How to walk away from a sale

Knowing how (and when) to walk away from a sales opportunity is a difficult, but important skill for a technical salesperson to learn. Great sales people lose fast and lose early! In this episode of the Luxury of Choice, host Steve Vaughan is joined by fellow trainers Jayne Green and Jonathan Slasinski to discuss when a salesperson should walk away, and how to do it professionally. 

Steve Vaughan, Jonathan Cooper, Pru Layton, Christian Walter, Pascal le Floche,  Jayne Green  and Jonathan Slasinski are Sales Trainers from george james ltd.  You can email the show at:  Podcast@georgejames-training.com

 The trainers on LinkedIn:

 Steve Vaughan https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-vaughan-salestrainer/
Jonathan Cooper https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-cooper-18716b1/
Pru Layton https://www.linkedin.com/in/pru-layton-b46a3528/
Christian Walter https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-walter-a1857b1/
Jayne Green https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayne-green-salestrainer/
Pascal Le Floch-Riche https://www.linkedin.com/in/pascal-le-floch-220ba46/

Jonathan Slasinski https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-slasinski-449a655/

george james training website https://georgejames-training.com/

Transcript

Steve Vaughan (00:01)
Hello again and welcome to The Luxury of Choice, a B2B sales and business podcast brought to you by the training team of George James Limited. My name is Steve Vaughan. I'm one of the training team here at George James and also the host and producer of this podcast. And I'm pleased to say after a couple of shows where we've actually brought you some repeats of earlier shows, we're back with a new content program today, mainly because finally, after all the traveling we've all been doing in the team.

We're all back to our normal places at work. And today I've got Jonathan Zlaczynski and Jayne Green with me. So how are you both? Jonathan, I saw you in Dallas last time. I saw you, yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (00:37)
Yeah, Dallas and that

was Vietnam before that Portugal before that Seattle before that Richmond, Virginia before that so it's been a it's been a good start to the year. Busy but just good to be back and glad to be you know talking with you all and getting another episode out there.

Steve Vaughan (00:42)
Wow.

Yeah, super busy.

Jayne Green (00:53)
Mmm.

Steve Vaughan (00:53)
Absolutely and Jayne I saw you last week in Paris and you've been super busy as well.

Jayne Green (00:57)
You did indeed.

Yeah, and a of busy time coming up as well the next few weeks.

Steve Vaughan (01:03)
Of course you've got scheduled training courses coming up, haven't you? Yeah, yeah. Well, let's go on with today's topic then really. And this is a topic which comes up a lot in our sales training. And I know a lot of salespeople do find it difficult, particularly newer salespeople, to sort of conceptualize really. And it's the concept of walking away, walking away from a sale, which probably does sound a strange thing to do.

Jayne Green (01:05)
Yeah, yep, yep.

Steve Vaughan (01:29)
But first of all, let's just define what we actually mean by walking away. So Jayne, what do we mean here? When we say we're going to walk away, obvious connotations mean we get up and walk away. But in terms of the sales process, what are we talking about?

Jayne Green (01:45)
Yeah, I guess it depends when we're walking away, but maybe we'll talk about later. It's that moment that we've made a decision, a strategic decision, that actually this isn't the opportunity or the lead that we want to play and take into the funnel or take further down the funnel for good reason. That actually we don't believe this is an order that we can win.

Steve Vaughan (01:48)
Sure. Yeah.

Jayne Green (02:07)
and if we get to that decision then actually it's really important that we know it is time to walk away.

Steve Vaughan (02:15)
Great, great, great. So for New sales people that perhaps might not have thought about this really, we can make the decision. It doesn't always have to be the customer's decision as to which way they go. We can choose to actually say to the customer, you know what, I don't think that we're right for you or you're right for us in not so many words. We can do that, Jonathan, can't we? It's absolutely fine.

Jonathan Slasinski (02:37)
Oh, definitely. think that there's, you know, there's a couple, a couple instances of what we would we consider walking away. think the first one Jayne kind of nailed it. It's about qualification. Are we really the right fit for them? Uh, you know, part of our, you know, one of some of the things we train on is losing fast, losing early, right? Like being able to understand, are we the right fit? You know? And again, as she said, when is this happening? Is this, you know, is it, is it down the, is it down the funnel?

