An Open Letter to Sales People Everywhere

Good afternoon, person who shall not be named,

You contacted me a few weeks ago to offer your company’s services in our office supply needs.  Let me point out, that you contacted me.

Actually, you contacted our sales department.  By email.  They forwarded you on to me to take a look at.

After asking for a price quote on information, you gave me some numbers.  In fact, that was all that was in the email that you replied with.  No greeting or salutation.  Just the numbers with item description and your signature.  Already losing points, even though the price was good.

Lucky for us, we had a local office supply store come out at the same time.  They came into our office.  Met him face to face.  He gave me some numbers right away and also took a list of our common products to check out.

His numbers were way better than even yours.  And not only is he local, but they have a paper sample option, free shipping no matter the order size.

Oh, and he got my name right.  In person.  Without seeing it written down.

You on the other hand, didn’t.  Even with my handy signature that has it written correctly.

That sealed the deal.  So thank you for giving me a blog post to write.  And also, I got to write a somewhat snarky email in reply to you that ended with this:

For further reference, I highly recommend that if you proceed to do sales by email that you take the few minutes to double check a name before sending it.  It shows a low level of respect and lack of detail, which just solidified us to choose to go with a different retailer.

Sincerely,

The person that apparently needs to change her name to Kelly

Happy Monday everyone!