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Lose Your Sale) How to lose an IT project sale.
My name is Paul Karol and I work as a director in a Russian IT company that mostly sells their products into the American Market. What we will discuss today was so costly for that company that I want to share this knowledge so that it doesn't happen to other Russian IT companies.
Case Study
Today I want to tell you about a sale that almost was. I was Consulting for this one company and they were involved in selling software to the United States. This one particular client was in contact with the sales manager for 2 months.
Now this sales manager was very good at their job and they had a lot of charisma on the phone and in the text messages. However they specifically did not know something that cost them a large contract.
1. In Russia it's respectful not to talk about your personal life because you feel that you're wasting someone's time if you do not know them well.
2. In the United States once you have been talking with somebody for a couple of months you would start to consider them sort of a friend.
The Russian IT sales manager had not been in contact with this client for about a week and this was unusual.
They were worried.
Then the text message came that said this.
"I'm sorry Marina that I have not been in contact with you for some time. I took my family and kids to the Lakeside and we enjoyed some time by the beach."
The Russian IT sales manager did not know how to think about this and they asked this question.
" So, do you want to buy our product?"