The halloween CRM admin and sales fails contest

The halloween CRM admin and sales fails contest



This Halloween, we're trading scary sales stories. Keeping with the good ol' Halloween theme, let's discuss the biggest fails we've come across in sales. We're talking the lowest of the lows, the horror of horrors you've come across, or those that you somehow managed to brave and make it to the other side.

For trick or treat, we're ditching the candy this season and offering five gift cards instead. The top five most interesting answers will get the following gift cards. 

$100 BestBuy Gift Card
$50 BestBuy Gift Card
$50 Amazon Gift Card 
$25 BestBuy Gift Card 
$25 Amazon Gift Card 

(All gift cards will be sent before Black Friday. If BestBuy cards do not apply in your region, we will send you an Amazon gift voucher instead)

You can include in your answer (post as a comment below), a few of these points:


 1. Horror: A telling of one of your most bizarre experiences with a potential client. We have all had some pretty bad luck with some deals. Strange, hilarious, or outright nerve-racking, some are just too hard of a nut to crack. Or, just any CRM admin nightmare story of your choosing. 


2. Trick: What you do to work around those tough corners and which Zoho feature has helped get you through it. 

3. Treat: A tip to help peers grow their business, something that you carried from this experience, that has always helped you stay ahead of the game! 

As I clearly can't divulge stories of one of our sales, GDPR and all, for an example here's one I heard from a buddy of mine who'd gotten flooded with deal closures last season.  


"It happened in the initial years of my sales career. I was passionate and opportunistic. I was enjoying converting our vending machines into dollars, and meeting the sales targets. Once, my manager even gave me a congratulatory hug. Which was so rare that I savored the moment too long and he had to push me away after a while.

However, the last quarter that year started slow. I was under pressure to close my targets, not just for the OTE but for that warm, long, and awkward hug too. Anyway, December approached and I was at the 40% mark. This was bad because December sales are always low, thanks to all the merry-making. I was getting desperate and started calling all the warm leads in my bucket, who were gradually drifting to the colder zone. 

One gentleman showed interest in meeting me on the 24th of December but was obvious on the call that there would be no order before January. Nevertheless, I decided to meet him in his office and see if there’s a slight chance of making the deal before New Year. I went to his office, we got into a room to discuss his vending machine requirements, but it did not go as I expected. He was too rude, to say the least. He had a grudge against his old supplier and he took it all out on me. Apparently, his previous supplier didn’t provide a good after-sale service when the machine broke down. He was irate and called out the entire salesmanship as an act of fraud. I tried to explain that we have an excellent service and that our clients are very happy, but nothing worked for him. One thing was sure though, he was not happy with his current supplier and wanted to return all the machines. So, there was a definite requirement. I grabbed this opportunity to show him our service. I asked him to take me to one of the broken machines. I took a look, called my engineer over phone, cooked up some Tony Stark stuff, and finally was able to restore the machine to working condition. I could not tell whether the client was impressed, so I took another shot: I offered to take back all the old machines he had and gave a 50% discount on the new ones ordered from us, plus free one-year service. Still, he had a poker face. I can’t do more than this, I thought, and packed my bags. I left my brochure, list of customer references, my business card, and a glimmer of hope in his office. 

​Next morning, while I was lying on my couch watching a re-run of The Office at home, I got this message over an email: “Hello, we had a meeting last night over the vending machines and looks like we can manage the budget for the price offered by you. It is to re-iterate that although you’ve offered free service, we would not appreciate any lag in the response. Also, the delivery should be completed by 31st Decemeber without delay. Merry Christmas!”

A few terms and conditions: 

1. The contest has no geographic restrictions. 

2. Zoho partners are welcome to participate but won't be eligible to win prizes. 

3. Language should be civil and not offend any member of the community. 

    • Sticky Posts

    • The halloween CRM admin and sales fails contest

      This Halloween, we're trading scary sales stories. Keeping with the good ol' Halloween theme, let's discuss the biggest fails we've come across in sales. We're talking the lowest of the lows, the horror of horrors you've come across, or those that you somehow managed to brave and make it to the other side. For trick or treat, we're ditching the candy this season and offering five gift cards instead. The top five most interesting answers will get the following gift cards.  $100 BestBuy Gift Card $50
    • Recent Topics

    • Disposable Email Addresses

      Dear zMail Team, Can you also bring out a few disposable email addresses for each accounts? That way occasional registrations and imminent spam from them can be largely solved right? ---- Deepak Vasudevan http://thamizhththendral.blogspot.com/
    • Zoho sheet - Zoho expense

