Shally's Alley Live

All right, here we are. Welcome to Shelly's Alley, January 15th, 2021. I saw a funny post on one of the Facebook groups last week that said, I saw the trailer for 2021 and so far I'm not interested. That was pretty good. Anyway, so hopefully this is reaching everybody. Looks like we've got 5 live, so must be doing something right. And today I believe that I have the universal chat set up. Looks like somebody already said something. Hey, look at that, it's working. All right, I think I can show the live chats. On screen. Wow. So for example, I can see Ronald's post here. Look at that. How cool is that? All right. So welcome today. The topic is phone sourcing do's and don'ts. I invited Glen to join me as a guest. If, if he would be able to come on board and, you know, be able to participate in the live chat here with, with. So hopefully he'll show up. If not, he's still on the Facebook chat as usual. If you want the handouts or notes, then you'll need to actually go to the Facebook group to download them there because that's the only place I'm going to upload them. If you're not in Facebook, then, um, so, you know, we'll figure something out, but I don't want to have to post documents to a bunch of different places. So the broadcast is going to be live everywhere, and the chat is apparently now live everywhere. Yay! But the notes and documents, we're going to just keep them in the Facebook group. Here is the Facebook group link as there. And now let me bring over my Notes and see if this works as well. Wow, looks like it does too. Would you look at that. So phone sourcing do's and don'ts, not a topic that gets covered a lot, and I do need to give a big shout out and hat tip to a couple of colleagues that have taught me a lot about phone sourcing. Firstly, uh, Maureen Sharib, who is basically the, the probably the most famous telephone sourcer out there. Maureen has her own group Maureen, if you're here, hi. Hopefully I do you justice. And also Connie Leducer, another one of my mentors in the phone sourcing space. These are people that I learned quite a bit from. I don't know if any of the tips that are in today's chat are directly originating from either one of them, but let's just assume that both of them have taught me pretty much everything that I know. And of course, I've put a lot of this into practice at companies like Microsoft, where I used to work with Glenn, Unfortunately, my other phone sourcer is out right now, so she won't be able to join us, but she's been one of my favorite go-to people. Her name is Vicki Bures. She is an Atlanta native who's also a genius phone sourcer. So look those people up, and Maureen has her own group as well. Connie's got a company called EQC, ExecuQuest, I think, and hopefully we can link to that at some point in the notes. So Do's and don'ts. There's quite a bit, quite, quite a few things that you should do, but not a lot that you should not do. So I'm going to kind of start with the do's and then I'll talk a little bit about the don'ts. First of all, it's a really, really good idea to prepare before you search. In other words, to start by doing a basic plan for what you're going to do and where you're going to go. So as we do that, the first question to prepare yourself for is, what's the purpose of this— in it— yeah, not— sorry, what's the purpose of this talent sourcing project? Now I want to make a distinction here that what I am referring to as phone sourcing today is the art of elicitation. We're talking about the function of identifying names, locations, ranks, contact information, etc. We are not cold calling and recruiting at this juncture. This is the, the research part, primary intelligence gathering, very similar to what journalists do when they're, you know, trying to uncover a story, investigative journalists, very similar to people in the competitive intelligence space where they, you know, try to talk to other people and kind of find out what's going on in the market. So this is research for the purposes of writing down the information. So why would you start with internet search? Because if you begin with internet, you actually have enough information to be able to navigate as you start talking to people. One of the things I like to collect— it's not one, it's a series of things— are the internal labels that the company uses. So for example, how do they— what do they refer to as business units, divisions, departments, unit? Is it a location? How do they use their job titles? Do they have a particularly interesting job title nomenclature. For example, one that comes to mind that I always found funny and interesting is that Yahoo people that were software developers, software engineers, were referred to as technical Yahoos. So that's something, you know, if you're calling into Yahoo and trying to find a software engineer and you say software engineer, they might scratch their heads, or they may realize that you're an outsider. So using the way that they refer to their job titles, their ranks, their roles in the organization. Another example that I like to use is to kind of illustrate the point here, is when I used