Who This Is For and What It Answers
This article is for Cambodian business owners, sales managers, and anyone who manages a sales team whether you sell services to local businesses, deal with NGO procurement teams, or work with international buyers and investors.
The question it answers: what specific behaviours cause salespeople to appear untrustworthy or desperate, and what should they do instead?
At Be Good Consultancy, working with Cambodian business owners and sales teams across real estate, hospitality, and professional services, we have observed a consistent set of behaviours that damage buyer trust before a conversation has a real chance to develop. The patterns below are not unique to Cambodia but the way they play out here, given local communication norms and relationship driven business culture, makes them worth addressing directly.
1. Assuming the Buyer Is Already Interested
One of the most common errors is skipping the step of establishing genuine interest. A salesperson who launches straight into scheduling a meeting before understanding whether the prospect has any relevant need signals to the buyer that their time is not valued.
In Cambodian business culture, where relationships and face saving matter, this matters more, not less. A buyer who feels pressured in a first contact is unlikely to raise objections directly. They will simply go quiet or give polite non committal responses. A salesperson who interprets politeness as interest is setting themselves up for a wasted pipeline.
**[ADD REAL ANONYMISED BE GOOD CLIENT EXAMPLE HERE]**
*To complete this, provide: type of business, what their salespeople were doing at first contact, what the consequence was, and what changed. A real example even brief and anonymised is what separates this article from generic sales advice available elsewhere online.*
**What to do instead:** Ask an open question in first contact that invites the prospect to share their situation. Make it easy for them to say “not right now” without embarrassment. A prospect who feels respected is far more likely to return when they are ready.
2. Pressing for a Meeting When the Buyer Has Said No
There is a difference between a prospect who is genuinely busy and one who sees no value in continuing the conversation. Treating both the same way continuing to follow up regardless will eventually damage your reputation.
A practical question to ask when someone declines: *”Is it that you’re too busy right now, or that I haven’t shown you enough reason to meet?”* This gives the buyer a clear way to respond honestly, and gives you useful information about whether to continue or move on.
For teams selling to NGOs, government agencies, or international organisations in Cambodia, this discipline is especially important. These buyers talk to each other. A pushy reputation spreads quickly in a small professional market.
3. Jumping to Your Solution Before the Buyer Reaches Their Own Conclusion
When a buyer mentions a problem, the instinct is to immediately explain how your product or service solves it. This approach is almost always counterproductive.
Buyers are more committed to solutions they feel they have reasoned their way towards. A salesperson who immediately says “we can fix that” removes the buyer’s sense of agency. The buyer may nod, but they are unlikely to feel convinced.
The more effective approach is to ask follow up questions that help the buyer articulate the problem in their own words, and to describe how similar organisations have handled comparable challenges without directly pitching your product. The buyer should arrive at the connection themselves.
This applies equally whether you are selling to a Cambodian SME owner, a foreign owned business in Phnom Penh, or a procurement manager at an international development organisation.
4. Making Side Agreements to Rescue a Stalled Deal
When a deal is not closing, some salespeople offer informal extras additional services, unofficial discounts, extended terms that fall outside what the business has agreed to provide. This is a short term fix with long term costs.
The client brought on through exceptions will expect those exceptions to continue. They will also be more difficult to serve, because their expectations were set outside normal operating parameters. In Cambodia’s relationship driven business environment, informal agreements made verbally carry significant weight and can be difficult to walk back.
**The practical test:** Before offering anything outside standard terms, ask whether your business can sustain that exception for every client at scale. If not, do not offer it.
5. Allowing Your Communication to Signal Pressure
Buyers read tone. A salesperson who sounds anxious, rushed, or unusually eager to close communicates that they need the deal more than the buyer needs the product. This shifts power in the negotiation and reduces the buyer’s confidence.
This applies across communication channels. In Cambodia, a significant portion of business communication happens via Telegram, WhatsApp, or Facebook Messenger. Messages sent outside business hours, sent in rapid succession, or written with an urgent tone all carry the same signal as a pressured in person conversation.
In our experience working with Cambodian sales teams, this pattern appears most frequently with junior salespeople managing follow ups via Messenger or Telegram. When a deal feels uncertain, the instinct is to message more frequently without recognising that the frequency itself signals pressure rather than professionalism.
**[ADD REAL ANONYMISED BE GOOD CLIENT EXAMPLE HERE IF AVAILABLE]**
*Suggested structure: type of business, what their messaging behaviour looked like, what the buyer response pattern was, what changed.*
**A simple discipline:** Before sending any follow up message, ask whether it is driven by genuine buyer need or by your own sales pressure. If it is the latter, wait.
6. Being Too Accommodating When Your Time Is Disrespected
A prospect who cancels a meeting at short notice without a meaningful explanation is testing consciously or not how much your time is worth. A salesperson who responds with “no problem at all, happy to reschedule whenever suits you” signals that their time has no value.
This does not mean responding with aggression. It means responding with calm professionalism: acknowledging the cancellation, asking whether everything is alright, and then proposing a specific alternative time rather than leaving it open ended.
Salespeople who allow their time to be disrespected repeatedly tend to attract clients who continue to disrespect it. Setting a professional standard early produces better working relationships.
7. Sending Too Many Follow Up Messages
Following up is necessary. Following up five times with no meaningful new information to add is not following up it is demonstrating that you have no other options.
Each follow up should offer something of value: a relevant article, a question prompted by something you have learned about their business, an update that is genuinely relevant to them. If you have nothing new to add, wait until you do.
For sales teams in Cambodia targeting international buyers or investors, excessive follow up is particularly damaging. International buyers often manage relationships across multiple markets and will simply deprioritise vendors who fill their inbox with repetitive messages.
8. Offering a Discount Before the Buyer Has Asked for One
Discounting before a buyer raises price as an objection tells the buyer two things: that the original price was inflated, and that you are willing to accept less because you need the deal. Neither conclusion helps you.
Discounts, where they are part of your commercial offer, should be positioned as a response to a specific buyer request or as part of a structured commercial proposal not as an opening move.
If price is likely to be a genuine barrier for your target market, the better approach is to build a clear value case first, so that when price is raised, the buyer is already weighing it against demonstrated value rather than an untested assumption.
