Back to our friend’s sales call earlier in the week…This person had clearly not analyzed the audience. He didn’t know even how to pronouce the company’s name, had no idea what sort of activity the people in the room actually did, and proceeded to present with confidence to topics that were marginally offensive.A comment was made that “All XYZ is junk.” Bet he’d have liked to have known that one of the people in the room had authorized $1M for an XYZ solution this year. Oops.A sample product (not sure it was even his company’s) was passed out with nearly offensive pictures on the cover (target audience of the sample product was supposed/presumed to be young males). The group in the room was 33% female, the company is right at 50% female, and average age around 40. The comment, “I’ll bet this looks just like your work force here…” was downright uncalled for and sent credibility to zero.He demoed several application/solutions that were a little out of the box. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but none of them were related to the problems the folks who were watching faced, and if similar things were deployed, I know for a fact the CEO would have fired people on the spot had he seen it. One phone call, 15 minutes of Googling, and a conversation starter instead of the canned “introduce yourself…” beginning could have circumvented all that, and the sales call could very well have had a decidedly different (and six-figure) outcome.One simple rule to live by:
Know your audience, and meet their needs.