Jayne Green (02:47)
Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Slasinski (03:03)
But I also think in my career, walking away has been more about that strategic fit, right? Where, yes, we do fit well with their products, but this customer could present some challenges, whether it be training, support, you know, there's other ways that, you know, we might have to walk away depending on, you know, the customer fit versus the product fit. And I think that there's different ways to think about this.

Jayne Green (03:08)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think, can I just add to that? I think exactly that because we might be able to win or we might not be able to win it, but we've got to decide whether we want to win it. It's the crucial part, isn't it, as well.

Steve Vaughan (03:41)
That's a great point. Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (03:41)
Yeah, and I

think that also comes out of timing because I think at the beginning of the quarter, you have a little bit more leeway where you're like, ah, I don't really need to win this right now. But at the end of the quarter, it becomes more of this decision of really strategic. Again, in my career, it's been very far and few between, but I will say there's been some ones that I still remember where I'm like, oh, I should have walked away from that one because the burden of supporting that people and just.

Jayne Green (03:44)
Hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (04:03)
I can think of loads, yeah.

Jayne Green (04:08)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (04:08)
It just wasn't very negative. You know, I think that's it. You know,

the, the, the first thing comes out of that qualification, right? Do we have the right fit here? But then the second comes is, is this someone that's good for our company? Is it good for our brand? Cause it is that collaborative partnership when we do sell things to people.

Jayne Green (04:13)
Yeah.

Yeah,

absolutely.

Steve Vaughan (04:23)
I

can remember probably getting on for 18, 20 years ago now, I won't mention the company I was working for, but we had a tender come in for a product that we weren't, we weren't involved in the specification at all, we got this tender left field. And I will say it was for a mass spectrometer, I won't say any more than that. And we did what you shouldn't, and we just launched this product and we were just trying to get it into the field. And we did what you should never do.

We lobbed a really stupid low price in and unfortunately the customer bought it. And then we spent 12 months trying to make it fit the application that they bought it for, you know, with engineers and applications and it was in Scotland, so a lot of time and effort. And after six months, you know, we should never have gone this. We should have walked away. So you're absolutely right in what you're saying. Why do people find it hard to walk away though? I think in my experience of working with salespeople in our industry, people do find it hard to walk away. Why is that, think?

Jayne Green (04:58)
no.

Jonathan Slasinski (05:02)
Yeah.

I don't think we want to lose, right? We want to win. And you always want your product someplace, right? So to me, when I was working at the NIH, and you go from lab to lab to lab.

Steve Vaughan (05:24)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (05:37)
you'd want your stuff in those labs, you know, so was very tough to be like, oh, no, this really is, well, this isn't the right fit. I gotta get out of here. It's like, no, no, no, there's gotta be something here. And then that just becomes more energy versus kind of going through the next place again, that whole lose fast, lose early. Where are you really wasting your, where are you spending your time?

Jayne Green (05:40)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (05:48)
Hmm. Yeah.

Jayne Green (05:49)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (05:54)
Were you good at losing fast to losing early, Jayne? Is it something you learned to do in your career?

Jayne Green (05:54)
Yeah. Yeah.

I

had to learn to do it. It wasn't a natural instinct because just like Jonathan said, you want your products everywhere. You don't want to lose anything. ⁓ Why? Because losing might feel like failure. So we have to deal with that, you know, ⁓ emotionally with ourselves. What does that actually mean? But I think actually it's confidence thing to be able to say this isn't the right fit or it's not the right time.

Steve Vaughan (06:04)
Mm.

Jayne Green (06:28)
you know, whatever that criteria is, or having an understanding of what we're going for, but it's really, it's a really tough thing. I lost orders and I learnt to walk away from orders at times, but that was always a tough one. Sometimes I wasn't courageous enough to do it, you know, and then you end up playing a very long game and end up possibly losing money afterwards by trying to support something that you really should have sort of said no to earlier.

Steve Vaughan (06:40)
Yeah, no, absolutely.

Absolutely. Well, let's explore that a bit more. I I gave an example from my career, but what are the consequences of not walking away at the right time? What can that mean in terms of what happens further down the sales process,

Jonathan Slasinski (07:09)
I think there's a couple things. First of all, it's trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, right? Now you're pushing an opportunity down your funnel, you're keeping it in your funnel, you keep...

Steve Vaughan (07:15)
Yeah, great example.

