81 – Sales and Marketing – Customer Perception

How often do you get sales calls or marketing calls, and how do they go? Damn. Some of these salespeople, actually an awful lot of them are lazy sacks of excrement. It’s often somebody calls me, partially from personal connection, and they basically know a bit about me. We had a lot of conversations, we’ve been on things together, etc. and all of a sudden they call and it sounds like they think I’m from outer space and have just landed. It’s like they don’t remember or don’t know anything. How hard is it to find out about somebody? Do your prep!

This episode was actually originally motivated by somebody who was talking with me about being on my podcast. I’ll explain that a little bit later. What happened was I stopped because somebody else that I had an appointment with, a salesperson, called and this is the scenario. Some just do this and are supposed to be in sales and marketing. Think of it. They’re going to webinars and seminars, and talking to others about how to do sales well. What to do. How you’re supposed to do it. What you’re supposed to say. They’re teaching people how to use X, Y, Z software so that you have a real personal connection with the person, and to develop that personal connection.

What happens? This person called from a major software company. Actually they were hired away from another company where they were supposedly a cracker-jack salesman, and they approach me in an absolutely inept way, annoying the heck at me. They start up with things, like asking me about myself. Heck, he already had the links in the email that we exchanged. I had already been talked to by somebody else that supposedly gathered some information so that he’d have it in front of him. So I just leaned back, took a nice deep breath, tried to hint to him as to what he should do while I’m on the phone. He couldn’t even take the hints. He still didn’t get it. He said things like: “What do you do?” Really? I just freaking gave you my information, my link, and told you what I was. I even said: “Didn’t you see my bio on…?” and I gave him the link for that. No. I had sent him things and he had the links to my bio in there. You would think, if nothing else, he would be pulling it up as he talks to me.

Folks, if you’re in sales, do a little bit of prep ahead of time. Make sure that you’re able to get on the phone and as best as possible seem like you’re interested in the person, know a little bit about them, and make sure you’ve thought of things that relate to you and them and your company, and what your company can do for them. Don’t brag about your company. They don’t give a dang about your company. What can the company do for them? Then you can get into all the testimonials and the support material.

I think from now on and I recommend you do the same, when I get a call from one of these folks I’m going to refer them to this episode. This will be episode number 81. I’m going to say: “Go to www.LifeUnsettled.com/81,” tell them to listen to it and call back. If they don’t have my information together then, I’m just hanging up. I suggest you do the same thing. I wasted like 40 minutes on the phone. I needed some things from this particular person, so I did. Otherwise, I would have hung up right at the beginning. But I and I imagine you may, too, get calls from these lazy salespeople on a regular basis. I’ll just ask them to call back after they’ve listened.

The process of some of the sales call was really crazy, too. He was asking me things as if he was talking to a person who had just started out doing certain things, someone who had never been in business. There are all kinds of things that he could have just said, like: “Are you familiar with X, Y? Should I go on to this?” There was lots of ways he could have skipped on it or been complementary in the way that he asked, instead of trying to tell me how to tie my shoes. That’s basically what it was. “How to turn on a light switch.