to work at Motorola, the building that my office was out of was a non-traditional building, meaning that in Phoenix, there were many other buildings, other locations, and entire campus. But my building was sort of separate and in a different location. It was an older building, and it was called Baseline. Why? Because it was on Baseline Road. So if anybody inside of Motorola asked you where you worked out of and you said Baseline, they knew that you were part of the HR department, particularly recruiting, because that baseline building is where the recruiting operations were run. So having the nickname for locations like that really helps. Here's the secret. When you have information already, people are willing to give you more information. So people will give you more if you have some, as opposed to if you're just asking and don't know anything. So by giving them little drops of, of the puzzle, pieces of the puzzle, they will fill in the rest for you. Another trick that I like to use is to give incorrect data on purpose, because people love to correct you. If you have someone on the phone and you say, uh, yeah, I'm trying to locate Mary Smith, she's the vice president of sales, right? And the person that is at the company might correct you and say, oh no, no, no, she's in marketing, or no, she's a director, not a vice president. So you have a little bit of information and you're getting a little bit more, but really you already knew that that was incorrect. But that gives them the opportunity to correct you, which brings them to a little bit closer to you. So you're establishing rapport, you're developing rapport. So do prepare, okay? Another one is do block your caller ID, or if we turn this into a not, or as a don't, don't use caller ID. There's a couple of ways to do this. If you're using your mobile phone, your phone provider will probably have instructions on how you dial a prefix before you make an outbound call to not show your caller ID. It could be sometimes it's like star 87 or something like that. You have to talk to your provider about it. But what I do is I use a software phone or soft phone. The voiceover IP platform, and there's some free ones out there. I have a subscription to one. And this particular client that you see here, this is a free client. It depends on having a soft phone account or a voiceover IP account. The reason I do this is when you go into the settings, in all of these systems, even the hard desk phones that are connected to voice over IP. One of the things that you can do is you can actually change your station ID. So when you're in here, you can set up what the, um, what the, the person sees when the phone shows up, the number shows up on their caller ID. So, you know, you can change that number, or you can simply just have it say the name of your company or your name. You could just say, you know, Shelly, for example. That's a really good way to do that. Now, I'm not saying block your caller ID so that you can be sneaky or because you're doing anything untoward or illegal, but when you block your caller ID, the same number doesn't keep showing up over and over again. And that's one of the things that people pick up on is if the same number keeps coming up on the switchboard, especially if you're calling into a system where you're being transferred in a phone directory kind of thing. So block your caller ID or use voice over IP. The other one that I like to refer to always as a good, a good item is work the dial pad. So if you look at the dial pad on your mobile phone or your, you know, your telephone handset, you'll see that there are letters associated with each of the numbers. So, oh, looks like Glen has joined us here and actually has the ability to share his screen too. Look at that, that's pretty cool. Sorry, I got a little distracted there. So when you're looking at those numbers, you'll notice that there are letters next to them. These are the Dial-by-name numbers. What is interesting is that there's a disparate distribution of names amongst the keys on, on your phone. So A, B, and C, the letters A, B, and C are under the number 2. So if you get into one of those dial-by-names, you'll notice 0 and 1 are reserved, but it starts at 2 and, and the alphabet starts at 2. So if you're, you're looking for someone whose last name is Abbott, you would press 2, 2 for A and B, and, you know, 6 for O, and so on. So what's interesting is if you want to use the directory and sort of dial around, you can start by dialing one number. So just A, which would be 2, and then if there's not a whole lot of people with that name, the system will actually start telling you, do you mean Abbott? Do you mean atoms, etc., like that, right? Here's the thing. The number 7 is disproportionately distributed. In other words, there are more than 20, I think it's 21 or 22% of all of the first letters of last names in the United States, I don't know about in the world, start with the number 7, meaning the letters P, Q, R, and S. So that's a good place to start, because if you start with dialing— instead of starting with A, which actually number 2, which would be A, that would be the second largest. You could start with that, but the other ones all pretty much have about 12%. So the, the number 2 is about 19%, the number 3 is about 11 or 12, same thing with 4, 5, and 6, which are basically D through O. 7, which is PQRS, has 21.5% of the names. 