The title to this weeks blog is an actual quote from a "no longer" potential customer(typos and all). I thought telling this story and analyzing it would be entertaining and useful. Several months ago my company joined an organization with one of the purposes being to network with and sell to membership. My first contact with one of the companies was polite and honest. "Mike, I have just hired a new office manager and I am in the middle of training her. If you give me a couple months we can re-visit the opportunity." That seemed perfectly reasonable so I put a note on my calendar to follow up in 60 days. When I called back, I spoke to the new office manager, explained my conversation with her boss and asked to schedule a meeting to meet. She was very polite, said yes and we picked a day and time to meet. Two days before the meeting I received an email from her that said "Now is not a good time, I will reach out to you when we are ready to look at other options." This is the same woman who told me 5 days earlier that she would be glad to meet with me. So I sent her a follow up email and I added a "read request" to make sure that she did not ignore me. My message was simply "thank you for following up, we can certainly look a couple weeks out, let me know what works best for you." A couple days after sending that I got an auto response that said she deleted my email without reading it. Still determined I sent her a follow up email and cc'd her manager who I originally spoke to. In my follow up email I wrote "we had a meeting scheduled for Wednesday that you said we needed to reschedule for a later time. I followed up with you via e-mail yesterday and got a message that my email was deleted without being read. I hope I have not done anything wrong, I still would like the opportunity to meet with you and assess your companies needs." She responded "I did read your email; I just did not open it. This is not a good time for us. I will reach out to you when things are slower." Ok, no big deal, this is not a prime opportunity so I put it into my 90 day follow up. Then things got very interesting. The next day she sent me the follow up email that you see as the title to this weeks blog. So here is what I think happened. She scheduled a meeting with me on the telephone because she has trouble telling people no. Once she got my email confirming our meeting she thought that would be a convenient time to back out and then ignore future messages from me. When I follow up with her and her boss who told me to contact her, she became embarrassed and told me never to contact her again. I left that part out of the title because I just thought it would be too long of a title.
When your a salesperson you learn when people aren't being upfront with you (read that as "lying"). You also recognize that no matter how much you didn't do something wrong you are always (at least in part) to blame. Last weeks blog I spoke about when to "push" a customer. In this case, I pushed at the wrong time and in the short term, I lost the ability to win this business. But I have always been a big believer that if customers were just a little more open and honest with sales people the world would be a much better place. Movies likes "Boiler room" and "Tin Men" give sales people a bad name. And there are many unethical people in the sales world today. But that doesn't give customers the right to just flat out lie and be deceptive. and more often than not it works against them. If this customer had just said to me" Mike now is not good, we have too many projects of higher priority to deal with right now. If you will touch base with me in 90 days we can discuss the opportunity then." Now that's not a whole lot different than what she originally told me, but the tone is significantly different. Her email to me said "go away." The response I just wrote says "give me this period of time and we can talk then."
Now, if her true feelings are "go away" then she needs to say that at the beginning, that's her problem not mine. I suspect that her boss did want her to meet with me but she was so overwhelmed that she did not feel like she could. I have a hunch that when I call back to speak with her boss in 90 days I will discover that the office manager resigned or was fired.
So, hopefully you got a good laugh out of this one. If you have a similar story, please share, I would love to read it.
Thanks for reading today
Mike S.
BTW I have put together a great networking and fundraising event for November 11th in Baltimore. Use the link below to register, thank you!
November 11th at MaGerks in Baltimore, great networking for a great cause
Interesting story. Sounds like your intuition told you that she was giving you the brush off. Maybe the read receipt gave confirmation to that but I don't think it is a good idea to actually say that because people don't like confrontation. I don't like read receipts and don't use them anymore myself because they can come across as creepy. I understand that sometimes you may need them if you are trying to meet a deadline, etc. I have learned that it's better to try a little finesse, especially with that personality type. It is funny though, I can understand being frustrated. The worst is when someone just doesn't return your calls at all! When that happens to me, I think exactly what you think and that is, “Just tell me please.!” I don't want to call someone that doesn't want me to. My time is valuable and I can spend it doing other things. It is disrespectful when a person allows you to spend a lot of time with them when they aren't serious just because they don't want to tell you no. I have decided that if the person is serious then they will be responsive and if they are not, well then I rather spend my time prospecting for someone who is! Good luck to my fellow, ethical, friendly, hardworking, and dedicated salespeople!!!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feedback Jen! I don't use read receipts all the time, just in cases like this where I suspect that things are turning south. It is a useful tool in moderation
ReplyDeleteWhen I first got this, I thought it was an e-mail from you and thought "what the heck did *I* do?"
ReplyDelete;-)
That's fantastic Jed. I knew the title might cause a little confusion. I have gotten such tremendous feedback from this one hat it was worth the risk. It has quickly moved into the 3rd spot for "most viewed blog entries."
ReplyDeleteMike,
ReplyDeleteGreat story; I feel your pain. I'm a little farther south than you in Raleigh, NC, and I feel that down here people are even more likely to avoid you simply because they don't want to say no. Sometimes it amazes me how much effort people will put forth screening calls and ignoring emails, when a truthful response can resolve the question of whether he/she is "in market."
With persistence being a trait of a successful salesperson it's difficult to give up completely on a prospect who initially shows interest in a product. Your efforts certainly pushed through the superficial. Keep us posted on your progress.
Neal Isaacs