Jonathan Slasinski (07:22)
Having to address it put you know, put your put your sales on it to it And what are you really trying to do? You're trying to fit something that might not be ideal for them just to get in there ⁓ Kind of what you were talking about, know with that tender right where they had something that was a great price for them But it didn't really fit their technical needs and think of the headaches of service support you trying to get in there Also now the customers starting to get upset the customers thinking about you and your brand But

Steve Vaughan (07:31)
Mm.

That's an important

point because we can easily think about the cost and the what's significant cost to us for engineers and applications people but the most important person in all this Jayne is the customer really isn't it?

Jayne Green (07:57)
Mm-hmm.

Absolutely, yeah and it's about what they actually want, know, and are they wanting what we can offer in terms of if we truly really know our capabilities and we truly really know the requirements, the solutions that would be value to the customer, does that fit? If it doesn't fit we have some very big decisions to make, you know, and I think the customer, sometimes customers don't tell you if it's not a

Steve Vaughan (08:07)
Mm.

Mm.

Jayne Green (08:31)
direct fit straight away. They kind of play this sort of this along, not in any negative way, but they're trying to work out what it is. You know, but we want the best fit for the customer. We want the customer, we don't want them to have our brand if our brand, it damages our brand, but actually next year we might be just the right person for a specific solution. And I think we have to really weigh that up.

Steve Vaughan (08:54)
That's a great point. This podcast is called the Luxury of Choice and I think we do have that luxury of choice. It's not just about having so many great opportunities, we compete the good ones. We also have the luxury of choice not to run with every opportunity that we pick up as well really, isn't it? There's a ⁓ sales lady I follow on LinkedIn. I hope she doesn't mind me mentioning her. Her name is Jessica Reitbrock. I think I've got her name right. She calls herself the antibody queen of the north, which I love.

Jayne Green (09:19)
Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (09:23)
and she wrote a post on LinkedIn a few months ago saying, I told my customer to buy from my competitor. Did I do the right thing? And I think she did. Do you agree on that? Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (09:30)
Yeah, I think she

did too. ⁓ totally. I mean, it's funny. It's like we talk about, you know, when did we learn to lose fast or lose early? was, it definitely wasn't in the beginning of my career, you know, and I would say it's probably towards the end of my career where I finally gave up trying to, you know, be, you know, bulldog. There was this grit, you know, like trying to always get something in there. But I will say once I said, Hey, this isn't the right solution, but

Jayne Green (09:33)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (09:39)
Mmm. no.

Jayne Green (09:41)
Hmm

Mm-mm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (09:55)
being able to add value and knowing what the market was, knowing who the other players were, this could be the better solution for you. That opens the door to, hey, wait, we just got $50,000. What can we buy from you? That credibility and just the fact that, hey, not now, but.

Jayne Green (10:00)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (10:08)
Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (10:11)
It's not, that's not not ever right. So it's like, okay, well, what else can we do? And I think that that really started opening the doors for me as a sales rep when I would just leave, but provide that value of, hey, this could be the better fit for you, not me. And I think that sends light bulbs off just like the antibody, you know, what she calls up the antibody queen of North of the North. That's awesome. I know I love that. But I think

Jayne Green (10:12)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (10:24)
Absolutely.

Jayne Green (10:30)
Of the north, yes. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (10:30)
Queen of the North, North of England, Jonathan.

Jonathan Slasinski (10:34)
I think that's such a great tactic that a lot of reps

don't, they just don't understand. Cause it's just shows your value, right? Like when you can show it, when you can bring to a customer something else, it's not you. Think of the emotions behind that, right? It's first of all, first of all, it's kind of tough for you to give up business, but think of the customer when they're like, wait, why isn't this person trying to sell me something? Why are they trying to sell me something else? wow. That, that just adds so much value and credibility to you.

Jayne Green (10:39)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

Steve Vaughan (11:01)
You're like our one Jayne, do agree with us? Yeah.

Jayne Green (11:01)
definitely. And a higher sense of trust. absolutely. I mean, we spend our lives as salespeople trying to build trust and rapport with customers. And so walking away because there's a better solution and being open enough, like Jonathan said, to actually even say, this would be a better fit for you, builds more trust. I can't think of any situation. Yes, yeah, absolutely.

Steve Vaughan (11:10)
Absolutely.