      I want to schedule to create an expense using Zoho Sheet and flow. That is the EMI that I pay on a particular date to the bank and should be itemised, like principal and interest on the loan. Can someone help me in this regard??
    • Ability to configure a schedule/shift for each user and/or crew in Zoho FSM

      Hello, In our team of Field Agents, we have different shifts. Some field agent always work from 7:00 AM to 4:00 PM while others work the evening shift like 4:00 PM to 11:00 PM. Sometime shift are on weekdays only or on weekend. It would be great to be
    • Free webinar: Streamlining customer service paperwork with the Zoho Sign extension for Zoho Desk

      Hello Everyone! Have you been wondering about bridging the gap between digitised customer service and business paperwork? Join our free webinar to learn how you can do this by connecting Zoho Sign, our digital signature app, with Zoho Desk, our online
    • Zoho Books | Product updates | July 2025

      Hello users, We’ve rolled out new features and enhancements in Zoho Books. From plan-based trials to the option to mark PDF templates as inactive, explore the updates designed to enhance your bookkeeping experience. Introducing Plan Based Trials in Zoho
    • Mail Search should allow grouping by conversation like Gmail.

      Having switched from gmail I have found the search function hard to use. Mostly because mail is not grouped by conversation in search. If I search for a word when looking for a conversation had with someone then sometimes 10 emails will come up from the
    • Improve Zoho Learn updated article notifications

      I noticed today while updating an article, that the notification users get says "[User Name] has published article [Article Name]..." My feedback to the product team is that it would be really helpful for an end user, if the system notification differentiated
    • Safari Support

      Safari, the world's second largest browser, zoho desk does not officially or fully support. That needs to change.
    • Can I get images from an "Image Upload" field in a webhook?

      I want to send images from 2 "image upload" fields via a webhook. Is this possible?
    • Ticket closure notification - all contacts cc'd on email thread

      Hello, If a client sends an email to our service desk and cc's in other people that work at the same company - so that they are in the loop of the service request. When the we close the ticket, only the ticket owner (person who emailed us - which created
    • Inactive account cleanup policy for Zoho Sign

      Zoho Sign reserves the right to delete accounts that are license free and inactive for more than 120 days. The account deletion will be initiated only after the user receives prior email notice about possible data deletion and how to backup the data.
    • Missde API documentation for Sales Receipt

      Hi! I noticed that the Sales Receipt endpoint is not currently listed in your API documentation (https://www.zoho.com/books/api/v3/introduction/). Could you please provide any available temporary documentation for this endpoint, along with a detailed
    • Multi-currency in Zoho CRM Forecast and Reports

      As a company we have branches in 4 different countries with as many different currencies. Our Sales Teams would like to work with their local currency as much as possible. The Forecast module using only 1 currency is practically usable only by the sales
    • How to select from pricebook when creating a salesorder or quote

      I am creating a sales order and when selecting the Products I do not see any where to select from pricebooks. How do i associate this to my orders?
    • Proposal for Creating a Unique "Address" Entity in Zoho FSM

      The "Address" entity is one of the most critical components for a service-oriented company. While homeowners may change and servicing companies may vary, the address itself remains constant. This constancy is essential for subsequent services, as it provides
    • I cannot find my older documents from 2024 and 2023

      I cannot find my older documents from 2024 and 2023.
    • System default SLA descriptions can't be modified

      The system default SLAs have identical descriptions for all SLA levels, but their settings differ. However, I am facing an issue where I cannot modify these descriptions and save the changes. The content of the description box can be edited but the changes
    • Customising Help Center

      Hi I don't think it is possible to add custom pages to help center? We'd like to use this as a customer portal with support tickets, FAQ/Guides, Billing and contracts. Is there any plans to add a feature like this or an alternative way to do it other
    • Replies sometimes creating separate ticket

      Sometimes when a customer responds to an email coming from Zoho Desk, instead of adding a reply to the original ticket, a separate ticket is created. This happens even though the response subject line contained the ticket number, and the person responding
    • Ticket Approvals - External Users

      The ticket approval option - we need to be able to select external users (Contacts) for approvals. Sometimes we are working with an end user and their boss needs to approve a purchase. For example, working with a cashier on a broken cash register and
    • Force Users to Ask Answer Bot a question... First

      End users will always skip talking to a bot. It would be nice if Zoho adopted the standard and forced users to first ask a question to answer bot (or zia in some fashion) and then pass to the agent if it wasn't answered. Options to force the user to speak
    • View Answer Bot conversations?

