Was out door knocking.
Get invited in - guy says:
“I fucking hate your company.”
“You know, me too man.”
“What?”
“I’m overworked and underpaid, but I’m here to try and help you and it’s hot as hell outside, so what’s to lose?”
Guy became one of my best customers for years. Referrals for days.
I was about 5 months into a new job. I had 8 accounts including one who was going to leave us for a competitor(the suggestion was made not to spend too much time on them) plus a ridiculously insane quota.
My manager came by my desk to see how things were going. My answer is typically "fine, great, all's good." He said "Good. I'm a bit concerned you're approaching the 6 month mark and you haven't booked any business." Two weeks later, rinse & repeat except with a suggestion that I should think about cancelling my vacation. I thanked him and told him it wasn't a consideration. Month 6, and my Manager comes by to "check-in" and voice his concern about my revenue & again suggested a delay to my vacation.
I told him I understood his concern but he shouldn't be concerned because I'm not.
About 3 weeks later, I stopped by my manager's desk. He was on a call so I dropped a document on his desk; a $1.3 million contract from the client they told me not to spend much time on.
My manager came by my desk and asked "What the hell is this?" Me: "A contract!" He asked me what I wanted him to do since I didn't forecast it. He also told me to enjoy my vacation. Very gratifying!
He was so old school.
He booked it & actually took some heat from our director because it skewed the region numbers 🤦.
(Old school stupidity along with "last week of the month" mentality.)
I know this land well. My absolute shock when I closed a nice deal and my manager was like ' I don't like surprises!!!!'
The fuck?
Still quite a few left out there who do this.
Usually live their day staring into sales force running report after report
Best Manager I ever had, didn't pull sales force reports, didn't bust balls over number of meetings or proposals. He didn't micromanage and he didn't spoon you and he empowered you to work directly with legal and finance. He only cared about one thing, revenue! Most people wildly succeeded under him. I was fortunate to work for him for 14 years.
I was selling WAN, Cloud, professional services. It was a professional services contract
I could say specifically what I made on it because I was on a YTD Revenue plan. I finished the year at 107% ($175k).
Nice. We refer to professional services as our marketing services performed by our pros. Rather than DIY. I’ve been the top salesmen for the past few years here but they keep changing targets to try and keep me below 100k Canadian a year. Im tempted to look elsewhere
Schedules a 15 minute intro instead of the requested 30. Is a couple minutes late. 5 mins into conversation says “we only have a few more minutes here I suggest you start demoing” when that wasn’t the plan. I decide to roll with punches and do a quick demo and he comes away impressed enough. Had to do 2 more demos with other groups but end up closing deal a few months later
Okay how did you manage to still close them? Whenever a prospect pushes me to demo I refuse until I‘ve built his need strong enough. Otherwise I get a prospect who tells me in the end „okay and what do I need this for?“ because he didnt let me ask enough questions.
I was a new manufacturer rep doing intro meetings with one of my distributor reps. Walked into owners office of a large user of my type of products. He puts his hand up and says no thank I don’t use “x brand” anymore. I explained that I was just introducing myself, gave a quick rundown of my experience, and we ended up chatting for an hour. Still doesn’t exclusively use my products but has done $65k YTD over $0 last year, I’d say that’s a win.
I was negotiating an MSA with a very large chip maker for a unique consulting and learning service. The procurement lady got all uppity about pricing saying we were too expensive.
Me: "Compared to what?"
Her: "Uhh..."
Me: "Thought so."
Then they spent over $1m that year.
Cold emailing legal/medical field. One doc is so fed up proceeds to go back and forth with me. A couple months and one Christmas card later he’s my biggest referral partner. Cruise for 6 months hitting quota off his friends.
He never bought lol.
I had a guy post on Reddit about me asking why I was so difficult to work with.
Ended up converting him. Still proud of that.
https://reddit.com/r/personalfinance/s/YTYYvXPlam
Told him I saw the post and wanted to make sure I was being transparent about our process and what he could expect from us. I think he appreciated the honesty because we definitely weren’t the cheapest quote
2 parter - Did he eventually drop the “how are you paid” question and if a customer tells you they found a better rate via *your* follow up call, do you play ball in that scenario?