It does. It's back to being a trusted advisor, isn't it? yeah, you what?

You know, customer things, somebody, you know, where somebody of the customer thinks, I know I'll speak to Jayne, I'll speak to John. I know they'll give me an honest opinion and their opinion will be valuable to me. And it's all about having that trust, as you say. We mentioned earlier that, you know, being able to walk away is down to the importance of qualification. And we've talked a lot about qualification on this podcast and, you know, look back to previous episodes on that. But

Jayne Green (11:35)
Mm.

Hmm.

Steve Vaughan (11:53)
what are the kind of red flags that you would look out for that would give you an indication that it might be time to consider it and walk away from this particular opportunity.

Jayne Green (12:05)
Hmm, so I mean there's this Yeah, well, there's there's quite a lot isn't there, you know in terms of red flags one would be And I can't get away from it if I've not so I if I put myself in that situation if I've not qualified Very well, it's then I was thinking about this earlier. It's that point of you know, realizing what I don't know is that Moment and when I then realized Joe, I don't know some of these things that they keep I keep trying to

Steve Vaughan (12:05)
That one's flawed, you both.

Jayne Green (12:34)
They keep talking about budget or talking about price, but I really don't understand anything about their budget or their process. You know, there's a real, if it constantly comes back to it's price driven, we've got to really work out whether this is something that is, you know, the journey that we're prepared to go on. And is this a strategy that we want to take? Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (12:42)
Yeah.

Mm.

because we don't want to be the cheapest, do we?

Jonathan Slasinski (12:57)
And

Jayne, love, this was kind of the other way that I was thinking about when to walk away because there are those times where your solution fits their needs. It does, right? And it's great value, except when it comes down to the budget or even the negotiation, you know, maybe competitions in there, right? Again, all part where it's at a price that just doesn't make economic sense for you to sell it at, right? And there's been times in my career where

Jayne Green (13:05)
Mmm, yep. Yep.

Yeah.

Mm. Yep.

Jonathan Slasinski (13:25)
You know, you're up against competition, you're up against the budget and there's, there's a, you know, a pricing that comes into it where it's like, we're not really making much money on this one if we sell it. So should we walk away? And again, I think that decision also comes down to where are you in terms of your quota? What, you know, is it the last week of the quarter and you need it, you know, or, or is it the beginning? But you're, I think there's definitely times where your solution is a fit for them.

Jayne Green (13:37)
Mm.

Steve Vaughan (13:37)
Mm.

Mm.

Jayne Green (13:44)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (13:46)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Jayne Green (13:47)
Yeah.

Mm.

Jonathan Slasinski (13:55)
But when it comes down to budget and all of these other things, you know, is it really a fit for us now? And that comes back down to that choice, right? You know, if your margins are really low because of the budget they have, you know, that's as a, a company perspective, that's when you need to start thinking about walking away, right? ⁓ Is this good for the company? It might be great for the customer. It might be good for you to get a sale, but is this really good long-term for the company when you're selling things at that kind of price?

Jayne Green (14:02)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (14:21)
Yeah,

I love that. Yeah. One of the things that used to sort of ring that sort of not alarm bell, but that sort of, I think we might be being strung along here, um, situation was when we're getting more and more samples. just want to run some more samples, Steve. We I know we run some samples three months ago, but we want to run a few more samples or can we run some more? Can we do a bit of a demo? Can we try one? And you think, you know, where's this going? Really? We just seem to be going on a never ending sort of treadmill of

Jayne Green (14:22)
Yep.

Mmm. ⁓

Steve Vaughan (14:49)
of sample running and demonstrations and there doesn't seem to any clear endpoints that would send to me a feeling that actually, you know what, perhaps we're making the numbers upon this one or they're not really serious about buying anything or doing something different. That was one that used to sort of give me an inside feel that perhaps things weren't quite right and I might want to walk away from that one. Do you remember that one at all?

Jayne Green (14:50)
Hmm.

Jonathan Slasinski (15:10)
Yeah,

Steve's funny because I'm just, this is the red flag now that becomes the customer. So again, we can have a solution that fits their needs, right? We have, maybe we fully, we're all in their budget, but now here's the customer. I need this. I need to run more samples. I want this. I need this in the protocol. And all of sudden it's like, whoa, now the customer's becoming the red flag.

