“She’s at lunch with some guy from an Internet company,” I was told.

That was the word I got when I went hunting for one of our administrative assistants. “Yep, he took her to lunch,” I was told by the receptionist.

Odd is the word that ran through my mind. I wanted to know what was up, but I also figured it could be personal business.

Later in the day, I found out that she’d gone to lunch with a guy who sells Internet connectivity to tenants in our building. He took her to lunch to make his sales pitch.

She isn’t the person who buys our Internet. But he didn’t know that and invited her to lunch anyway. She figured there was no harm in a free lunch, so she went.

The lunch was harmless. She would have taken time off for lunch anyway, so it cost me nothing. But it got me thinking, wondering, and worrying.

Why You Should Worry About Sales Lunches

You, like me, are good at getting salespeople off the phone. Some of us enjoy the sport of blowing off salespeople. It’s oddly entertaining sometimes.

I know that you’re the master of avoiding the financial planners, insurance salespeople, and the woman from LegalMatch who wants to sell you leads. You’ve built a defense system that stops them dead in their tracks and, when you slip up and they end up on your line, you shut them down before they can suck you into a conversation.

You’re good. You’re defended. You’re a machine who doesn’t waste a minute on annoying sales calls.

Unfortunately, many of your employees aren’t so good. They’re different from you and me. They’re polite. They’re nice. They have feelings, and they didn’t go to law school. They actually talk to people who call. They talk to salespeople because salespeople talk to them.

It gets worse.

Not only do they talk to salespeople, but they also give away info. You’d be shocked at the questions they’ll answer. They’ll give away information you consider proprietary. They’ll explain how much you buy, how much you pay, where you buy it, and how it translates into revenue for the business. They think they’re being helpful to the firm when they engage with professionals calling on the phone.

If the caller were a computer hacker engaging in social engineering, you’d be lucky to have any data left after a conversation with some members of your team. I guarantee you that some members of your staff have no idea what’s a secret and what’s not.

But secrets are the least of our problems.

The bigger problem—the one that affects the bottom line this week—is that your team is wasting time on salespeople. You blow off salespeople to save your energy for the important stuff. However, your team members are hesitant to be so rude.

Some members of your team are likely using the time your firm is paying for to engage with the salespeople. You’ll be surprised at how often it’s happening if you start paying attention. It’s not uncommon for the folks answering the phone or attending to the front entrance to be engaged with a salesperson each day. Sometimes it happens multiple times each day.

It’s really hard for your team to wiggle out of these conversations. They’re skilled at being warm and friendly. They’re not good at being cold and harsh.

How to Fix It

If things are going to change, then you’re going to have to do some training and adopt some rules. For your employees, the path of least resistance is to talk to the salesperson, accept the cookies, go to lunch, and reveal the information. You’re going to have to overcome the influence of the salesperson while simultaneously navigating the minefield of barring your team from eating the cookies and enjoying a free lunch. Nothing is ever easy, right?

The salesperson interruptions affect the productivity of your team. You need to address it. But you need to handle it delicately and do it before it becomes a problem. You’ll need to incorporate this issue into training. Use it as an opportunity to catch someone on your team doing something right.

Don’t wait until you’re upset having just witnessed the time being wasted right before your eyes. Don’t wait until that day when you walk up front and ask for a copy while your assistant continues to talk to the salesperson from the office supply vendor who wants your business and you feel like you’re interrupting.

Ranting when you discover that she’s at lunch with the Internet guy is the wrong approach (trust me). Training, written procedures, and open conversations and feedback are the right approach.