thing is true on the phone, that if that person understands the business, knows how to dial, if we go specifically into the numbers, the average success rate is 20%. Of course, it depends on the segment, if I were to mention ERP systems for example, there is a 10% success rate. But you have 100 companies and if we take the worst case scenario, out of those 100 companies you might have 10 relevant appointments and there of course everybody already has those numbers, how many deals you close out of 10 appointments.
Martin Hurych
Success is calculated from picking up the phone to making an appointment on the calendar?
Claudia Paldus
Yes, it's actually processed 100 companies and that relevant meeting.
How to get an appointment over the phone?
Martin Hurych
I'll confess to one thing. When my phone rings with an unknown number, I'm already imagining if it's someone from gas, energy, finance or if it's the marketing research so popular nowadays just to avoid GDPR. If marketers were to guide our listeners on how to step out of this scare that we're all afraid of and how to leave the best impression and how to get that appointment when all I know about that company is their external data?
Claudia Paldus
The person who calls it in must be well trained for the service. He should not know it technically, but he should also have seen the service or product and have experience with it. The second thing, information, data, you need a clear strategy of what you want to achieve, whether the goal is to have a relevant meeting or to see if they're open to negotiating now and so on. That's where you differentiate yourself is just the personality typology because what often happens is that medium and large companies get calls from somebody who reads the paper and makes very un-selfish calls. So I would recommend preparation, finding out as much information as I can about the company I want to call and getting a feel for the owner. Often those owners or sales directors don't like it when people ask them if they are interrupting and have a moment. If those people don't do that, that's already going to set them apart and give them a real chance to get on the subject and see if it's for the other side.
How to start a call correctly?
Martin Hurych
I don't remember a phone starting the last 14 days any differently. It always goes through my if I didn't have time, I wouldn't answer them. So what would be the right way to do it?
Claudia Paldus
The way it works is that the other party picks up the phone and you are able to tell if the person is an introvert or an extrovert. Based on that, you either choose a more forceful tonality and communicate with them on the same , or you tone down your voice. In either case, I recommend asking if the person has space to talk because everyone answers the phone, but it may not be the right time, just don't ask if they have a moment, they have time, that's a red flag for the owner. If the person is very pragmatic, then get straight to the point and no sauces because they don't have time to waste. If that person is analytical, they're numbers oriented, they're an introvert, then go there more in the form of that question and more of that reference or what our service can help with. A specific example, when I call an owner who's an extrovert, who's forceful, I address with him how many salespeople he has and if he'd be interested in having his sales team have more meetings.
How quickly can the typology of the called party be determined?
Martin Hurych
How much time do I need to figure out if he's an extrovert or an introvert? How long do I have to stay on the phone to talk the person out of it?
Claudia Paldus
3-10 seconds, depending on who is how perceptive and can identify it. The most crucial thing is totally concentrate on the tonality and the other person's tuning. These are skills that are definitely challenging to train, but it's like the gym, if we want muscles, we have to go there regularly.
Does the call centre have a place in the ?
Martin Hurych
You kind of said in between talking that the person in question must be an enthusiast and believe in what he's selling, which is fine. The older I get, the more ezo I am, so I believe you can push your enthusiasm through that phone. Does it make sense to take a call center?
Claudia Paldus
I don't want to nitpick or compare, each company has its place. Someone needs to process a large number of contacts and go into research, for example, so of course they can choose that route. If someone is all about strategy and depth, I recommend getting an in-house team that is at the level of the salesperson who is supposed to represent the company, or hire pros to that work. We did inquire with an accounting firm and we could have brought an accountant in-house, but we wanted professionals within market who had insight into a lot of companies, so we went the external route. Because we don't have the capacity to check that our in-house accountant is doing it right. The reason why people choose the outsourced route, which could be a call centre or maybe our service, is that they deliver results.
If you want to have that internal team, you have to have a project manager, you have to have someone recruit that person and then it can happen that that person doesn't want to be in that position and leaves. So there's a lot of work involved, but both options work and it's all about the numbers and the results it's going to bring to that particular company.
Does it make sense to have specialist telephone operators?
