Bad Behavior and the Need for a Buyer-Seller Understanding

“You know what my dream is? It’s to one day be on the other end of that phone” –  Charlie Sheen as Bud Fox in the classic film Wall Street

Okay, Bud Fox is not exactly the best example of an ethical character and Charlie Sheen is a colorful person to put it politely, but the sentiment is a common and valid one for many salespeople. The truth of the matter is that most salespeople are, or will be, both on the selling and buying end of a potential transaction at some point in their careers, and it’s important that both parties lead with some empathy.

In an era where sellers, even high-performing ones, seem to have less job security than ever and buyers are receiving a higher volume of salesperson outreach (and often of poor quality) from more channels than ever, bad (and sometimes borderline unethical) behavior on the part of both parties has sadly become more prevalent. While how one behaves is ultimately an individual decision, the business world would be better off collectively and a more pleasant environment if sellers and buyers both acknowledged the reality that each other are under significant pressure – and behaved in a manner that relieves, as opposed to compounds, it.

While there are countless examples of bad seller and buyer behavior that I’ve personally witnessed, I’ve cited some of the more common ones below to help all of us avoid replicating them – regardless of what end of the phone we are on.

Examples of Bad Seller Behavior:

• Promoting services that are blatantly irrelevant to the recipient based on their role or company. While it’s not realistic to expect sales reps to hyper-personalize every email, hitting “send” involves a request or expectation that the recipient will read it (or at a minimum open it). Given how inundated buyers are with inbound communications, to ensure a baseline level of relevancy, sellers should have the courtesy of at least doing basic research before contacting a prospective customer and avoid contacting “bad fits” altogether.
• Attempting to secure meetings by luring people with offers such as “a $100 gift card for a 30-minute meeting”. This not only reeks of desperation, doing so can make buyers feel guilty if they accept it and are not interested in what you have to offer following the meeting, or even more so if they are unsure if taking the meeting at all makes sense. And if you do offer a “gift” to take the meeting, make sure you follow through with giving it, regardless of the outcome of the meeting.
• Misrepresenting a suggestion as a “referral”, or worse yet, an “endorsement”. If you have a call with someone in one department and they say that it is not a good fit for them, but may be for another department in their company or another company that they are familiar with, do not contact a specific person in the other department/company and imply that your original contact said that they should purchase your product/service and/or should necessarily even take a meeting with you.
• Disrespecting a prospect’s requested evaluation process and/or unnecessarily going “over their head” prematurely. While it is important for sellers to uncover the economic buyer, influencers are important pieces to the buying process and can become coaches or champions when properly collaborated with – or your biggest detractors when not.
• Pressure buyers with “exploding offers”, particularly if you know that they are unlikely to be able to meet the requirements or if your offer really is not truly time-bound. There are legitimate reasons why one is not able to offer certain incentives or special terms after a certain point in time. If you plan to use them as a tactic to secure an order on your timetable as opposed to theirs, present the offer in a transparent and genuine manner, and explain the real reasons why it’s available.

Examples of Bad Buyer Behavior:

• Asking a sales rep to prepare a formal proposal when you have little or no intention of buying from them and/or are primarily using it to negotiate with your preferred supplier.
• Telling cold callers that you “don’t take cold calls” while you expect your sales team to cold call extensively. This is particularly egregious when the person making the statement is a sales executive.
• Canceling high-ticket annual or multi-year subscription services via a brief email with little or no explanation, particularly at the last minute.
• “Moving the goalposts” by asking for additional discounting after your initial request was honored by the sales rep.
• Verbally agreeing to enter into a formal evaluation of a service and not following through. While buyers have no obligation to buy or even speak with a sales rep, if they have spoken with them and are not interested, or the timing is off, it is best to simply say so, as opposed to having them chase you, which wastes their time and is not pleasant for either party.
• Proactively filling out a request to be contacted by a sales rep and then never responding to their outreach when the rep attempts to schedule a call or meeting.

Whether you are a buyer or seller, the “Golden Rule” certainly applies. If you are seller, before deploying a questionable tactic, don’t just ask yourself if it is the right thing to do – also ask yourself if it even makes sense in accomplishing your business goal. If you are a buyer, think twice about how you treat a sales rep that contacts you. In most cases, they are just trying to do what is a very challenging job. In other cases, the same person may be getting a call from one of your sales reps sometime in the future – and trust me, sales reps have long memories.