8 and 9 are not very commonly used. 8 has only 7% and 9 only has 5.5%. So if you wanted to kind of get to like 40% of the directory, you would only need the numbers 2 and 7, right? So you start with 1, just press 7, wait, and if it needs another key, you can press 2. So that would be PA. Now it might be, you know, the last name to start with PA. Some systems, the last name's actually— sorry, the dial by name is by first name. That's okay, same rules apply. These are first letter distribution. So using your telephone, the telephone directory to sort of navigate extensions. And then what I do is I just have a call recorder on. In fact, let me, let me show you here. So if you use a soft phone, there's a pretty cool advantage because the soft phone gives you the ability to record the call, but there's also a couple of things that you could use. There's this one here, which is basically a splitter, and what it does is it allows you to split the— I'm going to see if I can get this into focus here— it allows you to split the micro jacks from a phone line. So you put this on the handset on the part between, between the device and the handset. This is for, you know, hard phones. And then the other one allows you to put the audio out. And then the other system that I have is basically the same thing, but it's for USB, so it goes into your computer instead of into an audio jack, which also could be the jack on your computer. So arguably either way it's going into your computer, so you can record the call. Why? Because when you start dialing by name, it's going to say the names that you probably can't write fast enough to get them all down, especially if you're trying to get the letters correctly. So, you know, if you mean Abbott Smith, that's easy, but what if it's a lot longer? So when you record it, you can then go back and play it back and actually write it down. Now, if you're a really good typist or you're like Glenn and you can literally type like 500 words a minute, then maybe you don't need that. But, um, I'm not as gifted in that area, so I do need that. So that's what I am talking about as far as the recording. Now, another thing you can do as you're working the Dialpad, so this is a do, is go ahead and get transferred to or push one of those extensions and get transferred and listen to the outgoing message, because you may not have all of the information for that person from just the name, or you may not even be able to determine the spelling from the, you know, machine voice. But when you go into the actual mailbox, you'll hear the outgoing message, and they might have their, their title or their department, or may pronounce their name better, etc. Now, if they pick up, you might be wondering, well, Shelly, I don't want to do that because I'm trying to, you know, do phone, not talk to somebody at this point, right? You're right. But if they pick up, simple, you just say, oh, I'm sorry, I was trying to reach accounts payable. 'Could you please transfer me back? I think I dialed the wrong number.' And no problem, they'll transfer back. Now, as a bonus, they might even talk to you, might even be able to ask them some questions, which we'll talk about in a minute, to get other information. But even if they don't and they just transfer you, guess what? You're being transferred internally. So when someone else answers the line, it comes from an internal extension, not an external number, so they're a lot more likely to pick up. In fact, this is one of the ways that I get to people that haven't answered the phone before, is by dialing a wrong number and say, 'Oh, I'm so sorry, I was trying I'm trying to reach so-and-so, and then I get transferred internally. And you know, when they ask, how come your number came up as internal? Oh, I'm sorry, I misdialed and I accidentally dialed off by one number, and that person was kind enough to transfer me to you. No problem. Okay. Listen to the voicemails, as I already said, I shouldn't say voicemails, the outgoing messages, as I mentioned. Another thing is you can use Google and Bing Maps to get phone numbers. Why? Well, two reasons. Number one, if you use an 800 number, dial an 800 number, so 800-855-866-877, uh, and so on, the number from your caller ID will be revealed no matter what you do. It will reveal the actual station ID because the company that is paying for the toll-free number is paying the quote-unquote toll on the call. Therefore, the telephone companies, the regulations say the telephone company has to pass that information along. But if you go to maps.google.com or maps.bing.com and type in the name of an organization in a particular city, you will usually get the direct dial number that is not, say for example, the operator, the central switchboard, the main, the main line, which is probably not the 800 number as well. So let's say you were looking for a particular I don't