Casual doesn't mean unprofessional

I know the business world is becoming less formal. You can see it in the way we dress, the way we write emails and the way we greet on another. Business relationships are often strengthened these days by being personable rather than formal. But casual doesn't mean unprofessional.

I have had a few really poor salesmen experiences and thought I would offer them up as cautionary tales for those of us in the sales.

Distracted calling
I had a sales representative from one of my suppliers call me while he was driving & he had me on speaker phone. Besides the fact that the conversation would cut in & out due to background noise. I believe it was start of rush hour and raining outside that day too. He was so distracted from our conversation that he was not thinking about what he was saying. Not thinking enough that the filter between brain and mouth was not functioning. We had to have a make up meeting the following week so he could pull his foot out of his mouth.

My advice is, if you at going to call someone to discuss something important then do not do it while you are distracted. I understand if you receive a call that it might not have control of the timing. But surely if you are going to call your client do it only when you can give them your full attention.

Be prepared
Just like every scout knows, be prepared. Before you make a sales call to a prospective customer have all the information with you. I had a salesmen call me to follow up on a quotation he provided. I had a simple question for him such as "how much of the active ingredient is in the product you quoted to me?". He did not have his quotation in front of him. He proceed to ask me to email my questions to him so he could look at them.

Look if you are going to call me on the telephone to discuss your quotation be prepared to answer some simple questions. If you do not want to talk to me on the telephone then do not call me.

Setting up a time to call
I had one sales rep. write me an email to say I can call him before his first meeting before 8:30 am or between 4:30 & 5:00 pm that day. Otherwise he will be in a meeting all day. The problem with this is I did not want to talk to him. He wanted to talk to me! Or was this to show me how important he was.

Similarly I got this one line email, "let me know when you are free to talk." The problem with this is the person never tried to call me first. I was sitting in the office working all morning. Was I supposed to email back & say, "Now" ? I could understand this message if I was hard to reach or my phone was busy for sometime but to send this before trying to call seems ridiculous.

So please help yourself and do not fall into the above bad habits while contacting your clients or customers.