A sales representative (note: not ‘professional) selling ancillary small business technology to what my company offers dropped in on our office unannounced in hopes of eventually solidifying a referral partnership. His thought process for prospecting was sound enough. We are regularly asked for recommendations on where to buy his products, and we can’t offer them ourselves for logistical purposes. Plus, he would have never gotten much traction over the phone with such a vanilla product.
Ringing the doorbell just as my General Manager was coming back to the office from a late lunch, he had no idea that he’d just bumped into a decision maker who had recently been burned by a competitor offering basically the same services. My GM was in a conversational mood and in no rush to dive back into spreadsheets following a satisfying meal, so he was receptive to a mostly me-too elevator pitch with an interesting twist that seemingly could help us eliminate some startup apprehension in our own sales process. This got him a friendly introduction to me, followed by an hour long meeting about our mutual capabilities and limitations, and eventually leading into permission to buy my team breakfast and their morning’s ear over coffee. So far, so good.
It turns sour on the morning of his breakfast when he shows up late with stale doughnuts and no partner or accompanying presentation. Clearly flustered in front of a room of captive potential referral partners, he promptly displays a faulty and insincere understanding of our product in a stammering speech delivered with his arms crossed and brow scrunching ever tighter with sweaty anxiety. After 5 minutes of awkwardly stumbling through a summary of his employer’s mostly irrelevant history and services, the partner shows up unapologetic and eager to impress. He laughs alone at his own poorly timed humor, slips some shiny marketing collateral on the table and launches into the same ill advised summary pitch we had just endured. This time with unduly assumed swagger.
Comically unaware of their audience’s dissatisfaction with the quality of their meeting and breakfast pastry, this dynamic duo then proceeds to incomprehensibly botch the answers to several questions that I had laid out for them in bullet points as areas of concern in emails confirming their appointment. My team knows me well enough to sense when my fuse has burned too long in silence. They’re giggling and sharing knowing glances. Bracing myself for the anguish of restraint, I tap my watch and rush the meeting towards a close by citing concern for getting my people ready at their workstations by the start of business.
I later apologized to my team for wasting their time and encouraged them to view their morning as a lesson in what not to do. For some reason – maybe pity – I wrote the presenters an email thanking them for breakfast and reminding them to send me some geographic coverage information that was promised during the misguided FAQ. Aside from an occasional mocking reference, they were a thing of the past.
Then one morning, against my better intuition, an opportunity arose where someone on my team felt they could lock up a deal by recommending the services of our not-so-long-forgotten presenters. Eyeing revenue goals instead of my own good reason, I gave permission to send out the referral. The decision nearly cost us the deal when the presenters tried to raise their pricing 10% from their initial proposal at the time of close. I was livid, and I let them know it over the phone and through email, but I absorbed their apologies without excessive resistance in hopes of avoiding unnecessary and unproductive tension. I washed my hands of these guys and told my team to do the same.
A month later I am in the midst of training a new hire when I hear a knock on my office door. It’s our slow talking, inexplicably pompous, price hiking hero again. This time he’s got an over eager sales engineer at his side. “I just thought I’d drop in and see how things are going.” I’m thrown off. “Umm, everything’s great. I‘m just in the middle of training and didn’t think we’d hear from you again after you failed to follow up from our meeting and almost ruined the only deal we brought you in on.” He flips his shaggy southern comb-over and adjusts his obnoxiously modern square rim glasses. “I was hoping maybe I could take you out to lunch sometime to talk about how we can better work together.” “You know what, I’m busy now, but shoot me an email and maybe we’ll get together some time.” He leaves.
About 30 minutes afterwards I take a trip down the hall to make rounds with my troops when I’m blown away to find the intrusive duo chatting up one of my best reps during peak business hours. Summoning my last drop of decorum, I pull up a chair and wait for a pause in the conversation where I can remind all parties that my rep has important work to be done that afternoon. Then, it happens, “So, you guys should always recommend our services to your customers on every call” is his reply to an explanation about our product he’s already heard three times that inherently implies why we can’t recommend his services on most occasions. Dryly, “Get out.” “Should we get going?” “Yes, and don’t ever come back so long as I work for this company.” Everyone in the room tests my glare to see if I’m kidding. “Brian, where did we…” I can’t engage in this conversation. “Just go guys. I can’t have my sales professionals exposed to you anymore. I’m afraid they’ll pick up bad habits.”
This guy showed up with a hot prospect at the right time in the right place. He glided into an appointment with the gatekeeper, then straight into a layup of a presentation to the troops who can deliver his technology to end-users. All this on luck alone. A sales professional would have seized the opportunity to learn as much as possible about the opportunity so as to deliver the optimal presentation and follow it up by providing all the materials and resources needed to make the partnership a success out of the gate. This guys is no professional. He waited for opportunities to talk instead of listening. He showed up to a meeting late and unprepared. He spoke without charisma or care. He invaded my office and inhibited the productivity of my reps. All this without a smidgeon of self-awareness or expertise in sales execution.
Unfortunately for this hack, his employer and his customers, he’d never read this blog or any other publication intended to help him grow as a professional. He’s a loser. Thank you for reading.