Jayne Green (15:15)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (15:16)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jayne Green (15:34)
Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Slasinski (15:34)
Can we, you we might have an instrument that works for them, but are we always going to be able to meet their expectations and their needs? And now if we don't.

You know, in, in today's world with today's social media, I mean, if there's one thing you get wrong, it's blasted out there. And then all of a sudden you're bad. The company's bad or what, because you didn't run one sample after you've already run 20. Right. And I think that's, that's also this, this thing about how do we walk away? And again, from as a sales rep, it's really tough to walk away from even a customer who could be a little bit of a pain, but.

Jayne Green (15:49)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (15:49)
Yeah, completely.

Mm.

Jayne Green (15:56)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (16:08)
That's where that strategy comes down to is like, is this worth, is this worth the long run for me to have this? If I have to deal with that customer, even though we meet all their needs, we met their budget, all this stuff.

Jayne Green (16:19)
Yeah, I think there's also a complete opposite to that. So that's where the customers seem to be engaging because they want to do more samples. I think there's another red flag for me is when it's really hard to get them to commit to a next step. know, actually, you know, actually running a sample feels like a next step. It keeps me communicating with them. Massive red flag is when you get to a point when they seem really wooly about wanting what's happening next. And I think one of the big

Jonathan Slasinski (16:26)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (16:32)
Absolutely.

Hmm.

Jayne Green (16:47)
things that we can miss is we think the next step is always on us, but actually it's two way. You know, what commitment are they giving us? And for me, if they're not willing to take us on a next step, they're just wanting to think about it, I'll come back to you, and we're trying everything to get in there, that for me is a bit of a, is a flag. Why they're not wanting to get something in, yeah.

Steve Vaughan (16:52)
Absolutely.

I think it's absolutely right.

Absolutely. And around that, I guess, is when they're constantly changing the spec as well. You we thought we wanted this particular spec sleeve, but now actually we decided we need an auto sampler with these many positions or now we need this detector. And, you know, there's just no clarity around really what is they really want, if anything, really. That's another from, you know, bitter experience over the years that I can recall too as well.

Jayne Green (17:15)
Mmm.

Steve Vaughan (17:35)
I think the we need to sort of re-emphasize in this discussion really is time is your most valuable resource as a salesperson. I know the training you guys do as well. What I hear over and over over again is, I don't have time to do stuff, I'm super busy. And if we spend our time working on things we're not gonna win, we'll feel busy, but we're not gonna be effective, are we? And every hour that we spend working on a deal, we're not gonna win.

is an hour we could be spending progressing a deal we are going to win or dare I say prospecting for new deals, isn't it really? So I think perhaps it's a good mindset for people who perhaps are struggling with this concept. Think about it as maximising your available time to win the things you are going to win really. Is there any scenario where we wouldn't walk away even if we feel that perhaps we're not when waking the numbers up? Is there any time we might still be sure it, do think? Because we'll see it through or carry on.

Jonathan Slasinski (18:32)
I used to do this with, at the NIH, with government purchasing, there used to be, we need three quotes, right? And the customer might have had something in mind when they put in their initial quote and then you're there. And to me, it was always like, whoa, we meet all these specs. you could tell by the tender what the other one, what the competitive instrument was.

Steve Vaughan (18:38)
Right. Okay, yeah.

Jayne Green (18:40)
Hmm.

Jonathan Slasinski (18:55)
And that's when I wouldn't walk away. That's when I would actually go in there, try to build a relationship, figure out, could I, could I win this one? Even though, you know, at the flip side is the customer does want something else, right? You know, so it should be respect the customer and their, their initial wish. But as reps, you know, that's, that was kind of, you know, our, our battle at the NIH was figuring out.

How can we position ourselves to be a little bit better? And I think that's a good time when you shouldn't walk away. Try to get in there, try to build something from that.

Steve Vaughan (19:20)
sure. Yeah.

Jayne Green (19:21)
Mm-hmm.

Steve Vaughan (19:30)
Okay. Any scenarios from you, Jayne, where you wouldn't walk away even if it felt wrong?

Jayne Green (19:35)
⁓ I think if it feels wrong, it depends what feels wrong, you know, about that. it's a... Because we want to know there's a fit. So we know there's a fit, but there's this push back on, you know, cycles when budgets come in. So that can also be a red flag, but also it can be something we just need to understand more. You know, what do I need to understand more about the customer's, you know, buying process?

