1

I had a call from a sales person this morning attempting to get us to get a new phone system. I explained that we have a lot on at the moment but may be looking at this in the future and if they could just email me I would keep their email on file for when this time rolls around. It took about 5 minutes to get this across to them, and they then said they would email me and call again in 3 weeks (?!) to see if the position had changed.

They THEN called me back and said an engineer is in our area on Friday and would I like to meet with them to discuss what they can do for us. I politely said that I have some meetings on Friday so don’t have the time, and as I said previously we are not currently looking into this. They then asked if I was free at all next week for this meeting. I had to quite curtly get across the point, again, that we are not currently looking into changing our system.

Now I pride myself on my patience and polite manner but I was close to being rude with this person. I know their job will be to get clients but surely they realise that this is not the best way.

How do other people deal with things like this?

11 Spice ups
2

I just tell them we don’t use phones …

this either shuts them up or they try to be clever and ask how we’re talking now … to which the response is “telepathetic communications”

I don’t mind sales people calling - if they’re happy to take a refusal and not pester - if they pester they get short shrift and if they’re really persistent and stupid enough to not withhold their number I just put their number into the block list on the phone system … oh - and if they get hold of anyone else the only route to me is via a non-existant email address … Oh dear …

3 Spice ups
3

Usually hang up or redirect them to a dummy voicemail.

4

Do not give them even a glimmer of hope, never admit that the product they have will be considered at any time in the future. Request they not call in 3 weeks or any other time. The call back would have gotten rude responses. I hate how they follow up with pressure sales.

5

I’m too soft on people and keep getting hounded.

Need to learn to say “Not interested and never will be”

1 Spice up
6

Agreed.

I hate the emails where I answer politely, “I am not interested. If, in the future, my requirements change, I will contact you.”

And I get back, “Hey, can we talk to find out what it is that makes you think you don’t need this?”

Sigh.

4 Spice ups
7

You’re describing about every sales call I got since the beginning of the year. In my country new phone companies are popping up everywhere! They rent bandwidth from the tried and trued companies and call you saying: “We can save you 20% off your phone bill RIGHT NOW! Our sales rep is in the area this week and will ring your doorbell this Friday unless you specifically instruct us not to. RIGHT NOW. TEN TIMES.” So yea basically what you have here…

I do one of two things:

  1. If they seem very stupid and just running a script. I usually bombard them with hard questions like: "Currently we’re using a mixed environment using our own managed phone system with a SIM module to use cellphone connections to save costs on calling our own reps. Besides that we’re integrating a new ERP program that has to integrate both with our analog and digital communication systems, how is your companies expertise in these fields? And do you also have solutions for integrating VOIP in Linux based environments? Crap like that will scare them off, bonus points if you get away with making sh*t up.
  2. If I’m tired: “Ah you’re just a bit too late! We renewed all our communication systems a couple of months ago with a six year contract. You know what, send me your details so we can contact you by the time those contracts end.”
4 Spice ups
8

If there sales people are like this, I’m guessing they aren’t worth dealing with. It seems like the level of service after the sale is inversely proportionate to the level of aggression on the sales side.

1 Spice up
9

Absolutely. We’re getting our service from one of the largest providers in the country and everything works great. These companies usually rent bandwidth on outdated parts of the larger provider’s networks. They get that as a bargain and advertise: “We use the same network as … but with a guaranteed 20% discount!”

10

I’m betting I know the company. They called every month, even though I told them that it would be 2017 before we even started considering a different phone system. After 4 months of calls, I finally told them to take me off their calling list.

Now I’m getting calls from storage people. Ugh.

1 Spice up
11

Hey Guys! After reading these I apologize on behalf of the good sales folks… those guys give us a bad name (maybe like used car sales guys? I’m sure there are plenty of great used car sales folks too. I’m pretty good at being courteous and polite and most important respectful of people’s decisions AND time. I’ve had instances where people have gone a different direction and came back to us because they felt like they weren’t sold to but felt respected when they made a mistake or a poor decision.

