Telehealth_2the_Moon

Director of Business Development

Gimmicky Presentations Stories

Let's hear some of the stories you have about the most gimmicky things you've seen or heard about happening on a sales call, presentation, pitch, etc.

I want to laugh, I want to cringe, I want to get some ideas I can steal.

😂 Sales Humor

24 comments

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Filth

Politicker

Live Filthy or Die Clean

Ok buckle in for some cringe. Back when I was selling for an HR/Hiring solution I started talking to a bigger midwest town's tourism board. Me and the COO are talking, good report, etc. This is during the covid times and the COO has a poster of Casino Royale behind him off to the side. I'm a big fan of the Bond series reboot and bring it up, turns out he's a pretty big fan.

Now, the place I was at was real small in manpower, so after these good discussions with the prospect - I bring my CEO up to speed. All he seems to hear is the small note about James Bond. He then proceeds to hiring a Daniel Craig impersonator to do a whole personalized video to attach to our proposal...it was bad. I mean the guy kinda looks like Craig, add a tuxedo, sure...but the bad fake accent and the whole video...man my CEO was so fucking proud of himself and I could barely look at this thing.

End of story, we got the deal, but I had to kind of tell the prospect my CEO is a bit extra to put it lightly. Here's a link to the impersonators linkedin if your curious lol

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamestaggart007/

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

One too many sessions of needing to think outside the box! That's hilarious.

And now he's going to KNOW it works, so watch out.

Filth

Politicker

Live Filthy or Die Clean

OMG yes, the amount of times he was like - that bond guy got us the deal BOOM was torturous. You are spot on.

LordOfWar

Tycoon

Blow it up

I hate it when management thinks the single, half-assed thing they did is what closed the deal.

I lost it on the boss when he tried to say the largest order in the company's history was likely due to someone he knew who might have put in good word for us (never confirmed) and not from me working my ass off for 3 months backchanneling the deal through gov't and private buyers.

Filth

Politicker

Live Filthy or Die Clean

Ha, talk about cringe worthy. The amount of times I've been in positions and had to apologize for a manager or executive to a prospect and confirm they are working with me, not my boss, is way beyond counting.

jefe

Arsonist

🍁

Damn, I think you may win this.

Filth

Politicker

Live Filthy or Die Clean

It's winning by losing lol

jefe

Arsonist

🍁

Still winning, doubly (O) since you got the Closed Won

Telehealth_2the_Moon

Notable Contributor

Director of Business Development

Hahaha that's amazingly bad. Very well intentioned but clearly your CEO hasn't been told maybe all of their ideas aren't good ones enough!

SaaSsy

Politicker

Hahaha! HR sales leaders all seem to be the same.

antiASKHOLE

Tycoon

Bravado's Resident Asshole

I'm here with the popcorn and am ready to laugh.

SaaSsy

Politicker

Same - also great topic for EOM when alllll the sales managers think they’re inventing new ways of closing

Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

Sales Rep

In a deal to a teacher's union, everyone told a story about their favorite teacher growing up. Was nice at first but after a week of demos with a ton of partners/engineers doing it, got old very quick

Telehealth_2the_Moon

Notable Contributor

Director of Business Development

Oh man, how many people are we talking? Was this a 45 minute exercise to start things off?

Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

Sales Rep

Pretty much, when the partner was ready to present and did their intro they would go. When our team would go, all of us did.

Telehealth_2the_Moon

Notable Contributor

Director of Business Development

Ohhh that's bad. So they did it multiple times without being like "nah this isn't working like we thought it would"

DungeonsNDemos

Big Shot

Rolling 20's all day

Man, that would get old fast.

DevSomeBiz

Valued Contributor

Senior B2B Sales Guy.

I used to work for a company that makes extremely rugged laptops and tablets - think military, police, etc. One of our common presentation tactics was to just fling the laptop across the room during the presentation. No warning or anything, just casually mention that it's practically indestructible and send it.

I was sitting on a bench in Central Park with a lead, and I chucked a tablet. It bounced, rolled, and slid in front of a roller blader, who hit it and wiped out. The lead jumped up, ran to grab the tablet, and took off across the park. I went to see if the guy who fell was OK, which he was. The roller blader assumed that my lead dropped the tablet some how, and I didn't correct him! Won the deal.

Telehealth_2the_Moon

Notable Contributor

Director of Business Development

Wait, did the lead steal the laptop?? Or pick it up to run and hide the evidence??

Either way this sounds like something from a sales-specific sitcom. Like if the Always Sunny gang had a different sales job each episode.

jefe

Arsonist

🍁

It definitely sounded like he stole the laptop which would be amazing/awful.

DevSomeBiz

Valued Contributor

Senior B2B Sales Guy.

When I asked him about it later, he said “man, I have priors.” I didn’t ask any more. He ended up buying a couple dozen units. Not a huge sale. He managed a large liquor distributor, and he used them for drivers to manage routes and deliveries.

Telehealth_2the_Moon

Notable Contributor

Director of Business Development

Oh so he was like "if the authorities get involved I'm not going to be anywhere near here", probably a smart move honestly.

LordOfWar

Tycoon

Blow it up

I had some guy from the UK hound me to sign up and pay to be listed on his website. He just wouldn't take no for an answer and insisted on a demo.

I had nothing better to do so I let him walk me through it even though I was adamant we were not interested. FIgured he just had a quota for demos or something. His website was crashing the whole time and it was frankly super embarrassing for him as he tried to explain it away and kept trying to make it work when it was clearly having big backend issues.

When he finally got to the end and still wasn't accepting no, I told him I'd forward to management to review. He then tried to pull the "Oh well we only want to work with companies who value what we can do for them" angle.

He didn't take kindly to my response of "well we only want to list on functioning websites so it seems like we're not aligned."

UK reps are top-tier cringe.

nomdeguerre

Executive

Account executive

Doesn’t fit exactly but I thought of it and it was pretty cringy.

A number of years back I had been working on a pretty large deal with one of the largest travel groups in Europe.

Frankly they had been dicking around for months. Meeting after meeting, demo after demo. Just dragging things out with useless BS.

Then at one point we’re in yet another meeting and we do yet another meeting, and I guess I just had enough of their BS. Sooooo, when one of the leaders asked me what would I say about them getting live by (insert completely unrealistic date), I said “I would say welcome to LaLa land” stone faced.

You could hear a pin drop and needless to say, they didn’t like my answer and of course we didn’t get the order.

Although in my defense it was clear we wouldn’t get it anyway, but still pretty cringe LOL

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Telehealth_2the_Moon

Gimmicky Presentations Stories

24 comments

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