Every time this happens to me I swear it will never happen again and then it does. Thankfully it doesn’t happen too frequently (1 or 2 times a year) but when it does it reminds me that no matter how good you are at what you do or how many times you’ve had the conversation, each client and prospect is unique and you have to treat them that way. If you don’t, they will know and then it doesn’t matter how good you are.

I had just gotten off a red-eye flight on Friday morning after a week of training where I ended up getting sick and losing my voice. Because of my travel schedule these days I need to cram in as many client and prospect meetings as I can when I’m home so this particular day I had (6) thirty minute sales calls scheduled with prospects back to back to back and didn’t give myself any room in between. In hindsight I probably should have rescheduled some if not all of them but I decided to power through since my schedule wasn’t any better the following week.

My usual meeting prep includes going through a checklist of things and filling out a standard meeting notes form I keep in Evernote. It includes stuff like the “about us” summary, recent news/events, linking profiles with any notable connections or background info, an agenda, goals for the meeting, specific questions to ask each individual, etc. On this day I did the basics for each meeting (about us, linkedin, goals) but I didn’t have time to put too much thought into the stuff that matters (specific questions, recent news/events, etc).

The last meeting of the day was set up by a rep who saw me at a conference and wanted to introduce me to his CEO and VP. He was excited to make the intro because he not only liked the content I shared at the conference but also loved my approach and thought it aligned perfectly with the culture of their company. He started the call off by making the introduction and I took it from there. I asked my basic “doctor check-up” qualifying questions about how many reps they had, how their team was structured, what existing processes/methodologies they had in place and what their objectives were. Once I got the info I thought I needed I went into my pitch. I walked them through the program and the details trying to tie back to some of their objectives and make it relevant to them but ultimately I could almost feel myself on auto-pilot.

When I was done I asked if they had any questions. The VP asked a few basic ones but nothing that showed much interest at all in what I had just presented. The CEO, who was apparently a very charismatic extrovert was noticeably quiet. I knew I hadn’t engaged either of them very well but I was up against the 30 minutes we had scheduled so I asked about next steps. Their response was one you would expect – they asked me to ‘send them information’ which they would review and get back to me. When we got off the phone I sent them over the info with a summary of what I got from our conversation and tried to finish up my day.

I got an e-mail response within the hour from the rep who had set up the call saying they had talked after the call and decided not to move forward. He graciously offered to give me some feedback on why they made their decision. Here’s what he said “She felt she wasn’t engaged in a conversation.  Felt you didn’t understand our business.  She just couldn’t connect with you.  Didn’t think the questions you asked demonstrated that you did you homework.” As harsh as it was to here she was 100% correct. I had been caught going through the motions and I deserved it. I thanked him for the feedback and apologized to him for wasting their time.

This blog post is another apology to them for not respecting their time enough to do the necessary prep work and treat them as a unique client with their own needs regardless of how many times I think I’ve heard a similar story. If you can’t make the time to prepare and understand their specific needs of each and every client then you don’t deserve their business. My hope is something positive can come out of this situation by sharing this example with everyone and hopefully waking someone else up through the process. I’m awake now and off auto-pilot flying my own plane again.Thanks Josh.