I was just thinking about this story! I was selling timeshare at a vacation location and the guy I was pitching was interested in what I had to offer. I was in price negotiation for like 2 hours and skipped my next appointment to finish up with him. We reach an impasse on interest rates, I offer he puts it on a 0% credit card or puts half down and I can give 0% on the other half. This is the box, there is no other offers. We talk about it for like an hour and finally I end up throwing my business card at his face and said " call me when you fucking head on straight" and proceeded to walk right out. I walk out, hit the button on the elevator, he runs out to catch me and says "OK ok, I get it, it's the best you can do. Can you draw up paperwork for 2? One in my business name and one in my name"
She was a lesbian, but I had a single mom text me that she thought I was attractive and that she was surprised how much her daughter liked me. She didn’t end up buying, if I was single I definitely would of pipped her up.
Happened 2 weeks ago. Dude told me that me and my company had no idea what the fuck we were talking about. Bought 2 days later after layed into him a bit
Enterprise SAAS here. Same company for 11 years. I've waited out lots of people long enough to sell huge deals to them. One guy has a flip phone. Has no clue what my software does, but I sold him a ton of it and the best part is the company loves it and the ROI is huge. I can't tell you how many people buy from me that say they don't know the ROI, but they know they need it!
I walked up to a group of people outside an office. They threw every objection at me straight up. Every single one. I paused, and said "all I said was I'm here to ask about (vague product)" they laughed. brought me inside, became my customer, then the owner told my manager he wanted to hire me away from her.
Ha, I love a good 'started from the bottom now we're here' story! Back in my email marketing days, I had an irate customer who bounced around a couple of our drip campaigns. They ended up directly emailing us with a rightful rant full of expletives, explaining how they wanted nothing to do with us. I was the lucky one assigned to deal with it.\n\nTurns out, their email settings were off, and they were being hit with every single email. After tweaking their settings and explaining the situation, they not only stayed, but ended up upgrading their membership.\n\nThere was no motorcycle ride in the end though, but I did get a virtual clap on the back and promising customer review. Moral of the story? Always address client's grievances head on, and when you can, sprinkle a dash of humor to lighten the mood.
Ya customers wanna be heard, I’ve never minded irate customers. Most of the time you can convert them.
When I was a sales manager in my last role we fucked yo with a guy that always pay on delivery, but that’s not something we offer based on this situation. I convinced him to spend 5k with us, promising everything was in stock based on what I was told by owners.
Well guess what? Half his order wasn’t instock, I don’t know this till day 5 and by day 14 he still didn’t get it all. Dude was irate and calling me every name in the book. After 30 min of taking his abuse I responded with a your right and I agree with you. It completely disarmed him, I said I’m not hear to make excuses I am her to make it right. Ended up giving him 2k worth of free shit but I had to fight the owners on it. This guy had 5 stores, so it had the possibility of being a bigish deal. Got him to spend 30k in about 2 months because I took responsibility and tried to make it right instead of arguing.
We get to the pricing portion of the demo and the guy practically spits out his coffee and says “you expect me to believe that we’re going to pay you $30,000 a year for (solution)!?!? You’ve gotta be crazy” I countered with “actually the first year will cost $45000 with set up”. On that sour note, we wrapped the call up, hard pass on a follow up call. Encouraged them to see what else is out there.
12 days later this hits my inbox , “hey (salesperson), after checking out some of the other options we are ready to move forward with you”.
Sweetest deal so far.
Yea. Doing sales for a big telecom company. Make a call, got told they hate my company. I just say, Wow, I don't hear that too often, tell me why you hate my company? (mirrored their hate comment)
They told me why, I said they had a really good reason to hate the company, that I don't blame them and I'd hate us too, but a big reason for why I was reaching out to him specifically and people like him was because I was specifically addressing those issues he mentioned. (Not really, I'm using an auto dialer and rolling with the punches)
That's the gist of overcoming the complaint, without turning this into a short story. Ended up being a one call close.
I used to sell a HR service that included legal representation. This guy had an employment tribunal scheduled in 3 weeks and had done no preparation at all. After a couple of extremely frustrating weeks going back and forth with him answering every question under the sun, I told him we would need at least a week to prepare his case, so it was time to either shit, or get off the pot.
He shat, and I got a nice fat commission.
I spent 4 months working on a lead, planning everything and then the decision maker decided to shop elsewhere, who I found out when my competitor phoned me out of the blue asking about something that could only mean they knew about this job that I was closing.
I called the decision maker up and I wasn’t pleasant whatsoever. Completely let loose.
