Favoritism

Coffee Killed the Sale – Showing Favoritism.

I was involved in a fairly large opportunity where they had an eight member team that was to recommend the vendor. After a long process, where many times we thought we were in the lead, we lost the deal. Heart breaker. During the sales process Starbucks Coffee was offered. Not a bad thing right? Except my salesman did it almost every week, sometimes a couple of times a week, to the person heading up the decision. There were some serious politics between this team that we weren’t exactly privy to. Prior to one of the meetings this same salesman sent a message to all eight asking what they would like to drink. He said “I already know what Jill wants how about the rest?” At that point she went out of her way to not show us any favoritism. Prior to this she had been our advocate.