Steve Vaughan (19:40)
Okay.

Mmm.

Mm.

Jayne Green (20:05)
you know,

what maybe what gaps in my knowledge, what would make me want to stay? Because actually sometimes there are big grant cycles and our preparation and our experience get us into an understanding of what that is. So although we might be dealing with something that actually may not be this year, you know, sometimes we want to work away because we're so focused on making our number this year, but it also might be something that actually could be brilliant for next.

Steve Vaughan (20:31)
That's a super point. Yeah, yeah, great point. I think also perhaps it could be if it's a strategically right thing to do, you know, if it means it gets us into an account, like you mentioned with NIH, Jonathan, I guess, really, if by going through with the opportunity, even though we know we're probably not going to win it, it creates awareness and visibility of what we do in the account, perhaps in an account where we've never historically done business, it might still then just be a worthwhile exercise, yeah.

Jayne Green (20:39)
Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Slasinski (20:53)
without a doubt.

Jayne Green (20:55)
Mm-hmm.

Jonathan Slasinski (20:57)
think another good point about when not to walk away is also about this difference of, is the process just slow or is it dead? And again, I think that also comes down to understanding timeline and figuring that out. But plenty of opportunities, next quarter, it's going to come in, or next month. And then there's ones where you're beating that dead horse and you're just pushing them. Get those out. But there are times when

Jayne Green (21:07)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (21:07)
⁓ yeah.

Jayne Green (21:09)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (21:22)
Hey, it's just, there's some internal things that are going on that need to get, you know, so it's, it's very good again, to figure out what that process is and figure out, is this really dead or is it just being dragged out? Because there are a ton of internal things that are outside of, you know, the purview of a sales rep, but the customer might know that, right? And again, to me, if it's taking a little bit longer than you thought, do you just give up now? Well, let's make sure that that

Jayne Green (21:25)
Yeah.

you

Steve Vaughan (21:41)
completely.

Jonathan Slasinski (21:48)
that everything's still aligned, right? Because again, it could just be a slow process versus at that process.

Steve Vaughan (21:53)
Yeah, great point, great point. Okay, so let's say we've made the mental conclusion that we need to walk away from this opportunity. How do we do it in a professional way that doesn't damage potential relationships or potential opportunities for when it would be the right opportunity with this customer? How do we do it? What's the approach we take?

Jayne Green (21:53)
Yeah.

respectfully. I think giving, know, the biggest danger is that we've decided that this doesn't work for us so what we could probably end up doing exactly what we hate customers doing to us where we just ignore them from then on. Don't do that! Do it in a respectful way. Yeah, no ghosting. You know, it requires, I think it does require it, you know, this...

Steve Vaughan (22:19)
Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (22:33)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (22:34)
Please don't do that. That was a do-don't-do, not a do-do.

Jonathan Slasinski (22:37)
Yeah. No ghosting. No ghosting.

Jayne Green (22:45)
times I always love the face-to-face meeting. And I think this does actually require a face-to-face meeting, particularly if you've, you know, you've been journeying with the customer. And I think it's a very honest conversation and respectful conversation to say, you know, given this situation or this particular criteria or this change or this thing that you want, I don't think we can meet this fully, you know, so at this stage or until this actually may...

Steve Vaughan (22:48)
Yeah.

Absolutely. This isn't an email thing, it?

Yeah.

Jayne Green (23:15)
be a different ⁓ requirement or a different specification or money availability, we may need to just walk away from this. And I think we have that, we make that a very personal and professional conversation. Of course, the easiest thing to do is burn our bridges and go, ⁓ we don't want to deal with you. Nightmare. We do want to deal with them.

Steve Vaughan (23:32)
No. You're not worthy to be our customer. No.

Jonathan Slasinski (23:37)
I think

Steve Vaughan (23:38)
It is.

Jonathan Slasinski (23:38)
it's the respecting is huge, trying to have an in face, you know, in face and in person meeting. To me, it's always about the honesty, right? So again, I think I think upfront, if we are honest about the capabilities, it's a little bit easier to walk away and have that discussion. But I will say, as many reps and even me in my career, when you're trying to fit that, you know, that square peg into that round hole, and you're going down, down, down, down, down, all of a sudden, you're at the point where it's like,

Jayne Green (23:47)
Yes.

Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (23:59)
Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (24:04)
They're ready to buy from me, but this might not be the right thing. It's gotta be that honest conversation. And I think that that will even, even though it might cause some friction in the end, it's gonna be better for you to show that honesty because maybe there's gonna be something next, right? know? ⁓

Jayne Green (24:06)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (24:07)
Yeah.

Yeah, super.

Absolutely.

Jonathan Slasinski (24:24)
Or to me it was always, hey, if this instrument's not to fit, you know, I've got some consumables that could fit on any instrument. let's, know, what's again, what else is there, right? You know, you might, you might lose the big thing, but can we get still something else around the corner on that?

Jayne Green (24:31)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (24:32)
Yeah, great point, great point.

That's a great point.

Jonathan Slasinski (24:39)
But respect

Jayne Green (24:39)
Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (24:40)
and honesty, that's

Jayne Green (24:41)
Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (24:41)
gotta be it. Especially, again, and I know I've done this and I know a lot of reps do that, when you're trying to fit that wrong fit in there, because you want it in there. You just gotta be honest. But it's tough, it is tough. It's tough to lose, it's tough to pull out. All those kind of emotions that go with that. But it's the right thing.

Steve Vaughan (24:53)
Mm-mm. Mm-mm.

Jayne Green (24:58)
It is, and there's often a

Steve Vaughan (24:58)
It is the right thing.

Jayne Green (24:59)
next time, you you get remembered for doing the right thing actually. You also get remembered for doing the wrong thing. So there could well be a next time. If we get it right, people come back to us. Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (25:01)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (25:02)
That's right.

Jonathan Slasinski (25:04)
Yeah.

Steve Vaughan (25:05)
yeah. Super point. Yeah.

Jonathan Slasinski (25:10)
without a doubt.

Steve Vaughan (25:12)
Jonathan, one of the things that you're very interested in, know as a trainer, one of your training superpowers, if I can put it that way, is emotional intelligence. Is there a role or is there a facet that we need to think about here regarding emotional intelligence and how we play that in the decision whether to walk away or not?

Jonathan Slasinski (25:28)
Yeah, it's a couple of things, right? I think the first thing is, kind of, you know, your self management, right? So how are you feeling? Is this, how are you feeling emotionally about this? Right? Like if we know that losing is a big emotional trigger for us, how do we manage that a little bit better? Right? Cause if, if we're going to lose, we're going to have to manage that to pull out. Right? The other big component of, of emotional intelligence that plays in here is relationship management. Right? So how are we managing?

Steve Vaughan (25:44)
Hmm.

Jonathan Slasinski (25:56)
our emotions along with the emotions of our customers, right? In building this relationship again, you know, kind of things we talked about, it's through conversations, it's through qualification, it's through building that trust, building that rapport. But those are the two things that really speak up to me when it comes to the emotions is knowing your own triggers, like you don't like to lose, you don't want to feel that. Well, we're gonna have to manage that because there's a time when it's for the better.

Steve Vaughan (26:00)
super.

Jonathan Slasinski (26:21)
And then the best thing is just being able to manage that relationship with your customer and be on that same kind of plane. You where are they? Are they going to be upset with you? Or are they going to be happy with you? Right? I mean, this is these are all the things that we're going to see.

Steve Vaughan (26:33)
Super. Any thoughts from you on this, Jayne?

Jayne Green (26:36)
Yeah, I think it's that, you know, that part in us that emotionally does not want to lose face if we've journeyed with people. ⁓ But again, handling that well, putting some of that, that own sort of expectations on ourselves. Actually, it's not about losing face if we handle it well. We could be gaining respect, you know, we could be gaining trust, but I don't want to lose face by walking away.

Steve Vaughan (26:59)
Absolutely.

Yeah, completely,

completely. I was smiling when you were talking about how we lose your emotional reaction to losing Jonathan. You'd think as an Aston Villa supporter I've learned over the years how to lose but I never play sport with me. I've broken tennis rackets, I've kicked cricket stumps down, I've kicked goal posts, I've flung my 7-9 in the lake so never play sport with me. I'm a terrible loser.

Jonathan Slasinski (27:11)
Heh.

Jayne Green (27:12)
Hahaha!