      We are trialing Zia and are experimenting with Answer Bot on our knowledge base. So far so good! Management asks me if it is possible to view Answer Bot conversations, the purpose being to look over its shoulder and confirm that it is working as des
    • Mass Email an Account

      It would be nice to mass email an account stating there is an outage at their business or something specific to an account is needed to be mass communicated. Even if it makes a ticket for every Email Out to every contact in the Account. Think: the customer
    • Multiple Topics assigned to a single Campaign

      Hello, is it possible to assign multiple Topics to a single Campaign? We frequently write a content to our subscribers that spans multiple Topics and we would like to send it to all Contacts that are subscribed to at least one of the Topics. But it looks
    • Zoho Projects Fonts and Accessibility missing

      I cannot find any more the tab where I can change the font in Zoho Project. I also checked the knowledgebase and there they have accessibility tab which I am completely missing. Is there some setup I am missing or is it a problem with our account?
    • Zoho Books Custom Widgets Deprecation Error

      I created a simple sample widget with zet and published it using sigma Both in the Sandbox and Production the Widgets are showing this error
    • Problems with PDF files in notebook

      I'm evaluating Zoho Notebook as an alternative to Evernote and imported my Evernote account to Zoho Notebook. First issue is that notes in Evernote that comprise a PDF are turned into a 'group' with a single note page (that has the text from the Evernote
    • API (v3) Tasks sorting issue

      We are using the v3 API for Projects. When we gat all tasks, per page of 100 tasks, we get the task info alright. But when we try to sort based on DESC(last_modified_time) we don't get the correct sort order. It is roughly sorted by the last_modified_time,
    • Assemblies make my stock go negative

      I am sure this is just the way that we are using this feature, but we use assemblies, a lot. The issue for us is the way that the relive inventory and the fact that it makes our composite item stock go negative. I have added flows to auto assemble and
    • User Activity Reports

      I'd like to get data related to user activity.  For example, Login and logout times, emails sent/received, new records created , etc. Is that currently available. I just can't seem to find anything . Thanks, Dave
    • Help: Populate “Contact Owner” details into Customer custom fields (for email templates) in Zoho Books

      We want to send invoices on behalf of our sales agents, and include the agent’s name, email, and phone in the email body using placeholders. Plan is to copy the Customer Owner details into three Customer custom fields, so they can be used as placeholders
    • Undocumented Books API error message - 1000 - The requested action could not be completed. Please try again. | Unexpected error

      This code sometimes throws this error 1000 - The requested action could not be completed. Please try again. | Unexpected error What does it mean? result = zoho.books.updateRecord("salesorders",organization.get("organization_id"),salesorder_id,sales_
    • Partial payments for retainer invoices

      When a customer does not pay the entire retainer invoice there is no way to apply a partial payment. PLEASE add this function.
    • Making Tags Mandatory

      When creating an expense, is it possible to make the Tags field mandatory?  I see the option in settings to make other fields mandatory, like Merchant, Description, Customer, etc, but nothing about Tags. Thanks! Kevin
    • Mass Update not trigger workflows

      Hi, I have performed a mass update of all records in a custom module using a custom view. I have a dummy checkbox on my module that I turn on or off - hoping to trigger all the new workflows that have been created for that module. However, no workflows
    • Multi-Select lookup field has reached its maximum??

      Hi there, I want to create a multi-select lookup field in a module but I can't select the model I want the relationship to be with from the list. From the help page on this I see that you can only create a max of 2 relationships per module? Is that true?
    • Generating CRM reports based on date moved in staged history

      Hi everyone, I'm trying to generate CRM reports of jobs (I think these are called usually deals) based on when they were moved to a particular stage, ie all jobs that were moved to Proposal/Quote in the previous financial year. I can see from other similar
    • Modules for missed calls, emails, texts etc

      Hi there. Is there a way to create a module that would automatically show a list of all inbound calls that were missed by our users, as well as any inbound SMS's, emails & WhatsApp messages. That way, a user who is available, can work through that list
    • Subforms and automation

      If a user updates a field how do we create an automation etc. We have a field for returned parts and i want to get an email when that field is ticked. How please as Zoho tells me no automation on subforms. The Reason- Why having waited for ever for FSM
    • Conditional layouts - support for multi-select picklists

      Hi, The documentation for conditional layouts says the following: "Layout Rules cannot be used on the following field types: Auto Number Lookup Multi Select Lookup User Lookup Formula File Upload Multi Line" I have a custom module with a multi-pick list
    • Next Page