Are you rude to sales people in your job ?

[stairmasster]

If you deal with sales / business development people in your job. I don't mean door to door sales people, but B2B sales of products and services for your company.

Are you rude to them ? Are they rude to you ? Are they the bane of your life or do they bring any value to you ?

What do they do that annoys you ? What do the ones that annoy you less do ?

I work in B2B sales and have done for a long time, but sometimes I get frustrated by how we are treated when at the end of the day, we are just doing our jobs. I don't really mean cold calling so much. I mean more when you've actually engaged with someone to see if their products / services can help you and then you just treat them like a non human.

Any insights appreciated !

If I’ve approached them, then I’m not generally rude though I’ve found some sales staff to be incredibly sexist and unprofessional at times and I’ve refused to deal with them (a long time ago now, though, haven’t dealt with anyone like that in a few years).

If it’s a cold call I’m definitely what could be considered rude - I think cold calling is a totally unacceptable practice and I’m not going to be polite to people who do it.

No, mainly because that was my job so I understand it’s just a job and no obligation anyway! The only people I might be rude to are persistant callers when I have been direct and told them I’m not interested for whatever reason. Other times, I may take on the product or service because it’s a good fit. I’m always pretty direct though so they’re clear on whether it’s bad timing or a bad fit.

I hate cold calling but lots of companies still somehow manage to get business that way.

It depends what you mean by engaging with someone really.

I generally am not rude, but if someone doesn’t stop contacting me after an initial polite no then I do get direct and then just ignore.

I'm always polite (unless it's a scammer).
I take the view they're just trying to earn a living. I never buy from a cold caller but I'm polite and firm in my refusal to hear any more once I know why they're calling.

I got some of my best clients from cold calling. I just made sure I got the timing right and did my research on whether they’d be a good fit before I contacted them. Nothing wrong with cold calling if you do it properly.

Honestly, if I'm having a bad day and someone phones to ask if I have foreign currency transactions I will be pretty short with them. Not rude but not chatty.

I am rude to people who won't tell me what they're actually selling because they clearly think I'm not in any position of power and just keep dancing round the subject and people who want to speak to my boss and won't talk to me at all.

Just FYI sales people, my boss won't answer a number he doesn't recognise. So you either talk to me and I'll pass on messages worth passing on, or you'll eventually get an earful from me because you're wasting my time.

No I'm not. I'm not rude to anyone unless they're rude to me.

I'm not rude as they're only trying to do their job. I'm sure most of them don't really want to be there anymore than we want them calling us. If they're persistent then I tend to get a bit firmer.
I used to be rude to scammers calling from abroad. I read a newspaper article a few months back that some of the callers are trafficked in & made to do the job, especially those in the far East. They are supposedly treated appallingly if they don't. I don't know how true it is but it's made me think twice about being nasty to them, even though I despise what they're doing. I just put the phone down on them now.

Not rude initially but I tend to find they are very persistent and arrogant especially when it comes to trying to get through to higher management who under no means necessary will take the call. I end up rude in the end when the same sales person rings back several times a week maybe even later in the day with different tactics and ways to try bypass me to get to the big boss etc they are almost always rude to me after the initial no sorry, we are not interested

The current approach of emailing 'Hi, I want to talk to you about our product, I have these times available so please pick one' (inevitably followed by frequent and increasingly passive aggressive emails when you don't pick a date for a meeting you have no intention of having) really fucks me off because it it so presumptuous and rude.

So yes I would possibly be rude to those people if one caught me on the phone because I'm frustrated and irritated and they never seem to get the hint that my non response to their completely unsolicited emails tells them all they need to know.

And before anyone says 'you could just be polite and email them back', no just no - I am far too busy to do my own job and certainly don't have time wasting my time #beingkind to everyone who gets my name off LinkedIn

With that rant over.....of course anyone I have proactively engaged with, I wouldn't be rude to. And I'd send a thanks but no thanks if we didn't want to carry on discussions or negotiations

Most sales people I encounter at work are highly trained experts. They're usually the only people on this side of the planet who provide expensive and complicated equipment. They might check in once or twice a year to update us on recent developments for their equipment and that's welcome. Everyone respects them and their time. They're never pushy; they understand that if we need them, we know where they are.

Other sales people are a different breed. There are people who come around trying to sell things no one has asked for and we don't need. It would be fine if they just left information to read or provided links to websites, but they're a lot more pushy than that. It shines through that they just want to make a sale, so of course no one trusts them or wants anything to do with them.

And like NumberTheory said, they're never great people. I usually hesitate to generalise but that's one I feel comfortable making. I was at a cafe a couple of weeks ago listening to a group of sales people and their behaviour summed it up for me. Whenever one would get up, the others would all tear him apart. All they talked about was how to take people down and spend money to show their status. It's a type. Estate agents are the same.

