Check out the email my VP of Sales received the other day:
“Tim I am extremely disappointed. Not that you aren't going forward at this time. We have a phenomenal business and one client in a month doesn't make a dent in the overall revenue picture.”
“I am disappointed in the way you "treated" me - I put treated in parenthesis because I don't think that is the right word, nor do I think the treatment was intentional. Nonetheless it doesn't feel right.…….
“I've been in the industry for a long time and at fairly senior positions. Things like this just don't feel right. I never expect the business, my only expectations are how I am treated and how I should treat others.”
“…. it's been a struggle to get you on the phone or have any real dialogue towards creating a real partnership.”
“FYI - before writing back to you I just re-read your last 5 or 6 emails to me just to double-check myself.”
“All of that said I'm never one to burn bridges, although I will shoot straight. I wish you… all good things to come. Hopefully we'll be able to engage as real partners at some time in the future.”
Based on this exerpt (one of 3 "goodbye" emails we received from this vendor), you might think we had a pretty intense relationship going, or we were talking about a quarter of a million dollar project. We don’t and we are not. This email was also about 3 times longer than what I’m sharing with you here. It goes and on about how disappointed he is, how he waited for our decision.
While I’ll keep the name of the salesman and the company secret, this was one of a barrage of calls and emails we had received during the last few weeks before our contract expired on a database service we tried out for a few months. The service cost s few thousand bucks a quarter. We gave it try. We had some initial luck with it but in the end we were never able to get any additional value out of it. It was added to the scrap heap of tools we tried but didn’t work as we’d hoped. And that was that....until renewal time rolled around.
All of a sudden we began to receiving a tsunami of ever escalating phone calls and emails. Each was answered politely stating that we were evaluating the service and would let him know. The calls moved from my VP to my office manager and finally I was getting harrassed on my private cell number. They guy wouldn’t let me off the phone. I finally had to hang up. By the end, he was calling my VP every 30 minutes.
But what a wonderful example of what not to do if you are a saleperson! There is a line between selling and harassment. Make sure your team knows the difference.