How not to prepare for sales calls

The Traveling Introvert

I want to talk about sales, doesn't matter how amazing your business or your product is if your sales guy sucks. So I've been looking to work with a company about a project that I've got coming up next year. I've been vetting them out. I loved the mission. I loved the values. I loved what they stood for and I loved the product. And so I was on this page and I needed to get in contact with them.

So they have a contact form and the contact form asked the usual questions. Name company. Why you how did you find us and any other questions that I would like to ask to make the call? You know, better for everybody. And so I put specific questions. I wanted to know about time zones. I wanted to know about opening hours, and I want to know about invoicing and hours. And I put that in the form along with my name, my company.

You are well, that sort of a thing that then led me to a calendar link and like a great perfect. Now I get to look at a calendar link straight away. Wonderful. I go. And I booked time with someone who wasn't who they said I was going to talk to, but that was fine. So far, so good book. The time I get a confirmation email to my email address. Great email confirmation is from a name dot company at Gmail dot com, a bit of a red flag because this company has been around for at least four years.

Kind of thought I would get a domain name. So it should be name and company name, dot com or Gmail or whatever it might be. But fine, what have you next day I have the call now bearing in mind that it asked me some questions and got me to fill out a form so soon as we get on the call, the first thing the sales person says is, please tell me about your business. I'm already like and I just sent you a bunch of information about me and you can take the two minutes to go and Google company name or me my name.

I happened to be lucky enough that my name is unique enough that you pull up something. And so I ambivalent about something that is not exactly my business. It's just part of what I do. We continue on with the core. They ask me what my requirements are and I, I tell them what I'm looking for and then the person is very much like, OK, well, we think we're going to be a very good fit for you. And so I said, well, as you think, you're going to be a good fit for me and my organization.

Please tell me like what the top thing is that my clients are looking for, not persons response was. Well, they're looking for your unique service proposition and your offerings. Now, if you've been listening to this long enough, you would know they only had to mention the word introvert. That's it. That's all they had to say. But they obviously, even during that twenty minute call, couldn't be bothered to Google my name or Google my my company.

And so they tried to B.S. me some now really annoyed about it. And so they asked me if I have any other questions and I'm very much like, well I did ask questions in the form. And you haven't answered those questions because we still hadn't talked about when they open timezones that their staff are in and invoicing. And so the person got defensive and said, well, what do you think? I haven't answered. And so I repeated my questions and they sort of kind of answered them.

Then they said, OK, so when can we get back to, you know, to get this ball rolling, really have very limited spots, yada, yada, yada. Hartsell and I said, well, this week is very busy. I'm doing this for my clients and then I'll be working on this sort of thing the week after that. And so the person then says, OK, so I can contact you at the end of this week.

No, you obviously weren't listening. I just said I'm busy this week and then you can contact me next week. So I had to reiterate, we close the call normally most salespeople at this point, we then go ahead and send it if formational email that says, hey, great talking to you today. We covered X, Y and Z. I will follow up with you on this day. No email. Oh, wait, no, I lied.

I did get an email, but I got an email from a different person in the company saying, hey, I noticed you filled out this form and one of our team would love to speak with you. Please click on this link to put the time.

Really, really, it's not only does the left hand know what the right hand is doing, the systems are messed up and the sales guy blew it. I was so happy I was going to throw money at the most happy to work with them because I loved their vision and their mission. But he couldn't be bothered to just Google my name or my company name. Instead, he tried. They got defensive and then tried to to be asked me to be fair.

And that's how not to run your sales process, or at least the sales guy. He didn't use any common sense. It would've been better if he admitted and said, you know what, I just hopped on this morning. I didn't have a chance to look you up. I'd love to know more about you. Or can you give me a second while I do it? Now, that would be better. Coming clean would have been better, but the lying and the squirming around kind of made it look kind of sleazy and unethical.

And now I don't want to work with the organization and I don't care how much I love the mission and what they do, I now don't want to work. And actually there was a point where I was like, maybe I'll just email someone higher up and explain the situation. And then the other email came through the automated. Only one of our team would love to speak with you. And I was just like, oh, I'm done. So that's what I wanted to talk about today.

Thank you for listening. This is [e-mail] helping you build your brand and get high. If there's any questions on topics that you want me to cover on this podcast, let me know. Email me at [e-mail]. Have a great rest of your week.