Don’t make this fatal mistake

I get lots of cold calls from salespeople trying to sell me stuff for my business. In most cases, I quickly brush them off, usually because they are unprepared or unfocused or because they simply do a poor job of selling during the call.

However, last week, a salesperson managed to keep me on the phone and schedule me for an online demo. That doesn’t happen very often!

After our call, he sent me an Outlook invite to ensure that he was on my calendar. I accepted it and made sure I was at my desk at the scheduled time. Unfortunately, the salesperson failed to show up for the demo. No email. No call. No contact whatsoever.

It is unlikely I will buy his product — unless he contacts me later this week with a genuinely good reason why he missed the scheduled call.