Once upon a time, a client threw me out of their office, and looking back on it, I can laugh. At the time, it wasn’t too hilarious, but then again, this client repeatedly called me Brad, so maybe it was bound to happen eventually.
As a Sales Manager, I had signed off on a rather shady deal with this client. One I knew wouldn’t serve either of us well. Turns out, it backfired, and after several attempts to make things right, he had finally had enough of me and tossed me right the fuck out of his office.
He also canceled the rest of his contract, refused to answer my calls for years to come, and even told me to go fuck myself later via email.
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To be fair, this guy was a first-class jerk, and everyone in the market knew it, but I was brash, young, and hungry to get his money as a client, and I thought maybe, just maybe, I could be that one person that he played nice in the sandbox with. I was wrong to think that, and I was wrong to even try.
By the way, if you’re a salesperson and you’ve never been thrown out of a client’s office, I highly recommend it. If anything, it gives you a great story to tell later, but more than anything, it teaches you a lot about how to sell, how not to sell, and the boundaries that clients will ultimately have.
Regardless, this individual showed me his true colors even though I already knew what they were previously and ignored all of the warning signs.
The funny thing about people is that they usually tell you exactly who they are if you are willing to pay attention. They tell you in how they treat the receptionist. They tell you in how they talk about other vendors. They tell you in how quickly they move the goalposts. They tell you in the little comments, the late payments, the disrespectful tone, the constant exceptions, and the way every conversation somehow becomes your fault.
I recently read a story about how a CEO always asks his driver how the candidates he is going to hire at his company treat him. If the candidate is rude to the driver when he’s not around, he doesn’t hire them. People show you their colors and their character; you just have to pay attention to it.
The problem is that we are really good at hearing the signs and then negotiating with ourselves about what they mean. We tell ourselves they are just direct. We tell ourselves they are under pressure. We tell ourselves they will be different once the relationship gets stronger. We tell ourselves that we can manage them better than everyone else did, and that is usually when the universe starts preparing a very important lesson for us.
I knew exactly who this client was before he threw me out of his office. I had heard the stories. I had seen the behavior. I had felt the tension in every conversation. There was no mystery here. The only mystery was why I thought I was going to be the magical exception to a pattern that had already been proven over and over again.
This happens in sales, but it also happens in leadership, hiring, dating, friendships, partnerships, and every other place where we convince ourselves that our effort can overcome someone else’s character. We see the signs early, but we get attached to the potential. We imagine the best version of the person instead of dealing with the actual version sitting in front of us.
Potential is one of the most dangerous words in business. Potential makes you ignore the missed deadlines. Potential makes you excuse the bad attitude. Potential makes you keep investing in someone who keeps showing you they are unwilling or unable to meet you halfway. Potential makes you believe that if you say it the right way, coach it the right way, package it the right way, or give it enough time, eventually the person will become who you need them to be.
Sometimes people can grow, and I believe deeply in giving people room to improve. The difference is that growth requires the other person’s ownership. You cannot want it more than they do. You cannot drag someone into self-awareness. You cannot outwork someone else’s unwillingness to change. At some point, you have to stop managing the dream version of the person and start dealing with the evidence in front of you.
That client taught me that warning signs are not there for decoration. They are there to protect you from pretending you did not know what was coming.
When someone shows you a pattern, believe the pattern. When someone tells you who they are through their actions, listen the first time.
Your desire to be different, special, smarter, more patient, or more persuasive does not always change the outcome. Sometimes you are getting exactly what everyone else already told you that you were going to get.