We choose what we want to do for a living. Some people don't have a choice. My mother spent her life as a cleaner because she had a brain operation that affected her memory and couldn't do anything else. Most people in sales could get other work though. It's a choice that they do a job that's often about being pushy and dishonest.

I used to work in sales & telemarketing and am always polite to any B2B callers. I too wonder sometimes why some people feel the need to be so rude.

That being said, I guess for some it feels intrusive and that the conversation is all about the caller really rather than them.

I’m less patient when it’s unsolicited calls to my personal number from companies I’ve never dealt with before, although even then it’s probably not the fault of the person on the end of the line.

Oh gosh I think that's a terrible approach of these sales people. Sounds like a lot of recruiters who contact me.

My emails are more around ' I am speaking to (your role ) and they're finding XYZ challenging. We have helped them overcome these challenges using our product / service. Let me know if this resonates and you would like to exchange ideas on this / hear more about how we are helping in this area. '

Or even better if I find an article you've written on LinkedIn and it resonates with something that fits with my product / service. I'll mention I read your article and then tie it into exchanging ideas around the topic or whatever.

Anyway, I was meaning more that people can be rude even if you're already engaged in a conversation with them too. They just don't engage in common curtesy stuff. They demand things from you and then don't say thanks, that kind of thing. Or they don't reply to emails even though they said they would provide you with whatever you needed. Then they ghost.. etc.

It's like any rule of how you should behave in a professional way towards someone you work with, don't apply to us.

I totally disagree with the notion that sales people are dishonest. Not in professional roles for good companies. It doesn't work like that.

But most of the approaches people get are from low level hustlers. When I was the person most likely to answer the phone in the IT department I got lots of calls where the caller was full of little lies about why they were calling, how they got the number etc.

When I was actually making purchasing decisions and someone else screened out cold callers, I generally only spoke with people who were interested in developing a mutually beneficial relationship and trust was a big piece of what they did. But I spoke to way fewer people in that role than I did when I was more junior and screening out cold callers.

Only if they won't take no for an answer.

Some sales people don't know when to stop. When I say no, thank you, I mean it. I then don't have time to waste on 'keeping in touch' calls.

I've said no. I mean no. If the situation or budget changes, I know when to find them.

This is really enlightening thank you all for contributing.

The whole ' getting to the people higher up' thing is tricky.

Often when companies are looking to buy a new product or service they send someone to go looking around for it. They then approach us or are open to talking to us, to gather information to then report back to the higher up person / people.

Sometimes though, they're also not telling us the full story and also end up lying to us about why they're needing to do all this research. It may not be because they were taxed to look for something, but because they're looking for themselves for whenever reason. I'm happy to talk people through what we do and I love making connections but these things can then take up a lot of time without leading anywhere.

I'm happy to have an initial conversation with someone who's just doing research but I need to protect my time and resources after that.

The person may have lied to me to get this information form me, so often when we start to get deeper into discussions we do need to speak to another person to understand what their challenges are and if there is actually an initiative and a need. Otherwise we also waste time and resources. It's a very delicate situation to not make the initial person feel like you want to go above their head, but it needs to happen at some point.

Again the stuff I'm mentioning here is not cold stuff. It's when you're already engaged in conversation and have spent time together working on something. I wouldn't just call and ask to speak to your boss immediately.

The only one I'm curt with is an Amex sales person who repeatedly calls my mainline and pretends he's been speaking with my boss when he hasn't. Can't stand that.

No need to be rude. But once I establish they are a sales call I complain about the bad phone line and gently pop them on hold until they fuck off.

I generally block their email address if I’m not interested to avoid the annoying barrage of follow up emails and likewise if they manage to get my mobile number and call me, I’ll tell them I’m not interested and block their mobile number.

if I want a new tech solution or know how subscription then I’ll attend an industry convention or get one of my team to carry out research into the best providers of what I need. I’d never spend company money on some random who approached me out of the blue about a product that I hadn’t previously identified a need for. My budget is stretched enough without even countenancing that!

I am polite but firm, they need to listen to the first 'no thank you we are not interested'

No one should be rude but accept no

I wouldn't say I'm rude but there are some companies I am firm with as they keep calling despite me telling them on numerous occasions that head office deal with those contracts (and providing their main number). I've taken to saying "thank you but you've called me numerous times and I've relayed head office deal with this. Their contact details are in your records or available online" and hanging up. My role is very busy in a care home where there already aren't enough hours in the day. If they consider me to be rude maybe they should look at their own invasive practices.