Wining and dining
Apparently, account exec. did little cold calling and they have a corporate credit card with very generous allowances. The senior guys often bring clients to eat at top restaurants to bring large accounts (for example, credit card processing for a major retailer). They also have prime hockey lodges and such.
I also encountered similar attitude in investment brokerages. While I do believe someone needs to be well dressed and presentable, I thought part of it was simply machochismo.
So my Q:
1- Do wining and dining actually work? Or is it a flimsy excuse for basically abusing corporate credit cards? The way that it got described to me, it sounded a lot more like bribery and ego stroking then sales.
2-If you had an extremely limited amounts of leads (to throw a number lets say 35 up to 250) and you had to work with that, what sales strategy would you prefer?
What if they're not stars? What if they are holes poked in the top of a container so we can breath?
Mike