Each week, we bring you the most cringe-worthy sales moments from across the web. To submit your sales fail story for consideration, click here. (Don't worry, you'll remain completely anonymous).
Alright, so this is the funniest thing that ever happened to me during an in-person prospect meeting. I was working on this deal that was looking like it was going to close. I was going to my prospect's office to pitch leadership and my VP came along to be an executive presence at the meeting. I was less than a year into the job and hadn't built much rapport with him aside from a few passing interactions. We met in the lobby of the prospect's building before the meeting and talked a bit about the game plan. As soon as he started talking to me it hit me in the face. There’s no nice way to say this, but his breath smelled absolutely awful. I don’t know if he was sick or something, but it was unbearable. If I had known him better, I would have told him directly, but I didn't want to offend him so I just casually offered him a piece of gum. He said "No, I'm good." I really thought it was going to work. I assumed that offering someone a piece of gum was the universal sign for politely telling someone their breath smells bad. Apparently not.
We got into the meeting and introduced ourselves and shook everyone's hand. I watched him shake the decision maker's hand and the guy definitely noticed the breath — I saw him visibly wince. The VP and the decision maker were sitting pretty close to each other and every time the VP turned and said something to him I saw the guy struggling to not make a face, he just looked super uncomfortable the whole time. I became pretty absorbed in this whole situation and couldn't really focus on the meeting because I was just bracing myself for every time my VP said something to the decision maker. We ended up losing the deal. I'm not sure if the breath was the reason, but I know it definitely didn't help us. I took it as a learning experience and now I always carry gum and make sure my team and I walk into sales calls with fresh minty breath.
Anonymous Location withheld
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I have a customer who I have pretty good rapport with. We've been doing business together for years. We're both big football guys and always chat about it. My fantasy league needed one more person last year, so I asked the guy if he wanted to join the league. It was a $100 buy-in league just to make it interesting — nothing too crazy.
He ended up joining. But almost right away, he began sending me really one-sided trade offers that were only good for him. I kept rejecting them. He knows football, so he knew what he was doing. Whenever we talked, he'd jokingly bring up that I wasn't accepting any of his trades. I told him I'd accept them if he made me a good offer. Well, the guy kept sending me trade offers. I kept rejecting them but I ended up feeling bad and wanted to make the guy happy (I made a lot of money off commissions from him over the years), so I eventually accepted two of his offers even though I was getting completely screwed. I basically threw my chances of winning to make this guy happy.
The guy ended up winning the league last year and my friends were all mad at me for letting him in and giving him a super team. He's in the league again this year as the defending champion, but I'm holding my ground and not giving him anything.
Anonymous Location withheld
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I've had some really disinterested leads in my career, but this one takes the cake. I had a video call with an inbound lead who wanted a product demo. I went over the agenda for the call at the very beginning, but the guy stopped me and said he didn't want to do a bunch of "qualifying" questions, he had already done his research and really just wanted the full product tour. Not ideal, but I decided to go along and start the demo. I asked if there were any specific features or use cases he was interested in seeing, but he said he really just wanted to see "the whole suite."
I started doing the demo. But what I was actually doing was watching the guy to see what parts of the demo seemed to pique his interest. As I was watching him, he seemed engaged, but maybe too engaged. His eyes were darting around pretty quickly. I kept watching him. After showing him one of the features, I asked him if he had any questions and left a long pause. In that moment of silence, I could hear this guy rapidly clicking his mouse. As a gamer myself, I immediately knew that this guy was playing a video game. I was having a pretty rough week at work and was behind on my number for the month, so I was pretty pissed that this guy was just wasting my time, so I called him out. He kind of froze when I asked him if he was playing a video game. He denied it and said there was a big problem at work and his boss kept messaging him. I knew this was BS so I kept pushing. I said "Wow that's weird, I'm usually only clicking my mouse that frantically when I'm playing League of Legends."
He got super flustered. He apologized again for the "fire" and said he'd book some more time with me for later in the week and abruptly left the call. Of course, I never heard from the guy again. I'm pretty sure this guy was just booking sales calls to block his calendar so he could play video games at work. He wasted a good 20 minutes of my time, but I'm glad I called him out. I'm hopeful that because of me he doesn't do that anymore and I saved some other reps from wasted meetings.
Anonymous Location withheld