Martin Hurych
We are talking here primarily about bringing in products and services that the English refer to as high-ticket, expensive stuff, relatively few projects on a monthly or even annual basis. I see two potential specializations there, in-house salespeople versus call center, because with call center I imagine that the salespeople are more likely to be there for that empathy, understanding, tonality and so on. But how do you get what you're selling into their heads? Because a lot of my business owners and CEOs say that it takes sometimes a year, a year and a half to learn to even understand what's in their hands. You can't do that. Is there any way to combine that, that the call center or the phone guy opens the door for you, and someone else makes the other phone call? Does it make sense to have someone handling my phones and making appointments for someone else? Isn't it actually unfair when YOU say to start building a relationship on the phone and then someone else comes in for that appointment?
Claudia Paldus
In this case, I always recommend a combination, because the owners are also afraid that their store will stop calling completely. While this may seem like a not-so-strategic recommendation from us, we want the internal team to call as well. It doesn't matter if it's a reactivation team or an acquisition team, that calling is a really tough discipline. moment we're just calling for the company and the business isn't calling, there's not that gratitude and connection. Ideally, the internal team is still calling and externally we're supporting them. It's about communicating in that phone call that a colleague is coming in for that meeting and we always include a comment about what the typology was and what the gentleman wanted to address in the future. The goal is to accelerate the deal and make the salespeople's job easier, because often owners want the deal to sell and already be in that relevant meeting and not just have the person calling all the time. So it's more of a support, but I'll go back to what you mentioned, it certainly makes the most sense from a strategic perspective if the salesperson calls it themselves.
How to start building a relationship on the phone?
Martin Hurych
We've gotten through the first 3-10 seconds, we've stayed on the call, we know whether we should shout at our counterpart or whether we should give them analytical arguments in a soft semi-quiet voice. There's this red line running through the whole preparation, build rapport, build rapport, don't push. How do I start building a relationship on the first phone call when we've never heard each other before?
Claudia Paldus
Just by that introduction, you respect the man. First of all, it takes a certain amount of empathy to hear that the person is running somewhere for a meeting or telling you that they have 3 minutes and their next meeting is about to start. I know it's not the right time to discuss anything. Prepare yourself because I know myself that when I'm preparing for a meeting, 3 minutes is not enough. After that, you need to be receptive to what the client is saying. If I call a company somewhere and the owner tells me they have no salesperson, no one to train and I keep pushing them for a meeting, I'm going to burn that contact and it doesn't make sense.
But I can talk to him about his future plans, if he plans to build that sales department and if he does, I'll keep in touch and get back to him in 2 or 3 years. We've been closing our longest client for 3 years, so you really need to have that systematicness and that discipline in that follow up. I would put it down to the fact that the success rates aren't going to be as high because what they're not looking at and what's critical is the marketing reach. When somebody calls somewhere wrong, that's what people say. I had a conversation recently where someone called me and asked if they were disturbing. I had an email out and needed to finish it, so I told him he was interrupting me. He completely brushed it off and moved on, it was just a question on paper that apparently no one had responded negatively to yet, so he moved on and I just marveled.
Martin Hurych
How would you react in this case?
Claudia Paldus
Prima, when would it be possible to contact you? You need to check the response and be careful, there is a certain group of people who don't the phone, don't want to , so is another strategy to work with.
Martin Hurych
The typical response is, I don't have time, it, I'll get back you.
Claudia Paldus
Yes, but it often happens in those unselfconscious, unsolid calls when the owner is not so forceful. We try to avoid that internally in the team. That means we'll set up another call where we see if it's relevant to that client so we don't overwhelm that email. But there's a certain group of people, they're introverts, who need to send that information up front, they study it, we follow up with a third call and set up that meeting. There's just a fine line of realizing what the typology is and then sending that information. When you have to with someone or prepare for something, are you personally comfortable with having some information sent to you in advance?
Martin Hurych
Definitely, because I'm an introvert, so I definitely prepare myself, even if I'm the one calling the meeting and even someone is coming to me. I like not to be surprised, especially negatively surprised, so I try to get a bunch of stuff together beforehand. I often try to manage those things, which my wife tells me is wrong, so sometimes I have to cut back, but I definitely find out what I can.
Claudia Paldus
Let me ask you one more thing. When someone tells you some numbers and information over the phone and maybe sends that follow-up email, do you remember the first information they said versus the email?
