Have you ever had a sales meeting go well, just to immediately go south? I have had plenty, it’s bound to happen when you have done thousands of meetings over a long career. There was one though that left an indelible impression on my early sales career.
I was just transitioning from sales engineer to sales executive and was shadowing another rep. We had a meeting with a prospect early in the sales cycle and it was mostly going well. That is until my colleague dropped an F-bomb casually in his retelling of a customer example. I could see people around the room glancing at each other quickly as the rep kept talking.
As the meeting ended and everyone filed out of the conference room, our sponsor who set up the meeting walks over as we were packing up. After exchanging a few thoughts on the meeting, our sponsor paused for a moment. Then he said, “And maybe in the future, you can tone down the language.”
The meeting never led to a follow up. The prospect never returned any messages. We only brought on that prospect as a customer after the original sales executive on the deal had left and a new one came in to manage the relationship.
It might be useful at this point to share some context. First, the customer was a bank based in the Midwest US and their culture was very conservative. Second, most of the attendees in the meeting were quite senior and older. Third, this was twenty years ago.
None of these points should matter on their own. It seems ridiculous that a company would stop all discussions with a vendor to solve a significant business problem based on a sales rep uttering a single word. Aren’t we all adults capable of handling some salty language on occasion? What’s up with these prudes?
If that is what you are thinking, that is exactly the type of thinking that got this sales executive frozen out of his account. This is our “me” centric frame of reference, as opposed to an “other” centric view that allows us to consider the perspectives of our prospects and customers. In the context of the story above, it was not the best setting or timing to be dropping colorful language.
The question of foul language in a sales call became a hot topic at the start of 2020 when a Silicon Valley sales technology vendor brought it up in a viral post. According to their data, swearing can actually lead to higher close rates. At the time I ignored it because I thought it was a marketing stunt, plus there was no way to confirm their data or analyze their research methodology.
With the shift to all digital selling and my recent series of posts on authenticity however, it seems worth exploring the question of how swearing impacts engagement with buyers. Does swearing lead to more authentic bonds or does it do the opposite? Should you be dropping F-bombs and more in your meetings with customers?
A few years back, I was attending the Rainmaker conference where Jacco van der Kooij was one of the main speakers. I enjoyed his talk and how he has continued to elevate the acumen of B2B sales in the tech industry. I wondered though if his colorful jokes and language would cause any issues with the audience. Sure enough, controversy erupted when one well-known sales leader shared on LinkedIn her discomfort with his talk. Most of the commenters agreed.
Context matter. In the more metropolitan Atlanta, the cultural mores of the South still hold strong. The same talk in San Francisco or New York would not have caused any uproar. When I was working on the floor of the commodities exchange at the start of my career, every other word was an F-bomb. When I jumped to startups a decade ago, it was not that much different. Removed from the stifling work culture of corporate offices, startup founders could be themselves.
The startup culture is about bringing your whole self to work. There is much less of the artificial separation of work and life personas. Employees in startups tend to be more of their authentic selves, which shows in how sales reps approach their sales efforts and engage with prospects. So a blog post from a Silicon Valley startup about swearing on sales calls makes sense in this context. It’s hoodies and Allbirds all the way down.
When it comes to authenticity in business relationships, it’s useful to think of it as a dial. Turn it all the way down and you come off as robotic. Turn the dial all the way to ten though, and you are in TMI (Too Much Information) territory. Someone like Gary Vee would be dialed up to ten. He is always on and always raw. On the other end, it would be something akin to listening to C-SPAN.
You use that dial to gauge how much of yourself to share as you learn more about your prospects. Observe how open your contacts are as they speak and engage with you and each other. If your prospect is swearing like sailors, then you can drop in a few choice words knowing that it will not cause offense. This is known as mirroring, where you mimic aspects of the person you are engaging with to put them at ease.
At this point, you might be thinking I am contradicting myself. How can you be truly authentic and at the same time hold back who you truly are? Think of it like dating. You probably have some weird habits and ticks that you would not openly share with someone you are just dating. That is because you want the person to trust you. Then over time as they trust you more, they also become more accepting of your weirder traits.
When building relationships with prospects, you need to earn their trust. You are not turning off your personality, you are simply calibrating how open you are and dialing back some of the more extreme aspects of your personality in order to build up trust. Once trust, credibility, and rapport is established, then you can share your love of extreme metal music and knowledge of dumplings across global cuisines.
Language is a powerful tool of influence. Use it too loosely, you could make prospects uncomfortable and experience unintended consequences, like a prospect ghosting you. Use it too tightly, you come off as untrustworthy. The question of whether to swear or not with prospects is the wrong question. The right question is how much of yourself is appropriate to share with prospects, because ultimately people buy from people and we prefer to buy from people we trust.
What about yourself and your comfort with swearing in sales meetings and calls? Is it a no-go for you or are you ok letting it rip when appropriate? Share your experiences, and until next week, sell your fucking faces off 😉
Mark Birch, Founder of the Enterprise Sales Forum
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