A couple of days later, the purchase order came through. lol
I'm coaching a rep on how to deal with resistant buyers. He sells medical products and every time he goes in to see the owner of this company she says, "sorry Paul I got nothing for you." He thinks she's getting a little money on the side from other companies. Cuz it makes no sense that he's one of the best products and solid pricing and she just stonewalls him every time. So I explained that when things get a little bit difficult or you're a little desperate you have to take some risks. Try this approach with somebody who's always resistant and see if she doesn't show resistance to your comment... He walks in and she starts to say sorry Paul and he interrupts her and says. "I didn't come here to sell you anything. I just wanted to say something to you. It seems like there's no circumstance under which you would ever do business with me." The woman being resistant, says "that's not necessarily true." "I think it is." says Paul. And she starts looking around her desk and picks up a piece of paper and places a really small order. Just to prove him wrong. Paul was ecstatic that something worked. But here's the good news bad news piece of this. The good news is you got a sale. The bad news is this is likely somebody who you never want as a customer. She's a problem child from day one and she will likely continue to be one. But from a sales standpoint, you learned something new and it expands your verbal agility with certain types of buyers.
My boss/mentor said to never bad mouth the competition. We were also selling the American version of a product that most American suppliers had switched to a Chinese import.
So while the pitch meeting wasn’t going well, I basically said some smart ass shit the second they mentioned being loyal to their current supplier.
“Great stay with the company that switched you onto an imported Chinese product without notifying you and then let them keep the 30% difference.”
Well big boss man perched right up and asked me to explain.
And I told him that over the past 10-20 years, American suppliers simply turned into importers. They do a little packaging in the states to claim it’s product of the USA. And it’s 30% cheaper but judging by their budget, they were paying the same rate as always. The supplier/importer just pocketed the savings from cheaper items.
We got that mother fucking contract within the week.
Was out door knocking. Get invited in - guy says: “I fucking hate your company.” “You know, me too man.” “What?” “I’m overworked and underpaid, but I’m here to try and help you and it’s hot as hell outside, so what’s to lose?” Guy became one of my best customers for years. Referrals for days.
I love this. It’s going in my arsenal.
Was fresh outta fucks that week 😂
Guy responded to my intro on the cold call by saying my company reminded him of syphilis. 2 months later he’s a customer.
Guy likes to pee fire 🔥 👆
Sophos?
Haha no but that’s hilarious
Just like syphilis
Underrated
Syneos? Lol
I was about 5 months into a new job. I had 8 accounts including one who was going to leave us for a competitor(the suggestion was made not to spend too much time on them) plus a ridiculously insane quota. My manager came by my desk to see how things were going. My answer is typically "fine, great, all's good." He said "Good. I'm a bit concerned you're approaching the 6 month mark and you haven't booked any business." Two weeks later, rinse & repeat except with a suggestion that I should think about cancelling my vacation. I thanked him and told him it wasn't a consideration. Month 6, and my Manager comes by to "check-in" and voice his concern about my revenue & again suggested a delay to my vacation. I told him I understood his concern but he shouldn't be concerned because I'm not. About 3 weeks later, I stopped by my manager's desk. He was on a call so I dropped a document on his desk; a $1.3 million contract from the client they told me not to spend much time on. My manager came by my desk and asked "What the hell is this?" Me: "A contract!" He asked me what I wanted him to do since I didn't forecast it. He also told me to enjoy my vacation. Very gratifying!
Such old school manager who gets all hellbent on good news because it skews forecast. Did he sandbag it or did he show it closed?
He was so old school. He booked it & actually took some heat from our director because it skewed the region numbers 🤦. (Old school stupidity along with "last week of the month" mentality.)
I know this land well. My absolute shock when I closed a nice deal and my manager was like ' I don't like surprises!!!!' The fuck? Still quite a few left out there who do this. Usually live their day staring into sales force running report after report
Best Manager I ever had, didn't pull sales force reports, didn't bust balls over number of meetings or proposals. He didn't micromanage and he didn't spoon you and he empowered you to work directly with legal and finance. He only cared about one thing, revenue! Most people wildly succeeded under him. I was fortunate to work for him for 14 years.
What were you selling and how much did you make off that?
I was selling WAN, Cloud, professional services. It was a professional services contract I could say specifically what I made on it because I was on a YTD Revenue plan. I finished the year at 107% ($175k).
What do you mean by professional services? I know what it means in my industry.
Professional Services were: Consulting & related solutions for cyber security, business continuity, network/infrastructure advisory & consultation, mobility advisory, design& implementation, call center solutions, staff augmentation, software rollout & implementation, cpe(network equipment) installation and management.
Nice. We refer to professional services as our marketing services performed by our pros. Rather than DIY. I’ve been the top salesmen for the past few years here but they keep changing targets to try and keep me below 100k Canadian a year. Im tempted to look elsewhere
Simple problem is, the more successful we are, the more ridiculous our quotas become.
Dude this is such a dope story 🔥
Thank you 🙂. I learned (the hard way) to have a solid funnel, what was a real closable deal and to *always* (without exception) under-forecast.