Honestly I think I could be a better sales person by being more persistent but usually try to put myself in their shoes especially when I myself get sales calls for our company trying to “increase our sales” or “guarantee appointments with prospects”…seems like the no one really does much research anymore or cares about how people feel when they get some random call from someone they don’t know. I rarely pick up the phone anymore to do a sales call given my 11 years or so here and I get more referrals from customers than I do from a sales call or email (however spiceworks has been great to us with a simple private message or comment publicly on this forum). Being helpful is the key even if that means you don’t sell anything (hopefully sales folks are hearing that).

Unfortunately there are a lot of disrespectful, pushy people out there since they probably are in a bad environment where quotas exist or worse on 100% commission where they initially thought it’s just a simple sale and playing golf all the time, but it’s not. it’s a lot of hard work and building relationships over time and just being honest and having a drive to meet more people to help them…not to just simply sell a product and go away. Simply “down here in the south” it’s just being nice and having a great product that you are passionate about…it helps that I’m a geek and used to be an engineer and know the products very well but it all comes down to people buy from people and hopefully more sales folks will understand it’s about being respectful and research and relationships.

Hope you guys don’t give up on us!!

Cheers Everyone!
Tim

http://www.linkedin.com/in/schilling

2 Spice ups
12

My coworker gets calls like this all the time. It’s the point now where he puts the calls on speakerphone so we can all listen. He does give that “glimmer of hope” by saying “I’m in the middle of something right now,” and the sales-leech then does the “I’ll call again next week” thing.

Another of my colleagues also gets the sneaky “Hey, is Roberto around?” “Uh, no, there’s no Roberto here…” “Oh, sorry about that. Hey, while I have you on the phone…”

At this point in our experience, we feel no need to be polite to sales-leeches. They’re disingenuous to us, they lie to get their hooks in, so they deserve nothing more than contempt.

I had to call the owner of a company once to get his sales-leech to stop calling me 2-3 times a day. I’d see the number appear on my caller ID, ignore it, and she’d be utterly relentless. She’d either call and not leave a message, leave a message, call our main line asking for me, and repeat. In no uncertain terms, I told him that before her persistent calls bordering on harassment*, I’d considered doing business with his company, but as a result, I will no longer consider them for anything.

He apologized, and tried to worm his way into my sympathy by saying that he was a graduate of our K-12 district, so he hoped that we’d be able to establish a relationship in the future.

Don’t care. No.

They stopped calling.

  • I never thought of it this way until I actually typed this out.
1 Spice up
13

Caller ID plus integrated voicemail = winning

If I don’t recognize the number, I don’t answer my desk phone.
If the caller ID indicates a vendor, I don’t answer my desk phone.

Actually, I do my best to ignore my desk phone. There is a very short list of people who don’t go directly to voicemail.

If they leave a message, Cisco Unity drops it into my Inbox and I listen to it from there.
If they don’t leave a message, well, it wasn’t that important now was it?

2 Spice ups
14

See we get the calls put through from our Reception. They tell me who it is so I could ask them to put vendors through to VM I guess, but I can understand their frustration with people who refuse to take calls all day (as my old manager did).

1 Spice up
15

It’s either their sanity or yours. From your post I assume you just recently got into a position where you’re called often? If so, really find a quick and good way to get rid of them. I made the mistake of letting them call at a later point… Coming up with a new excuse is really annoying the second time.

16

Yep from IT Tech to IT Manager, so now I get all the fun calls. Normally people are okay and get the hint. The worst thing is, I AM going to be looking at the possibility of changing phone/data provider. It’s definitely not going to be the offending party now though.

1 Spice up
17

Ha! We’re in the exact same position. If you ask a few technical questions specific to your situation and they know a good answer, it might be worth looking into. That’s how I’m filtering now and it’s working pretty well.

18

Turn my phone off, or rip the bloody thing out the wall (VoIP) seems to work quite well. :slight_smile:

Check nomorobo.com heard this does well with keeping your sales/auto-calls at bay.

1 Spice up
19

Alas, it appears nomorobo isn’t supported by any of the wired or wireless carriers here in the US. Couldn’t imagine why…

20

this is why I could never be a sales person. Once a person says no, I generally get the point.

2 Spice ups