I Don’t Need to Know WHY You Were Late. Just Apologize.

Sales people should ALWAYS be early, but sometimes things happen. I remember one time the highway was shut down, and I was stuck for over an hour at a dead stop. I was BEYOND panicked.

When I finally arrived at the account, I launched into a long explanation of why I was late, what had happened, how stressed I was during that hour, how sorry I was....and then I stopped. I could tell I was oversharing and the customer had tuned out and was giving me the "ick" vibes. I shut my mouth and started the meeting.

Since then I have noticed this countless times over the years. Sales reps (and people in general actually) have a tendency to overshare, for lots of things, like:

👉 Reasons they're late
👉 Reasons they can't make a meeting on that date (my kid has a football game, and I missed the last one and promised to be there for this one etc)
👉 Reasons they need the order (I'm super close to winning the trip to the Bahamas, I promised the order to my boss, etc)

We're all human and we all have "stuff", but until you know the customer SUPER well, just apologize once, SINCERELY and move on. No need to overshare. Read the room. Giving the "ick", as my teenagers say, is a recipe for disaster.

Do you agree? What has your experience been like? Let me know in the LinkedIn comments!

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