Losing hard-earned Trust

Twice. That's how many times I've engaged with potential suppliers who've made "cold" contact with me via LinkedIn. Despite using the platform daily for many years, only two people have created enough initial interest, followed by a sense of trust, that I've engaged with them to the point of considering signing-up to their company's offerings.

One of those sent me a proposal. I saw value in the offering and was happy with the price quoted. Due to the nature of the service, I was even made aware of who much profit the supplier would make on the proposal. Still happy, I arranged a follow-up call to complete the application. Job done and a new customer won by said supplier. Right? Wrong!

Having done all of the hard-work, this supplier then eroded all of my trust through some avoidable steps:

1. I missed several calls to my mobile phone from a land-line number that I didn't recognise and, returned to results when searching on the all-knowing Google. The caller didn't leave a voicemail. Eventually, I answered one of these calls to find it was an admin person at the supplier wanting to confirm the time of the planned "close" call.
2. Over the next few days, various people from the same supplier sent me LinkedIn InMails trying to sell me their services. I was polite in my responses, explaining that I'd already verbally committed to purchase and suggesting that they might want to update their CRM.
3. The profiles of those individuals show so little employment history detail that my now suspicious (paranoid?!) mind made me wonder if they are real people, or made-up profiles with some unsuspecting person's photo, being used to get around the maximum limit of one person sending InMails
4. Now that I'm feeling uncomfortable, I've done more digging and have been left with enough doubts that I have cancelled the next call and will not be proceeding.

I'm sure that this company is reputable. They are regulated by the relevant authority. But a few "spam" calls and careless repeat attempts to sell to me, even once I'd said "yes" has lost them my business.

Nelson Mandela said: "I never lose. I either win or learn". I've given my reasons for not proceeding to the supplier and hope that they will learn.

Far too many sales are sabotaged by the actions of the sales person or their company. If you'd like to talk about who you can minimise the amount of time you get in your own way, give me a call / say "hello" via LinkedIn. I'll log it in my CRM system and try not to give you cause to wave goodbye!