This is my last letter for a while for The American Entrepreneur Ron Morris from Pittsburgh. This in reference to a letter from Ron about sales people wasting time. Here is a link to his article:Link
Ron,
I see this a lot in inexperienced sales people and I try to tell them that they need to stop chasing the bad business. Heck since I am still green in sales I am fighting with very issue.
In one of my jobs I have contact with salespeople that are trying to sell me industrial equipment for my project. In one case there was a salesman that wanted to show me his wares beyond what I asked from him. I knew this would be a waste of his time because I work for a government contractor and there are many rules about what can and cannot be used. I told him on the phone “I do not need anything else so I do not want to waste your time”. He insisted he meet with me so I said ok (on a side note he was late for our meeting by 30 minutes, very frustrating). At the end of it all he was unable to sell anything to us because of our very specific needs. He probably spent 10-20 hours gathering all of the information we requested with no income generated for his company. On top of that he gave us very poor service. From this experience I do not want to do business with company because of the headache they cause me and the time they wasted.
On the topic of people wasting your time, I believe many people have a lot of time in their lives that is filled with TV and other worthless activities. Because they have so much time to waste they think that everybody else does (never mind some of us want to be in control of our future). This is one of my big frustrations in sales; people do not have the courtesy to tell me (the salesman) they are not going to show up to a meeting thus wasting my time.
All I ask is that the salesman please be considerate of your time and your client’s time. It is a limited commodity as Ron Mentioned. Also, good customer service will keep clients and bad customer service will permanently turn clients away. Finally, if you are on the buying end of a sale please be considerate of the salesman’s time, the more of his time that is wasted the less he is able to help others in need.