Recently I was talking to one of my clients, the president of small technology firm. She was livid. Earlier that morning, a salesperson had contacted her firm and the conversation went like this:
"Who am I talking to?" he immediately demanded. She gave him her name - which isn't a typical one.
"How do you spell that?" he asked. She slowly spelled it out. Confused, he asked her to repeat it several times, which she graciously did.
"What does your company do?" he asked next.
That was the final straw. She finally butted in: "Are you selling something?"
"Yes," he said. Then, undaunted, he continued his interrogation. "So, what does your company do?"
"I can't believe you're asking me this," she said in disbelief. "You expect me to take up my time to educate someone who's too lazy to even visit my website and find that out? Why would you think I'd do that?"
He sputtered a couple of times and then apologized. But he'd already blown it. No recovery was possible.
The lesson: Contacting prospective customers before you've invested time learning about their business is a sure recipe for disaster. Don't do it!
Great post, Jill. That's an unforgivable sin nowadays, with the Internet and tools like LinkedIn. Why make selling any harder than it is? I always recommend reading the prospect's website, and if they are public their annual report (it's always shocking though, that your prospects will rarely have read their own annual report).
Posted by: S. Anthony Iannarino | 05/28/2006 at 03:15 PM
Guilty as charged Jill. I've made a similar mistake myself, and asked all the "dumb" questions too.. and learned selling by making one mistake after another..
But do you have any tips on what you should do if you're going to a convention..? There are just sooo many companies there.
Posted by: Arun Sadhashivan | 05/29/2006 at 03:46 PM
That is amazing to me. It wouldn't take 15 good minutes to find out her name, email, and product/service highlights.
A lot of salespeople don't get it. You have to earn the right to sell to executives. Sr. managers/execs are too busy to deal with others that cannot add value (ie. stop a pain) immediately - especially with outsiders but it also applies to inside staffers too.
If you're not seen as a peer, you won't get the big business.
Posted by: Nick Rice | 05/29/2006 at 07:33 PM
When I started in sales we were taught to ask people about their business because people love talking about themselves and it was a way to open them up.
That's all changed. Time is too critical on a sales call to try and butter potential clients up and besides most people see this as a sales "technique" and people resent that.
Posted by: Paul Swenson | 05/30/2006 at 08:59 AM
Why sales people are not utilizing internet concerns such as Jigsaw just shows how they really need to update there training. Its time that we get away from the old school thinking of dialing for dollars and started to concentrate on what is the best use of our time and money.
Posted by: Greg Sanders | 05/30/2006 at 09:40 AM
Jill,
It's frightening but true... It doesn't seem to matter how many tools are available, salespeople can't help themselves and keep on blagging it! A bit of thought and some simple research would save them making these kinds of misteaks (whoops!) over and over again!
Great selling is about doing the simple stuff really, really well.
Posted by: Gavin Ingham | 04/29/2007 at 10:53 AM