Sounds like a funny question right? Well I just ran into a very strange situation a few months ago, and I feel compelled to share it. I was leaving a voice message for a vendor when I heard a bunch of F-bombs coming from him as I was leaving my message. Apparently, the vendor never stopped recording, and it eventually captured an inter-office business conversation laced with vendor F-bombs. The F-bombs start revealing themselves about 10 seconds after the vendor voice message finishes, but the caller never hears a beep prompting the caller to start leaving their message. Imagine how many customers, or better yet, potential customers, have heard this, but never said anything to the vendor. I called the vendor to let him know, and he was flabbergasted. Maybe it’s time to check your voice message. Keep listening to make sure it doesn’t contain something potentially embarrassing, or damaging to business opportunities.

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In today’s world, so many buyers have one eyebrow up when they meet with vendors. A classic, and easily detectable mistake is when vendors rely on assertions instead of claims. What’s the difference? A claim is a statement that can be backed up with evidence, and an assertion is a baseless statement with little, to no evidence as back up. Where do you and your customer facing teams fall? Maybe it’s time to make sure that you’re using claims instead of assertions?

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I learned a valuable, and painful lesson years ago. I met three customers for important lunch, and for the second time, I was 15 minutes late. Little did I know that the leader of the customer group was an ex-marine, and punctuality was a standard operating procedure for him. As I greeted everyone and sat down… I got my head handed to me. From that day on, I have worked diligently on trying to be punctual in business. It’s probably one of my biggest weaknesses in business, and life. I constantly try to get better at it. What say you? Where do you fall in the spectrum of punctuality? What improvements can you make?

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