Bagel Belly Blog

On marketing

This bugs me (approximate rendition of a telephone conversation, just now):

Secretary: "There's a call from a ----- ----- of MS UK"
Me: "Ok, put him through"
Caller: "Hi Andrew, you may recall we were talking about our product at the end of last year, and I said I'd call back, do you remember?"
Me: "Sorry, no, can you refresh my memory?"
Caller: "We're providing a company information product that ... "
Me: "Ah yes, I remember - "
Caller: "... provides you with blah blah blah blah blah blah ... "
Me: "Yes, I remember now, thanks - "
Caller: "... blah blah blah blah blah blah ... "
Me: "Ok, look, I'm sorry, we're not interested, but thanks very much for your call, bye!"
Caller: "... hold on, can I just ask, blah blah blah ... "
Me: *click*

So what bugs me?

Firstly, if you're going to cold call me, please have the decency to stop ranting about your product if I say I remember what you're talking about. Give me time to get a word in edgeways, at least. It's not just about how far through your call script you can get before I hang up, you know. -10 tolerance and interest points.

Secondly, if I tell one part of your company I'm not interested in their product (say, a credit checking service), please don't then pass my details on to the sales team of a thinly-veiled rehash masquerading as another product (say, a corporate information service) to have another crack at me. -10 tolerance and interest points.

Thirdly, please don't use ambiguous names to get through my call screening. MS UK? Hmm, I don't recall having been in conversations with Microsoft ... ah no, it's the deliberately unspecific folks at MarketSafe. -5 tolerance and interest points.

Fourth, if your product is basically built around scraping information from existing databases such as Companies House, please be sure to add something unique - like, say, USABILITY. If your product is better than the incumbent, you don't need to resort to aggressive and unpleasant sales tactics. -15 tolerance and interest points.

And finally - if you don't want me to rant about your company and you'd like me to keep your product in mind for such time as I do decide it would be useful, definitely DO NOT email me something like this:

Thank you for the message that you are not interested in our database. This will now save us both a lot of time in the long run and negate the need for me to keep calling.

I would like to point out that had you had the courtesy to tell me that initially instead of hanging up on me mid sentence, we could have saved ourselves a lot of time.

I would have liked to find out why you changed your mind so completely from when I first gave you the free demonstration, when you were very impressed and thought our system would work for you.

Clearly you do not have the spare 10 or 15 seconds that this would take, so I will wish you all the best.

Oh, and don't bother with putting a disclaimer on your emails either:

Disclaimer: This e-mail is confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed.

If it's unsolicited, I don't think that really works.

It's not quite a "cheap, nasty and tacky" email, though ;-)