know, let's do one of those rehabilitation clinics. It's called Benchmark, Benchmark. You know what, I just realized I am not sharing this with you. Give me just a second and I will put this back on here. There we go. So I just typed in benchmark and hit enter. It's already defaulted to where I am here locally. For you, you might want to put in benchmark comma and then whatever the city or state that you are looking for. And it looks like it's kind of processing it right now, probably because I'm using a lot of my bandwidth to broadcast the video. So hopefully this will Come back soon. Physical therapy. Doesn't seem to have picked up on it, so I'm gonna try that again. Benchmark physical therapy. What I'm trying to show you here is how the phone numbers come up, and Google Maps and Bing Maps are looking for triangulated information that's pulled off of websites. What you'll see here is these are all the direct dial numbers. As opposed to the, you know, corporate office. So you can call directly and somebody that, you know, works at that location will answer. They may still be someone who is, you know, the designated phone answering person, but probably less likely to be an operator or some professional receptionist that directs calls. So that's Google. Bing has the exact same thing. That's a good trick to use because you'll get around the 800 number. When they do answer, the person answers, ask for their name, call them by their name, be friendly and smile when you're talking. If you smile when you're talking, people can detect that. They don't know that you're smiling. It's not like they can be like, oh, I can tell Shelly's smiling or not smiling. But something about your voice changes a little bit because of the way that your vocal cords are forming the sound. And we humans instinctively pick up on a little bit more pleasant tone. So go ahead and smile just for a little while. If you're not the smiling type, no problem, force yourself to smile just while you're doing this, and you'll notice a difference. Above and beyond, you've got to basically act the part. You've got to have presence, be firm and confident and professional, and just ask for their name, even if they said that, call them by their name, and be friendly. You can also, of course, state your name, and I usually do, and I'll say, "My name is Shally Sheckrell. I'm with Newton Consulting." I'm looking for the accounts payable department, or I'm looking for Mary Jones in accounts payable. That is enough usually to get transferred and not to get the third degree and have people ask questions. If you do get asked, I'm sorry, who are you? Just repeat your name. This is Shelly Steckel. And why are you calling? I'm trying to reach Mary Smith in accounting. Okay. And where are you from? I'm with Newton Consulting. That's it. You don't have to provide more detail than that. You're not lying. So my biggest don't right here is never ever ever, maybe I should bold this and highlight it, never ever ever ever lie, misrepresent, give false information, or do what's called pretexting. If you learned that in your old-school staffing agency days, unlearn it. It is not ethical and it is not acceptable, and above all, it is not necessary. You can get all the information you need without lying, misrepresenting, or pretexting. There was a big FBI case where the FBI used pretexting, in other words, making up information, to entrap criminals, telling them, I think in this particular case it was, that they had their DNA when they in fact did not have their DNA. And so that forced a confession. This was thrown out in court, and apparently there was some sort of memo that went out. I don't know how it ended up being anything official or whatever, but the FBI was then reprimanded for using pretexting, and I believe they're not allowed to use it anymore. So if the FBI isn't doing it, shouldn't do it, then we shouldn't do it either. So give your name, but you don't have to say what your job title is. You can just say Shelly Steckroth, and you can just say the name of your company. That's it. Another thing is, when you do ask for information, don't ask for more than one simple thing, just one at a time. One question at a time. If you ask for more than one, you will end up getting tangled up. They'll either answer one and not the other, or what's worse, what might happen is they start asking you questions. And once they start asking you questions, again, don't lie, don't misrepresent. There are some things you can say to sort of redirect, but you could also end up getting trapped and simply having to say, I'm sorry, I believe this call is inappropriate, and simply terminate the call. So if you are being asked for specifics, if you did end up getting into that situation, probably because you asked for more than one question, or probably because you weren't confident, or maybe you weren't smiling, or whatever the other things that I told you about. Listen to their tone and mirror their cadence, their tone when you answer the question. If they sound a little bit upset and angry, sound a little bit upset and angry. Not more upset and angry, but just try to match