Turning Around a Troubled Sales Effort
I would like to collect some stories about professionals artfully righting a sales effort that fallen in a ditch. Here is one, for starters:
An executive recruiter accidentally called the client by the wrong name during a sales pitch. Who hasn’t at least once in a career? He apologized, but it was not his day, and he did it again. The third time he did it, he caught himself and without saying another word, picked put on his coat and started putting away his things. The client asked what he was doing, to which he responded cheerily, “I would never hire somone who got my name wrong three times at an important meeting. I suspect you wouldn’t either, so I don’t want to waste more of your time. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I wish you all success with the search.” He had read his client correctly; the man laughed and told the recruiter to take his coat of, because he wanted to continue the discussion. The recruiter got the search.
Do any of you have good stories about artfully turning around a difficult sales situation?