In today’s turbulent and volatile business world, many sales professionals get only one shot at making a good first impression when initiating the sales process of trying to acquire a new customer. In a recent survey that Advantexe conducted for a Strategic Business Selling engagement with a group of sales professionals, participants of the survey admitted they only prepare for an initial sales call about 47% of the time. By “preparation,” I mean basic things like checking social media, reviewing the customer’s website, creating a hypothesis for their business strategy, and having a general understanding of where the customer account is in its competitive business ecosystem. It also means checking your own customer relationship management system to make sure that the prospect isn’t already a customer.
Around 2:30 pm last Friday afternoon, our office received a call from a sales person representing XYZ Software, Inc. The caller asked for me by name and I took the call even though I was in another meeting. “Uh, hello, Mr. Brodo? This is John Smith from XYZ…so how are you doin’ today?”
I’m fine, thank you.
“Uh, well, yeah, so I wanted to see if you have any interest in learning more about the technology of XYZ. XYZ has the best, most sophisticated software in the industry and we’ve been selling a lot of it to businesses like yours.”
Mistake after mistake. An absolutely terrible start to the sales call.
As an author of many sales training programs, I responded to John with the gift of feedback: “John, I don’t think you have done a great job today preparing for your call to me. If you had, you would have realized that we are already using XYZ and as a matter of fact, recently entered into a partnership agreement.”
“What? Oh no, I didn’t realize. I guess they didn’t update my salesforce. Sorry about that.” And then he hung up on me.
The entire dreadful call took less than 90 seconds. 90 seconds to significantly impact in a negative way my perception of the XYZ Company. But, the terrible call also provides a couple of interesting learning moments about strategic business selling the most significant of which is the answer to the following question: Is it possible to save your personal brand after a terrible sales call?
I believe the answer is yes, and here is a recommended best practice in case you or someone one your sales team every makes a similar bad mistake like this:
1. Apologize immediately with an email (not a phone call and certainly not a text)
Hanging up on me made a bad situation worse. In this case, after an obtrusive and bad call followed by a hang-up, something unobtrusive is very much needed.
Subject: Sorry again for my confusion
Dear Mr. Brodo,
I wanted to take a moment to apologize for my confusion earlier. I do see from our records that you have been a customer of ours for the past three months and we are very happy to have you and your company with us. I should have looked and prepared better before I interrupted your day.
2. Make an Unexpected Offer
Your personal brand and the brand of the company has been damaged. There is a small window of opportunity to hopefully fix it. Do something unexpected that illustrates it was a small mistake that really shouldn’t hurt the brand. This may actually enhance the brand.
Mr. Brodo, as a show of good faith, I have spoken with the person here at XYZ who handles your account – Sally Jones - and we are going to credit you the entire month of November at no charge. Our customers are the most important thing to us and we appreciate that you have joined us and we would love to keep you as a customer for years to come.
3. Have a Senior Leader Follow-up with a Personal Call 7-10 days Later
The apology and the unexpected gesture are good and hopefully solve the problem. A follow-up from a senior leader of your company 7-10 days later can only help to ensure everything is still good. The senior leader doesn’t have to make a big deal of it, just say that they are personally calling to make sure you are satisfied with XYZ and if there is anything else that is needed. The senior leader of course must be prepared and is aware of the customer’s situation.
Please leave a comment or your perspectives on what you think and if you have ever been involved in a similar situation.