it a little bit. And redirect. You can do that by doing a couple of different things. You can say, for example, oh, you know what, I know I have the wrong number, I was trying to reach so-and-so, or you can say, I'm sorry, is this sales? This is Shelly from Newton, I'm really trying to reach Peter in sales, something like that. So you can always redirect. One of the worst questions that you can get asked is, what's this about? Because your instinct is gonna say, oh, well, I'm, you know, I'm calling to try to find out who the— don't say anything about what the real reason is. Again, you're not gonna lie, but you don't want to tell them the full story. Don't say, I'm trying to get, you know, every name in your directory. Obviously that's not gonna go over very well. And don't lie either. I've heard recruiters that have done things like pretending they're with 1-800-Flowers making a delivery, or I heard a story once where a recruiter said that they were a dump truck delivery and they had a pile of gravel and they were just gonna dump it in the driveway if they couldn't speak with the person about it, whatever. None of that stuff, if you actually, just don't do it, okay, it's not worth it. So simply just redirect, we can restate what you stated before, and I'm gonna give you a couple of other examples as well, but let's keep going. So you're gonna listen to them, mirror their tone and their cadence and try to use a little bit of that, not fully, if you're mimicking them, then people pick up on that too and they'll get offended. If they have an accent, by all means, please do not try to imitate their accent, that almost always just goes badly. So now you have them, you know, transferring. So you know, you asked, is Mary Smith the VP of Marketing, or I'm looking for Mary Smith, VP of Marketing. No, she's in sales. Oh, okay, well, so who's the VP of Marketing? Oh, that's so-and-so. Okay, well, would you mind transferring me? Yeah, no problem. But before you transfer me, just in case we get disconnected, would you please tell me their extension? So this is my like last little bit. So I've already gotten them to say yes, they're gonna transfer me, and I know they're about to do that. I'm gonna give them one more little, you know, something to see if I can get away with the extension. Sometimes if they're very well-trained gatekeepers, they'll say, I'm sorry, I can't do that. But if they're not the person that usually answers the phone, especially when you call the direct, the direct branch, they might say, yeah, it's 5706 or whatever. "Thank you very much. Now, if we don't connect, who else should I try?" So now you might be able to get two pieces of information, but you can't ask for both. You can't say, "Before you transfer me, can you let me know what their extension is? And if I can't connect, who else should I try?" That doesn't work. So try to get the one. If you don't get it, go ahead and get transferred. You can always dial back in, use another number. And if you do, if they do agree to transfer and they do agree to the extension, then you can ask, If I don't connect, who else should I try? Then I mentioned I was going to give you the workaround. So there's my two favorite workarounds. Now, if you asked Vicki, one of the phone searchers I told you about before, she's got a favorite one. I'm not going to tell you what it is, I can't spill her secrets. If you ask Maureen, she'll have a favorite one, although she uses a lot of different ones, and Connie also. Again, these are ethical, we are not lying, but these workarounds allow you to get past these objections. Before I tell you the workaround, though, I want to tell you that one of the most important things is to not ask— so this is a don't— don't ask yes or no questions. Don't ask closed-ended questions that end in yes or no. Try to leave them open-ended. Yes or no questions will usually be answered briefly and might give the person pause and time to ask you something. And they're very easy for them to say no to. So when you ask, is Mary Smith the VP of Sales? And they say no, that's the end of the conversation. If you then come back and say, who is it? Now they might start getting suspicious. But what if you said something like, I'm looking for Mary Smith, the Vice President of Sales. How long has she been with the company? Or something like that. Oh no, she's not the Vice President of Sales. She's the Vice President of Marketing. There you go. Right. So here's the two workarounds. Again, don't ask yes or no questions, but here's the workarounds. My favorite, favorite, favorite one that I like to use is what I call information overload. What is information overload? Information overload is when you give someone so much information that they are essentially overwhelmed and have a need to just relay the question or pawn you off. They're just going to forward the call. Okay, so to give you an example, um, this is something that I used back in the Cisco days. I was calling into a competitor— I'm not going to tell you who, but they also made optical routers— and I was calling the local branch, and someone answered, and they asked me a couple