“Are you Team Cat or Team Dog?”
The other night, a door-to-door salesperson knocked at my door.
As soon as I opened it, I noticed his jacket, name tag, and clipboard. I realized right away that my FIFA game would have to wait as I was about to be stuck in a sales pitch.
Here’s how the encounter unfolded:
– He greeted me with a big, fake smile and asked how my day was going.
– He made a theatrical show about how I was the first person to ask how his day was in return. “Not bad, yours?” he said—I find that hard to believe in England.
– He then asked if I preferred cats or dogs.
– Despite my clear body language indicating I was busy and not interested, he plowed through his script.
– I told him I was preoccupied, and he offered to return in three hours, to which I eventually (and firmly) said I wasn’t interested.
What struck me is that even as a Sales/BD coach who sells regularly, I nearly gave him some false hope about a future meeting. I had to really hold back the impulse to do so.
He was essentially trying to schedule a meeting, and I would have ended up either ghosting him or attending without any intention of buying.
Sound familiar?
If he had provided me an easy way out right from the start, we could have both avoided a few minutes of awkward conversation in those first 10 seconds.
The reality is, if someone isn’t going to buy, you need to get them off the call and out of your funnel as soon as possible. The same principle applies when selling job opportunities to candidates.
And if your current company rewards this kind of behavior with pointless KPIs, it might be time to find a new job.