Martin Hurych
That's a good question, it depends a lot whether I want to give him any space at all, whether what he said to me before the numbers intrigued me enough to turn those ears. If it's just a quick burn, we've cheapened the energy by another 15%, feel free to send me that, I would probably ask for that email, but very likely, if I wasn't impressed on the phone, I wouldn't even open that email again. It would be , send me an e-mail and I'll get rid of you fast. I would have to hear something forceful after those 10 seconds in terms of why should I even stay on that phone.
Claudia Paldus
The reason we ask these questions is because what often happens when we do academies in companies is that there is perhaps a more extroverted salesperson who inaccurately communicates the numbers at the beginning, then sends them in and there is a deviation. If you look at how long the company has been going for, for example, it's 22 years instead of 23 years, and that's where the seeds of distrust are being sown towards those introverts because the numbers don't add up. One more thing I'd like to ask about the time they're supposed to call each other. When you specify a time with someone, do you expect that salesperson to call on time?
Martin Hurych
I'm pretty militant about this because my personal preference is a quarter of an hour early rather than 5 minutes late. I actually think it's unfair and unfair to those I'm going to or calling because I'm potentially wasting their time. If a plausible excuse arrives, I guess it can be tolerated, but I personally observe that since cell phones landed in our pockets and tariffs stopped being relatively expensive, we've been terribly bad about time. So if someone called 10 minutes late, I'd probably be nervous.
Claudia Paldus
This is something to work on in communicating with the more introverted type of owners and managers. The idea of hiring a very extroverted salesperson is great, because he or she may not be afraid of the follow-up, but if they don't follow the principle of that discipline, the success rate of that call is going to go down no matter how good the initial contact was.
When to call clients?
Martin Hurych
It's interesting that you make an equation between introversion and punctuality, I've never looked at it that way, but it fits me personally. I can see that with the more extroverted ones, after the 10 minutes he may be doing something else entirely, which is why it surprised me. I actually know a lot of owners who have minute takers, they solve some meetings in the hallway between the office and their own car, and if I called 10 minutes late, I might as well lose him for the day. This leads me to the question, when to call?
Claudia Paldus
We call within the Czech and Slovak Republics and it varies from region to region. For example, if you call Moravia, you can call there at 6am, 7am. When we call Prague and the Central Bohemian Region, of course, calling there before 9 o'clock is something rude. We always try to select the people within the locality as well, so that there is a dialect that corresponds to that region. For me we can call Monday to Friday, it just depends again on the size of the companies we want to reach. Larger clients and corporate firms tend to have those Mondays on a consultative basis, so afternoons are better. For smaller companies, again, I see Fridays in the afternoon as those people often take time off or are not available.
So, I'll admit that with every project we run, we try to call as long as possible and just tweak those times. If it's a production director or a finance director, for example, they're available and they tend to have a lull before that time and they're already in that job. Often we'll catch owners of medium or larger companies somewhere on vacation and it's kind of 50/50 again, they want to deal with the business and talk, or it's really about just dealing with the urgent stuff. It varies, I can't give a single answer to that, but for me personally it's not taboo to call on a Friday afternoon or Monday morning and it's about that belief as well. We have a colleague in the team who calls on her lunch hour. I'm convinced that I would never call anyone over lunch because food is important to me and I need to sit down for that hour and eat. But my colleagues might catch people who have eaten earlier and have the space to do so.
Where does telephony fit in the marketing mix?
Martin Hurych
The phone is part of both business and marketing depending on which way you look at it. More and more I see that if we were playing recess, they are more likely to set their backs to be quickly discharged and to seen when someone is choosing a supplier. They're not on the side of wanting to discharge and run the whole thing. That said, they push a lot into digital marketing and email campaigns. Where and how does telephone communications fit into this mix in 2025?
Claudia Paldus
I used to have a lot of blinders on and it was about saying we're doing cold calling, reactivation, and it's the only way we're going and doing it. The moment we started working internally as a company with someone who understands marketing as well, and we expanded that to LinkedIn, newsletters and things like that, we got a lot more reach. What's paying off for us internally, and what we're working with with our clients that we're calling, is a combination of newsletter, marketing, LinkedIn and calling. The inquiries come from the marketing part, but there's not that immediate interaction. What the phone allows is that you can see if it's relevant to someone right now and set up a meeting right away, rather than waiting for that person to get back to you. It will happen, the question is when. So I definitely recommend from our experience with our clients to combine different marketing avenues, but that phone is something that can accelerate that because you have that meeting there and that person finds that space for you.