of questions. I tried to redirect, but they kept going. They were obviously a little bit more well-versed in phone sourcing, so They asked me, but what does that company do, right? Because I named the company, and what does that company do? So I said, well, what's happening is I'm conducting— asked me to conduct some research about the security systems of optical routers, particularly over DOCSIS on cable. And I was wondering if the same protocols that apply— usually at this point, they're like, What? No. So hold on. Right now, this is where it helps to prepare. If you know a little bit about the technology, you literally want to have like a passage that you can say that's almost like a marketing passage. And you just turn that into a question. When you start talking about like that technical stuff or whatever, or sarbanes-oxley regulations or whatever, people just— their eyes gloss over. You can kind of see them on the other side of the phone going, oh man. And they're just going to, okay, okay. Yeah, I got it. Let me transfer you. So that's my favorite because I'm literally just giving them something that you could have even gotten from their webpage, from their homepage or something like that. So that's my go-to. The other one is to sound confused. So that one is a little bit harder to do because you don't want to sound confused where you're not professional. And there's a couple of ways that you can sound confused while still being professional. Oh, I'm sorry. You know, I am trying to reach Mary Smith. And it's been a while since we last spoke. We met at a conference. I think I might have written down her phone number incorrectly, or, you know, something like that. Obviously, if you did not meet at a conference, don't say that. But you can say something like, I was given her name, and the person who gave me her information may have given me the wrong number. I'm not sure if I'm, you know, etc. So those kinds of things. So I think I have the wrong number. Or I had the wrong department, or, you know, I thought she was in engineering, turns out she's in QA, those kinds of things. So that's how you can kind of work around the person that is objecting to your call and asking too many questions. My favorite, again, overload. Just have a canned paragraph that you can literally just spout off. You don't even have to know a lot about it. Now, before you go into Well, gee, Shelly, that sounds a little, you know, A, difficult, and B, suspicious. What if they actually do know what you're taught and they come back and ask you a question? Well, believe it or not, that happened to me in the same sort of situation with the router stuff. The person said, well, that's an interesting question. So let me— and it turned out that they were a product manager that had answered the phone. And they're like, why do you need to know this information? This is pretty detailed. That's when I was like, all right, well, I, like I said, my boss asked me to do some research. I'm trying to put this together. I really don't know a lot about what I'm talking about. I need to talk to somebody. And it turned out that they were the right person. So I was like, oh, okay, okay. And I listened. Uh-huh, great. Well, you know what? I've got a lot to go on. Let me put some, you know, some of my notes together and I might need to call you back. You know, again, my name is Shelly Steckl. You know, thank you very much for your time. Bye-bye, right? So I kind of tried to end it. So that I didn't leave behind any trace, because you don't want to do that. But in that situation, that saved me. If you get to the point where you're completely trapped, the way out is simply to say, "You know what, I'm sorry, I think this call may be inappropriate, this isn't really what I was looking for, I apologize for your time," and just simply just, you know, hang up. It's okay to end it, don't keep going, and don't feel like you have to backpedal. Just don't get trapped into actually giving them, you know, the information that they were asking for that might be revealing. Another don't, so actually I think I have 4 don'ts. The other don't is don't argue or disagree ever with any of the people that you're talking to when you're phone sourcing. So don't push back, don't disagree, don't argue. If you do that, that's one of the ways that you that's one of the ways that you get sidetracked. I don't know, I'm trying to be politically correct here, I probably shouldn't even try to be that, but when you disagree, even if it doesn't seem like a big disagreement, that's one of the ways that the person immediately picks up and starts getting really defensive, and it's super easy because they're the ones that are on the control side of this, super easy for them to really just jump into getting suspicious, so never, never, ever argue or disagree. Probably a good idea for me to review those 4 don'ts, right? These are the big don'ts. Number 1, never ever, ever lie, misrepresent, or pretext. So give your name, just don't give more information than what you have to. Number 2, never ask closed-ended yes or no questions. Number 3, never argue or disagree. And number 