I had a sales call recently. My prospect began by asking me what I thought of their site.

I was happy to answer his questions. In sales, we’re likely to provide as much value as possible, every step of the way. The more value our prospects receive our expertise, this thinking goes, the more they’re likely to buy our services.

On our second call, my prospect expressed interest in my selling tools. Like many of you, I use LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Apollo extensively. He hadn’t heard of either, and as he took notes, he deflected my questions about his interests.

Then I realized that he was milking me for information that would help his business, rather than engaging with me as a truly interested prospect.

Sometimes, salespeople are stereotyped for milking their prospects. In our industry, after all, a great deal of competition exists in free, commodified information that is available online.

But are we milking our prospects, or are they milking us?

Let’s not milk. It almost never works.

At the same time, let’s keep our ears open for getting milked. It probably happens more than we realize. When we think we’re getting milked, it’s time to move on.