Are your sales reps following up in a timely manner? Are you?

Many building product sales reps can tell stories about design professionals that took advantage of the rep's services. But the reverse also occurs too frequently.

An example of a sales rep taking advantage of a design professional's The following is from an email I got from Mr. Specifier (not his real name), the Director of Specifications a large A/E firms:

Michael:

Here is another example of a product representative dropping the ball.

Mr. Rep (not his real name) wanted to meet with me and the other spec writers here.

I checked with our other spec writers to find a date and time acceptable to all of us (not an easy task). Within 24 hours of his request for a meeting, I was able to recommend a date and time when we could all meet with the rep. But 4 business days (6 calendar days) have passed without a reply from Mr. Rep. I am irritated and have canceled the proposed meeting.

This interaction does not leave a good taste in my mouth. While it is nice that the product rep. is willing to bring lunch, it still is our time we are giving him for the presentation and to arrange the meeting. Is this product rep always going to take 4+ days to respond to me? How do I go back and ask the 4 spec writers for their second available date?

This rep. is getting off to a bad start with us. I would just blow him off - but I am very interested in his product and think the other spec writers might learn something, He is a CSI member, so I may give him another chance.

Do you think it is unreasonable to expect a quicker response?

Being generous, one might give the rep some slack. Perhaps the emails got lost in his spam filter, or maybe the rep is sick. But in this day of electronic communication, the rep can white list prospects to keep them out of the spam filter, and can set an auto-responder to let prospects who is taking care of business in his or her absense.