I recently met with a prospect that didn’t like my approach to his inability to make a decision. His suggestion was that I exhibited passive-aggressive behavior. Because he’s much smarter than average folks like me, I decided to do some research. I went to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive-aggressive and found this.
There are certain behaviors that help identify passive-aggressive behavior. [2]
- Ambiguity
- Avoiding responsibility by claiming forgetfulness
- Blaming others
- Chronic lateness and forgetfulness
- Complaining
- Does not express hostility or anger openly
- Fear of authority
- Fear of competition
- Fear of dependency
- Fear of intimacy
- Fosters chaos
- Intentional inefficiency
- Making excuses and lying
- Obstructionism
- Procrastination
- Resentment
- Resists suggestions from others
- Sarcasm
- Sullenness
Is that me? or was he thinking of something else?
Oh well. You can’t do business with everybody and in cases like this….it’s a good thing.
Have a great week!
RainMakers & Sales Rock Stars 
Exactly true. You have to cut bad clients right away. Something that takes awhile to get use to.
Actually, Noah, it’s much better to never let them get to be clients and you’re right. Sometimes it is difficult to turn business away. Trust your gut.
Dave Kurlan recommended you to me. I loved todays post – isn’t it great the way that prospects project their issues onto the salesguy? Thanks. ps I blog on sales at http://johnonsales.terapad.com/
I couldn’t have said it better myself. I’ll check out your blog tonight.
To be passive aggressive, at least in today’s vernacular, just means to speak aggressively (such as trying to convince someone of something) in a passive manner (so they don’t boot you to the curb).Isn’t that really what sales is?
Speak aggressively in a passive manner or speak passively in an aggressive manner? Or are we using aggressive when we actually mean assertive?
Prospects do this. Stupid Human Tricks. They don’t take responsibility for their inability to deal with their own problems and when you confront them they make up really cool sounding names to make it the salesperson’s problem.