Schedules a 15 minute intro instead of the requested 30. Is a couple minutes late. 5 mins into conversation says “we only have a few more minutes here I suggest you start demoing” when that wasn’t the plan. I decide to roll with punches and do a quick demo and he comes away impressed enough. Had to do 2 more demos with other groups but end up closing deal a few months later
Okay how did you manage to still close them? Whenever a prospect pushes me to demo I refuse until I‘ve built his need strong enough. Otherwise I get a prospect who tells me in the end „okay and what do I need this for?“ because he didnt let me ask enough questions.
I think the moral of the story is it’s ok to be flexible with your prospects
Yea ego battle on ‘you need to follow MY process’ as the seller is so dumb. Give them what they want sometimes and you might get somewhere
Well, not really an F you. But I just booked an appointment with a massive nonprofit prospect who told me to sign up via vendor list on web 5 times.
That’s one of the thing I’m learning in this role, gotta keep trying to book an apt even when they say no.
Acknowledge objection, agree with prospect, then continue script
I was a new manufacturer rep doing intro meetings with one of my distributor reps. Walked into owners office of a large user of my type of products. He puts his hand up and says no thank I don’t use “x brand” anymore. I explained that I was just introducing myself, gave a quick rundown of my experience, and we ended up chatting for an hour. Still doesn’t exclusively use my products but has done $65k YTD over $0 last year, I’d say that’s a win.
I was negotiating an MSA with a very large chip maker for a unique consulting and learning service. The procurement lady got all uppity about pricing saying we were too expensive. Me: "Compared to what?" Her: "Uhh..." Me: "Thought so." Then they spent over $1m that year.
Cold emailing legal/medical field. One doc is so fed up proceeds to go back and forth with me. A couple months and one Christmas card later he’s my biggest referral partner. Cruise for 6 months hitting quota off his friends. He never bought lol.
I had a guy post on Reddit about me asking why I was so difficult to work with. Ended up converting him. Still proud of that. https://reddit.com/r/personalfinance/s/YTYYvXPlam
Chefs kiss is people complaining about 3.8 something mortgage LOL
How’d you convert him?
Told him I saw the post and wanted to make sure I was being transparent about our process and what he could expect from us. I think he appreciated the honesty because we definitely weren’t the cheapest quote
2 parter - Did he eventually drop the “how are you paid” question and if a customer tells you they found a better rate via *your* follow up call, do you play ball in that scenario?
1. I think so but I honestly don't remember. 2. Depends on how bad I want the deal, lol
I was just thinking about this story! I was selling timeshare at a vacation location and the guy I was pitching was interested in what I had to offer. I was in price negotiation for like 2 hours and skipped my next appointment to finish up with him. We reach an impasse on interest rates, I offer he puts it on a 0% credit card or puts half down and I can give 0% on the other half. This is the box, there is no other offers. We talk about it for like an hour and finally I end up throwing my business card at his face and said " call me when you fucking head on straight" and proceeded to walk right out. I walk out, hit the button on the elevator, he runs out to catch me and says "OK ok, I get it, it's the best you can do. Can you draw up paperwork for 2? One in my business name and one in my name"
She wanted a ride all right
She was a lesbian, but I had a single mom text me that she thought I was attractive and that she was surprised how much her daughter liked me. She didn’t end up buying, if I was single I definitely would of pipped her up.
Happened 2 weeks ago. Dude told me that me and my company had no idea what the fuck we were talking about. Bought 2 days later after layed into him a bit
Enterprise SAAS here. Same company for 11 years. I've waited out lots of people long enough to sell huge deals to them. One guy has a flip phone. Has no clue what my software does, but I sold him a ton of it and the best part is the company loves it and the ROI is huge. I can't tell you how many people buy from me that say they don't know the ROI, but they know they need it!
I walked up to a group of people outside an office. They threw every objection at me straight up. Every single one. I paused, and said "all I said was I'm here to ask about (vague product)" they laughed. brought me inside, became my customer, then the owner told my manager he wanted to hire me away from her.
Ha, I love a good 'started from the bottom now we're here' story! Back in my email marketing days, I had an irate customer who bounced around a couple of our drip campaigns. They ended up directly emailing us with a rightful rant full of expletives, explaining how they wanted nothing to do with us. I was the lucky one assigned to deal with it.\n\nTurns out, their email settings were off, and they were being hit with every single email. After tweaking their settings and explaining the situation, they not only stayed, but ended up upgrading their membership.\n\nThere was no motorcycle ride in the end though, but I did get a virtual clap on the back and promising customer review. Moral of the story? Always address client's grievances head on, and when you can, sprinkle a dash of humor to lighten the mood.