Should I give advance notice that I'll be on the phone?
Martin Hurych
There was a when it was said that before making a phone call, I should prepare the person in question. Will you sign this?
Claudia Paldus
No, I like the acquisition and for me personally it's a game and fun. When you make that acquisition call great, you've already set the stage for that meeting because if the person understands the business, they know how hard it is and in turn they look forward to the other side coming in. Now I digress, we have the age of LinkedIn, the different preparations and there's an opportunity to prearrange that call. If the person is super busy and they've pushed your call back a few times, we'll text them and set up a time to call them. But we don't do that with everybody because we'd spend a ton of time doing that and it wouldn't have a lot of results.
What is contact reactivation?
Martin Hurych
You've mentioned two a couple of times here, acquisitions, that's the first one, cold calling, which is what a lot of traders are afraid of and get the blues about, but you've also mentioned reactivation a couple of times here. What do you mean by reactivation?
Claudia Paldus
Reactivating contacts is an amazing discipline. I can totally see it, the visualization immediately comes to me because it is the so-called diamond field of every company. When that company has been in business for a few years, that interaction with those clients has taken place, it's just that maybe the deal didn't get done, it wasn't the right time. The reactivation of the contacts allows you to see if that person is still in that position, if the strategy of that company has changed, and you can renew that relationship and follow up on that meeting. It's a discipline that is better than cold calling in terms of fear of salespeople, and you can close that deal there even faster than you can with the acquisition. Because there's already a connection or a line to that company. It is a matter that we are also doing, for example, 60% of the time, in the that the success rate of those appointments is higher there. If somebody is listening and has that internal team, I would recommend reactivating the whole database of those contacts, because that can be the most interesting business.
How to reactivate contacts?
Martin Hurych
I'll admit, I take awfully bad care of my former clients. What do I have to do be able to call them and not have them tell me I've been shitting on them for 3 years now?
Claudia Paldus
I certainly wouldn't have mentioned at the beginning of that call that you heard each other 3 years ago. On the reactivation thing, it's absolutely amazing and it's something that should be built from that initial contact, from that acquisition, and it's a CRM system set up correctly. If the client is very extroverted, they can share about holidays, personal stuff and if they're an introvert, then again, there's work stuff for example. All of that information needs to be retained and then in that call you need to build on that. That's the best option and of course the personal story, what the person has experienced, what the visit to that podcast has given them as well, brought them, so to follow up on that nice line.
What haven't we said yet?
Martin Hurych
What haven't we said yet about telephone communication and should we?
Claudia Paldus
Telephoning is perceived as very coercive these days, but it doesn't have to be. It's about looking at it as a business tool that can get me those results, it's just important that the person who has to handle it matches that. I haven't been open to LinkedIn in the past because I wondered what the outcome might be, so after learning about the things that are under the surface, it's been an amazing source of inquiries for us. In the same way, making phone calls can work great for any business, it's just important to set up the process and be open to it.
How many phone calls should a salesperson make per month?
Martin Hurych
Let's talk about acquisition calls, which are probably more interesting to a lot of owners at this point. How many calls should a good salesperson make a day?
Claudia Paldus
There it is individual in each company depending on how many deals they have to close, how many meetings they have to have, some salespeople in the company do 20 meetings a month, some do 40. What our experience has been, if you're a person who is dedicated to making those phone calls, you should be reaching out to 250 companies a month, handling that contact from start to finish and having an output from that, appointment, no interest, deferred. For salespeople if it was half that, they're constantly growing that database, that would be fine, but it's always up to the individual to set it up with the sales director. What we also see within, for example, manufacturing companies in the market, they didn't dig that well when they weren't thirsty and now that they are thirsty, it takes time to get that wheel of those new clients going. So even if you don't need an acquisition, I would recommend that you keep expanding that portfolio of those new clients.
Martin Hurych
20 appointments a month for me is not enough, but for some sophisticated stuff it can be fine, I used to do 40. To that you say I should call 6 companies a day from my car, I'm rooting for you, but I don't think anyone does that. I'm just saying that to make a point about what it means to be a successful company, that it's really hard work like any other. Business is not a magic door behind which something happens that doesn't need to be understood and contracts fall out of it. I'm increasingly saying that the sales department is a contract signing factory, and what you're saying pretty much confirms that.
