1. I had a salesperson meet with me to show me their new marketing tool and how it might help my company. He followed up last week and left a VM. I returned the call and left a VM telling him to call me later. Then I pulled out his materials, did some research and decided I didn’t need what he was selling. At least I felt better prepared than if I had received his follow-up call.
When I hadn’t heard from him, I decided to send an email. Its interesting the thought process when a salesperson doesn’t call you. Did he get canned (it is a newer, riskier product), or did he give up, or is he just disorganized? Email seemed a safer way for me to say ‘no’. Besides, I could clearly articulate why, on my terms, without listening to useless counterpitches. His reply: “Can we have a meeting to discuss this?” Now I’ve got to get up the nerve to write back “no”.
2. Our sales manager also recently banned a potential vendor from incoming calls because he thought his product was more important than the work we need to get done. The last straw: he was dumb enough to try to go up to our president.
3. I also went thru my AOL instant messenger buddy list this week, deleting people I no longer ‘need’ to chat with. It gives a stange feeling as you purposefully snuff out an interactive relationship.
B2B selling and marketing is about relationships. But how do we deal with the sticky issue of ending those relationships? Here is an article from Wired on breaking up in this day and age that, while not a step-by-step guide, it does cover a lot of the issues with becoming disconnected from someone…saying goodbye or no.
Wired News: We’ll Always Have ICQ
It takes two minutes to remove someone from your IM lists, even if that person has eight handles across five different clients. You can filter incoming e-mails straight to trash if you don’t want to deal with someone again. You don’t run into your online exes around town.
Online relationships tend to be emotional, because that’s the kind of connection we make when we remove the physical from the equation. But without the physical reminders that someone has left behind — a shared table at the local cafe, the friends you hung out with together, a toothbrush — it’s a hell of a lot easier to get through the emotional upheaval and move on with your life.