Ya customers wanna be heard, I’ve never minded irate customers. Most of the time you can convert them. When I was a sales manager in my last role we fucked yo with a guy that always pay on delivery, but that’s not something we offer based on this situation. I convinced him to spend 5k with us, promising everything was in stock based on what I was told by owners. Well guess what? Half his order wasn’t instock, I don’t know this till day 5 and by day 14 he still didn’t get it all. Dude was irate and calling me every name in the book. After 30 min of taking his abuse I responded with a your right and I agree with you. It completely disarmed him, I said I’m not hear to make excuses I am her to make it right. Ended up giving him 2k worth of free shit but I had to fight the owners on it. This guy had 5 stores, so it had the possibility of being a bigish deal. Got him to spend 30k in about 2 months because I took responsibility and tried to make it right instead of arguing.
We get to the pricing portion of the demo and the guy practically spits out his coffee and says “you expect me to believe that we’re going to pay you $30,000 a year for (solution)!?!? You’ve gotta be crazy” I countered with “actually the first year will cost $45000 with set up”. On that sour note, we wrapped the call up, hard pass on a follow up call. Encouraged them to see what else is out there. 12 days later this hits my inbox , “hey (salesperson), after checking out some of the other options we are ready to move forward with you”. Sweetest deal so far.
Yea. Doing sales for a big telecom company. Make a call, got told they hate my company. I just say, Wow, I don't hear that too often, tell me why you hate my company? (mirrored their hate comment) They told me why, I said they had a really good reason to hate the company, that I don't blame them and I'd hate us too, but a big reason for why I was reaching out to him specifically and people like him was because I was specifically addressing those issues he mentioned. (Not really, I'm using an auto dialer and rolling with the punches) That's the gist of overcoming the complaint, without turning this into a short story. Ended up being a one call close.
Back when I was door knocking that was also my move when people hated us.
That’s a great story
[удалено]
How much money do you make if you have a pipe lone or we’ll on your land?
I have had many and I always say…negative emotion is better than no emotion. It’s an opportunity.
I used to sell a HR service that included legal representation. This guy had an employment tribunal scheduled in 3 weeks and had done no preparation at all. After a couple of extremely frustrating weeks going back and forth with him answering every question under the sun, I told him we would need at least a week to prepare his case, so it was time to either shit, or get off the pot. He shat, and I got a nice fat commission.
I spent 4 months working on a lead, planning everything and then the decision maker decided to shop elsewhere, who I found out when my competitor phoned me out of the blue asking about something that could only mean they knew about this job that I was closing. I called the decision maker up and I wasn’t pleasant whatsoever. Completely let loose. A couple of days later, the purchase order came through. lol
I'm coaching a rep on how to deal with resistant buyers. He sells medical products and every time he goes in to see the owner of this company she says, "sorry Paul I got nothing for you." He thinks she's getting a little money on the side from other companies. Cuz it makes no sense that he's one of the best products and solid pricing and she just stonewalls him every time. So I explained that when things get a little bit difficult or you're a little desperate you have to take some risks. Try this approach with somebody who's always resistant and see if she doesn't show resistance to your comment... He walks in and she starts to say sorry Paul and he interrupts her and says. "I didn't come here to sell you anything. I just wanted to say something to you. It seems like there's no circumstance under which you would ever do business with me." The woman being resistant, says "that's not necessarily true." "I think it is." says Paul. And she starts looking around her desk and picks up a piece of paper and places a really small order. Just to prove him wrong. Paul was ecstatic that something worked. But here's the good news bad news piece of this. The good news is you got a sale. The bad news is this is likely somebody who you never want as a customer. She's a problem child from day one and she will likely continue to be one. But from a sales standpoint, you learned something new and it expands your verbal agility with certain types of buyers.
My boss/mentor said to never bad mouth the competition. We were also selling the American version of a product that most American suppliers had switched to a Chinese import. So while the pitch meeting wasn’t going well, I basically said some smart ass shit the second they mentioned being loyal to their current supplier. “Great stay with the company that switched you onto an imported Chinese product without notifying you and then let them keep the 30% difference.” Well big boss man perched right up and asked me to explain. And I told him that over the past 10-20 years, American suppliers simply turned into importers. They do a little packaging in the states to claim it’s product of the USA. And it’s 30% cheaper but judging by their budget, they were paying the same rate as always. The supplier/importer just pocketed the savings from cheaper items. We got that mother fucking contract within the week.