Claudia Paldus
A lot of people look at it as, I'm going to have a cup of coffee, I'm going to go somewhere, but it's a very demanding discipline and the business needs to get the credit for what it does. It takes time to get those contracts done, for the high-ticket products the business cycle is long, it can take a year or two and for the smaller things it takes time anyway, plus the competition comes into it. It's making the phone calls at the beginning that opens those doors, but then of course it's about the sales team, which has to be good enough and good enough to close those deals.
When will AI call us?
Martin Hurych
When will artificial intelligence make more phone calls than physical humans at Telephone Communications Ltd?
Claudia Paldus
I confess that in the context of artificial intelligence, we are open to using it to modify, for example, records, to speed up the recording of calls. But it's not something that we're plugging into the calls or it's not the way I want to go, to have AI do those calls for us. I see it as an amazing tool, probably in the future within different customer service lines or on those calls where the scenario of that call is constantly repeating, it makes sense to me. But for that acquisition and that primary contact with that generation of owners that we're dealing with, it's something that they're not open to in even the research that we've done. Just the different robocalls, if you're calling somewhere, they're talking to you, I'm not comfortable with that personally either, so maybe that's why I'm so unsympathetic to it, that I want that human interaction.
What are Claudia's goals in 5 ?
Martin Hurych
What are you planning to do as a company in the next 5 , where do you want to take the company?
Claudia Paldus
We now have a coaching team that handles the phone academies and it's 6 trainers. What was very important to us in the beginning was that they were practitioners, so it's one business director, a colleague who runs projects, another colleague who does the academies. It's really people from the practice because we need that person to be able to make phone calls to those sales people on that training and the goal is to double the team in five years. We are operating in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, plus we have a book called Higher Profits Through Telephony, we will now have sold 1,000 copies in a year in the Czech and Slovak Republics, and we are on the way to translating it into English.
I'm very excited about that and we're also going to have an online course coming out and that's for large institutions. As I mentioned to the client, he has 500 salespeople and there are 6 of us in that team, so it's not possible to process that because our training sessions take a long time. So we want to expand that team and at the same time with that online, which we also want to translate in the future, we want to change that world of telephony so that we don't have those pressures, those unpleasant calls, but we want to give it a form of that business that is on a level.
Martin Hurych
Listening to you, in 5 years, my phone won't disappear from my pocket. We're not going to be a phoneless age.
Claudia Paldus
We'll see what comes, but in any case I see that the business and telephone contact will be much more appreciated by those people who really know how to do it and do the business on a level.
Martin Hurych
If, for some reason, those listening or watching us were to skip, click and jump all the way over here and not hear anything of what we were saying before, what would be the conclusion?
Claudia Paldus
The conclusion would be that I would recommend to everyone, even if they may not be currently doing it, to expand their client base, to reactivate their contacts. If they want to have a person internally to do the recruiting, they should really pick someone that they're going to invest in and be good at, because it's just like a restaurant. If you pick the wrong bartender, the wrong waitress in a restaurant, you never want to go back if they don't treat you nicely and it's not a pleasant experience and the food can be better. If you're considering bringing in or training from freelancers, it's a good idea to make sure they're actively doing it themselves. Going back to the bikes, because there are a lot of bikers who can ride and have been riding that bike for 20 years, but it's about that proven validity, because we have a moto-trainer on those bikes as well, and there you either know how to ride that corner or you don't. It's the same in business, you either have the numbers or you don't.
Martin Hurych
I couldn't think of a better plot arc. Thank you very much, I wish that both the company and you personally prosper, that Richard prospers and that you keep to the fact that you will now really take a year off.
Claudia Paldus
I'll keep my fingers crossed. Thank you very much for inviting me, it was very nice.
Martin Hurych
If you like you only had your phone for Instagram, TikTok and in our case LinkedIn, dust it off again and see if there's a call button somewhere, because you'll 100% need it after this Kindle. If we've got you thinking, or maybe motivated you to actually give phoning a try, we've done our job with Claudia brilliantly. In that case, I'll ask for likes, for subscriptions, for sharing this piece to get it where it's needed most. I'll reiterate my request, if you're interested in learning about business, about strategy, about innovation, about working with people in B2B, consider joining the 1,300 owners and CEOs of engineering, technology and manufacturing companies. If you do, you won't miss any more news. All I can do is cross my fingers and wish you success with more than just your phone, thanks.
