When you’re with friends, you know what they will find funny and what they will find offensive. I’ve learned the hard way that personal relationships are vastly different than acquaintances from work.
Friend or Foe
There was a prospect named Jim that showed a lot of buying signals. All of a sudden, he stopped returning messages. I thought I got along well with him and could use some friendly sarcasm in an email. I wrote something about it being harder to get an audience with the president than to get an audience with him. He took offense to it. He forwarded the email to my boss and said something nasty about me. I was rightfully removed from the relationship by my boss.
Go Over Her Head
While cold calling one day, I spoke with a purchasing manager that was not interested in what I had to say. She was rude and hung up on me. Usually, my way of dealing with this is to forget about it and call another company. This time I left a message for the purchasing manager’s boss. I wanted her to know that her purchasing manager didn’t care about saving money for the company. The boss was not amused. She called and told me never to call her company again.
Overheard
I was in the office of my new boss and he was assessing my pipeline. He was confused about why some of my prospects were outside of my assigned territory. I said, jokingly, that my former boss was out of control and would let me do whatever I wanted. I knew my old boss could hear me as his office was next door. I thought he would laugh. My new boss could see my facial expression, and he knew I was joking, but my old boss didn’t. How could he know? I noticed he was cold to me after that day. The reason why didn’t occur to me until years later.
Rivalry
I was meeting with Rita, a prospect from Boston, and we were getting along great. One of our common interests was baseball. I’m a Yankees fan from the New York City area and Rita is a Red Sox fan. The night before, the Yankees lost the last game of the regular season to the Tampa Rays, thus giving the Rays the division lead and knocking the Red Sox out of the playoffs. Knowing Rita is a Red Sox fan, I joked about the game. Rita wasn’t happy. I got an earful about how the Yankees lost on purpose cause they knew by losing the Red Sox wouldn’t make the playoffs. Rita was never the same to me after that meeting. I didn’t win the business.
I’ve realized that in business, it’s always best to stay professional. Save jokes and sarcasm for personal friends.
