7 Reasons Other Sales Reps Hate Working With You

Do you care what the other salespeople on your team think of you?

If not, you should.

Sales isn’t an individual, every-rep-for-themselves game. Although healthy competition can raise the bar for everyone, you shouldn’t make enemies of your teammates.

Doing so is literally bad for business. A top-performing sales team is twice as likely to have a collaborative culture than an average one, and four times more likely to report sharing top performers’ techniques with the rest of the team.

So if you’re pissing off your teammates, you’re not just hurting yourself: You’re bringing everyone down with you.

Read on to learn the seven behaviors that’ll earn you a terrible reputation.

1) You Don’t Take Meeting Times Seriously

Showing up late to meetings or to meetings won’t just vex your manager, it’ll also seriously annoy your team members.

It’s much harder for the other meeting attendees to focus when people are wandering in and out like it’s a coffee shop. Setting your own schedule also shows you think your time is more valuable than anyone else’s -- and the other reps won’t take kindly to that implication.

Of course, sometimes your calls with prospects will run long or otherwise conflict with internal meetings. When you can, leave a buffer between your meetings. If you can’t avoid scheduling them back-to-back, give your team members a heads up that you might be late, or send them a quick note via Slack or email when it looks like your previous conversation is going to end later than scheduled.

2) You Always Think the Glass Is Half Empty

A little pessimism in sales can actually be a good thing: It’ll motivate you to ask your prospects tough questions and plan for potential roadblocks.

But if you’re constantly bringing the doom and gloom, your team members will run in the other direction. It’s challenging to stay motivated when someone is always insulting the company, putting down the product, or criticizing the team’s strategy.

Plus, a single negative rep can sabotage an entire sales team meeting. Emotions are actually contagious -- so when one person goes on a rant, they infect the entire room with their mood.

3) You’re a Lone Wolf

Many sales reps are naturally competitive, so when you come up with a creative technique or effective strategy, you might want to keep it to yourself.

However, prioritizing yourself over the rest of the team never helps build strong relationships. Not only will your fellow reps like working with you far more if you freely share your ideas and insights, the entire company will see better results.

According to a CEB report, a sales team’s “network performance” (the positive effect teamwork has on average performance) determines 44% of company profitability.

“The value of all of that shared information increases dramatically as more and more reps opt in to learn and, in turn, share with one another,” CEB directors Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon, and Nicholas Toman explain.

4) You Never Accept Responsibility For Your Mistakes

When you strike out on a call or miss your quota, where do you assign responsibility? Some salespeople are eager to point the finger everywhere but themselves, blaming their territory, the quality of their leads, the product, and so on.

But if you’re constantly shifting the blame around, you’ll earn contempt rather than sympathy.

Your fellow reps don’t want to hear your excuses. After all, they have the same job as you -- and when they fall short, they own up to it.

5) You Don’t Do a Good Job Qualifying

Lazy qualifiers are never popular.

If you’re an SDR, booking meetings without properly qualifying leads will force your salespeople to spend valuable time on poor fits, uneducated prospects, and tire-kickers. On the surface, it’ll look like you’re doing a great job -- but sending your reps bad meetings will cause you both to miss quota.

The takeaway? Do your due diligence. Ask the right questions, and walk away if necessary.

6) You’re Pursuing Their Leads

It’s not a shocker that contacting the same prospects as your fellow reps will piss them off. Stealing leads from your colleagues is literally taking money out of their pockets. And there’s no guarantee those deals will close -- even highly interested buyers will be aggravated by multiple calls from different salespeople at the same company, so you’ll sabotage both your team member’s chances and your own.

Being competitive is a good quality in a salesperson. But make sure you’re not taking things too far, as stepping on your team member’s toes will only hurt you.

7) You’re Not Using the CRM

Logging data probably isn’t the most exciting part of your job -- but do it poorly (or worse, not at all), and your office reputation will take a hit.

This is another mistake that SDRs should steer clear of making. If you’re booking meetings for an inside sales rep, their ability to take over the prospect relationship depends on the information you enter in the system.

If you don’t explain the prospect’s pain points, the rep will be forced to redo the discovery step -- annoying the buyer and slowing down the entire process. Or say you leave out the crucial fact that your lead doesn’t have budget authority. Your rep will waste valuable time before realizing they need to loop in the decision maker.

Did any of these seven behaviors ring a bell? If so, you’ll want to change your ways immediately. One toxic rep can poison an entire sales team -- make sure it’s not you.