Jonathan Slasinski (27:26)
But the good thing is when we talk about,

you when we talk about emotional intelligence, this is something we can build upon and something we can improve. So Steve, what you're doing there is you're identifying your triggers. So that's a huge part of self-management. It's a huge part of self-management is identifying those. Some people just let them go, right? But it's something we can always build on.

Steve Vaughan (27:31)
Absolutely.

Jayne Green (27:32)
Mmm.

Steve Vaughan (27:37)
Sport.

Yeah,

love it. think I'll book a training course with you later, Jonathan.

Jonathan Slasinski (27:47)
Ha ha ha ha.

Jayne Green (27:48)
So while we're

saying this, our next team meeting then we'll be doing a little bit of sport and then Jonathan will be coaching us all afterwards.

Steve Vaughan (27:53)
Ha ha ha.

Jonathan Slasinski (27:55)
Exactly.

Steve Vaughan (27:56)
With

the amount of rain we've had here in the UK, the last thing I've done is play golf recently and I need a frogman outfit to play golf at the moment so ⁓ it's been ridiculous. Final thought from both of you on when to walk away. Any final thoughts, tips, ideas, suggestions? Any final comments? One from you, Jayne?

Jonathan Slasinski (28:02)
my goodness.

Jayne Green (28:14)
So I have to go back to qualifying. If we're qualifying really early and understand what our criteria is for quality, what we're actually looking for, know, understanding solution, understanding fit, but understanding the practical things, you know, who could actually sign this off? What would their budget be? Are they speaking to other people? When we start to have a really clear view of what that is, then it automatically comes down to that. Do I have this information? Can I get this information?

just gives us something early days to that, be able to lose fast, lose early.

Steve Vaughan (28:49)
Love that, yeah, always be qualifying. ABQ, always be qualifying, yeah. One from you, Jonathan.

Jonathan Slasinski (28:53)
I love that. You

actually have two. the, you know, the first thing is, think, you know, we think about, you know, our antibody queen in the North, right? It's about what value can we bring, right? So if we have to walk away, make sure we are adding that value of making the suggestion about what could be a better fit, right?

Jayne Green (29:10)
right.

Jonathan Slasinski (29:12)
But I think the toughest one for me when I've done this in my career to walk away from is just the customer that you know is not going to be ideal for your business moving forward. And then that becomes a strategic decision. You know, can we continue to support someone who is going to be so needy, who needs, you know, the handheld, all that kind of stuff. I think it just, you have to look at your business also from a strategic perspective, you know,

Can we fully support this person and fully do the right thing for them? Especially as I said, you when I first started my career, there was no social media where people weren't blasting the rep for not showing up or, the data was bad or things like that. You know, you really have to think about all these things, you know, especially when it comes to a difficult customer to walk away from.

Steve Vaughan (29:57)
Absolutely, Final one for me really is, as again, this podcast is called The Luxury Choice and as a salesperson, you do have significant choice of what you spend your time doing or where you focus your efforts. So make the best of it really, make the best use of that time, focus the time on stuff you have a chance of winning and not that you're just making the numbers up really. So if you've enjoyed today's episode, then don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast app.

Also, we would love a review if you ⁓ listen to us on Apple or Spotify. can leave us ideally a five-star review. We'd be very, very grateful. If you want to know more about the training courses we do run here at George James, then just go to our website, George James Training, and you'll find all of our scheduled training courses for the year and also the kind of material we cover in tailored training as well. We are working on doing more LinkedIn Lives over the course of this year as well. We've had to sort of take a slight pause because the

Provider we used put a massive price highs through that we thought was a bit a bit much So we just looking at alternatives on that but we will come back with some LinkedIn lives during the course of the second half of 2026 as well and finally just to remind you that we are interested in anybody would like to come and join us on the panel on a podcast at any time if you're Working in the industry as a salesperson the sales manager and you've got an interest in a particular aspect of sales or the sales process we'd love to hear from you contact me or any of the team directly if you know us

or you can email the show at podcast at georgejames-training.com. That's podcast at georgejames-training.com. Jonathan Jayne great to see you remotely after seeing you both for real over the last couple of weeks. We'll see you again soon. And for you, the listener out there, happy selling and we'll talk to you soon.

Jonathan Slasinski (31:33)
Good to see you too. ⁓

Jayne Green (31:35)
Mmm,

yeah.