4, never call toll-free numbers because they reveal your caller ID. Now I'm laughing because one of the comments here on the chat is, "Hi Shelly, I've got your DNA, what's the best time to talk?" That is awesome. And of course, guess what? It is an anonymous user on Facebook that posted that, obviously. There you go. So, geez, I wish I could share that. That's so funny. Here we go. There it is. That is hilarious. Hi, Shelley, I've got your DNA. What's the best time to talk? That's one way to get me freaked out on the phone. So there you go. A last couple of quick things that I wanted to share with you as, as we wrap up here today. And as you know, I'm trying to keep these to 30 minutes now because I'm doing these broadcasts live everywhere. Just a couple of quick things that I wanted to share, and this will be in the notes as well. Remember, go to the Facebook group to find the notes. Once you start working the phones, you will notice that a lot of these systems have the same kind of outgoing message and you'll recognize what kind of system it is. Some of the big names you might recognize are Audix, Avaya. I don't know if some of these might be purchased by another company. I think Avaya was definitely purchased. Audix, Avaya, Cisco, Intertel, Meridian, Octel, Siemens. These are the big systems. And when you recognize the message, the robotic message, you know which one it is, then you'll be able to quickly manipulate the the computerized, the interactive voice response or IVR system. For example, with Audix, frequently all you have to do is press *8 and you end up in the query for dial by name, and then you press *2 to get into dial by name. So when you hear the Audix system, I should probably record these and then play them back or show you like a recording of them. I'm gonna see if I can find those. But you'll hear the message and you'll hear the Audix machine voice. and then you know, okay, great, I can try *8, *2, and you'll be in the dial-by-name. Now, they may have disabled that, in which case it won't work, but you'll end up back in the zero operator, whatever. Also, with audits, try **6. Smaller midsize companies have a company directory, and **6 gets you to the company directory. It starts listing off the extensions. Larger companies usually disable that because it would be impossible for the machine to list all of that. With Avaya, usually it's star pause, then 8, then star for the dial-by-name. So you can see that a lot of these have some commonalities. With Cisco, you do star pound, then 4 for dial-by-name. But after the 4— after the pound, listen up, because sometimes it's not 4, it could also be 3. That's a configuration thing that the SysOp person can configure. So star pound wait, and it'll say to dial-by-name, press Usually it's 4, but they can change that. InterTel is dial 1, then pound, and start spelling the name. Then you have to dial 2 to actually call the extension. So you start dialing the name, it says, did you mean Steckerle Shelly? Press 2, which means yes, and then it dials. Um, another one is Meridian, which is pretty common, and for that one it's star 7 pound, or star 7 0, or star 7 0 star. Those are the combinations. And with Octel systems, this is probably the biggest one, it's literally 0, and you go to the operator. Then you'll actually hear here's some prompts. It'll have to say to dial by name or to reach the directory, otherwise there's no other way to get there. I think the last one is Siemens, which is usually *0 or #0. You can go to ivrhacks.com and get a big list of all of these. ivrhacks.com, and there should be a list of these, of these numbers. I actually have a little kind of cheat sheet of about 20 or some odd combinations that I'll post in the notes So, well, I think that is it for our chat today. Hopefully you have enjoyed the conversation, and looks like my universal chat system did actually work. So thank you very much. As we get used to doing this, I'll be able to simul-task and respond to more of these chats. So wish you a great extended weekend for those of you that have Monday off, or for those of you that have— that are staying home on Monday. Have a good family weekend and don't forget to visit the Facebook group, the sourcing method for the handouts, and go to powersourcing.com to find out a little bit more about what I do during the day for a living. Yes, the cheat sheet will be on the Facebook group. So that is, uh, basically facebook.com/groups The sourcing method. Let me see if I can post a link here. I mean, I know I can post a link. Let me post a link is what I should have said. It's free to join. Just go ahead and join and one of the moderators will approve you and you can look inside of the files and you'll see the handouts. Also, if you're new, go to the units and you'll see all the recordings. The recording for this one is gonna be on there as well. Well, it was a pleasure as always sharing with you. Thank you for being part of the talent sourcing community. Please pay it forward and keep sharing, and I will hope to see you here next week. Glenn, thanks again for wonderful note-taking. Thanks, everybody. Take care. Bye-bye.