Lazy salespeople should not exist - at least not in a business to business environment. It should not be possible to be a lazy B2B salesperson and remain employed. And yet....it happens all the time.
How often do you get targeted by someone trying to sell you on their company's products or services, when 2 minutes on Google would have told them that you're not in their target market? Or told them how to and how not to approach you? I get multiple phone calls like this every day - thank heavens for voice mail. And here's the thing: even if I was interested in their offering, by revealing their complete ignorance about me and my company up front, they've ensured they will not be on my shortlist of possible vendors.
In this day and age, it's not very difficult to find out information about a company. It requires 3 basic tools:
- A heartbeat
- A brain
- An internet connection
When a company sets out to make a major business purchase decision, such as acquiring a new ERP Software package, they will typically engage with multiple potential vendors. Some of those vendors are simply not appropriate for the business - perhaps there's no industry-specific fit, or the business is too big / small for the software. So who should be able to determine that lack of a fit quickly and save everyone wasted time and energy? Should it be the buyer, who is perhaps doing this for the first time in his/her life? Or should it be the vendor, who does this every day for a living? The answer is obvious.
And yet...there are so many salespeople out there in the ERP Software industry who will actively and aggressively pursue a prospect, rush to a demo, and write and aggressively promote a proposal, without ever really learning enough about the buyer to understand that they are not a good fit in the first place.
If the prospective ERP Software (or other B2B) supplier spends much more time asking you questions about your business than telling you about their solution, that's a really good, positive sign. If they already seem to know a little about your business and your industry the first time you speak, that again is a strong indicator that they're organized and efficient. If not, you may be dealing with a lazy salesperson.
