I just learned on the airwaves that one of the Auto Makers- might have been Toyota- was holding a sales event at one of their dealerships. I was told that I unequivocally needed to attend because, and I quote, "EVERYONE is going!".
I was alarmed.
How am I just finding this out now?
I got on my bag phone and called a close friend. I was a bit embarrassed (for me)reaching out to him to ascertain my level of social blindness. He answered his car phone and I just spit it out. He was also unaware of this event of such grandeur. He then told me this is an advertising method called the "bandwagon technique" used by advertisers, reaching its height of popularity in the year 718 A.D. He said it is never used anymore, largely because its creative ingenuity is on a par with infomercials purporting weight loss with no exercise or diet.
The first paragraph is true; the remainder is me having a little fun.
Jerry Seinfeld once observed that a man leaning on his car horn to hopefully garner the attention and favor of an attractive female pedestrian is "out of ideas". That poor SOB isn't alone.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Pardon the Interuption
People do not like being interrupted.
This helps explain the immense popularity, historically speaking, of the Web pop-up window, the television commercial during the suspenseful moment of the film you're watching, the BLARING car dealership ad on the radio (NOBODY beats our prices!...we're customer-centric!!)and the knuckle-dragging script reader who calls you at home trying to sell you vinyl siding for your brick condominium.
If you are required to cold call ANYONE as part of your job and your employer also requires you to read from a script or close to it, you have no shot of succeeding. You are human spam and my heart goes out to you...seriously. Nobody deserves that type of abuse...on both ends of the line.
A small parable: My kitchen is on fire. You solicit my business by knocking on my front door. You happen to be selling hand-held fire extinguishers. Good timing, bro. Where do I sign? Actually, gimme that bad boy so I can put out this inferno; then, you just made a sale hombre. Great timing. If you're selling something else, I'm not interesting in speaking with you right now.
This horsebleep about "overcoming objections" when you're calling me cold really grinds my gears. It's the proverbial trying to teach a pig how to sing. All you are doing- as you attempt to "overcome my objections"- is pissing me off. Nothing else. If I'm already your customer and we know each other, that's different. Even then, be tactful and be smart when you try to persuade me to see things your way.
You can make money and new customers by cold calling.It's not easy and it's DEFINITELY not for people with thin skin.
There is ZERO magic involved. Aside from effective voice projection, modulation, tone and some common courtesy, success is in the numbers. People are either in the market for something or they are not. And even if they are in the market, they might not tell you because: 1.) They don't like what you're saying on the phone and how you're saying it. 2.) They don't know you or your company and 3.) They do know some people AND some companies who do make what they are in the market for.
Be a pro on the call and you have a shot.
There have been numerous exceptions in the marketplace over the years (Most people were not "in the market" for a portable digital music player when they bought their first iPod). There are examples in the business-to-business arena as well...though I can't think of one off the top of my head...that's how rare they are).
Find people in the the market for what you are selling. The other 95% + you speak with, be polite and thank them for taking your call and move on.
This helps explain the immense popularity, historically speaking, of the Web pop-up window, the television commercial during the suspenseful moment of the film you're watching, the BLARING car dealership ad on the radio (NOBODY beats our prices!...we're customer-centric!!)and the knuckle-dragging script reader who calls you at home trying to sell you vinyl siding for your brick condominium.
If you are required to cold call ANYONE as part of your job and your employer also requires you to read from a script or close to it, you have no shot of succeeding. You are human spam and my heart goes out to you...seriously. Nobody deserves that type of abuse...on both ends of the line.
A small parable: My kitchen is on fire. You solicit my business by knocking on my front door. You happen to be selling hand-held fire extinguishers. Good timing, bro. Where do I sign? Actually, gimme that bad boy so I can put out this inferno; then, you just made a sale hombre. Great timing. If you're selling something else, I'm not interesting in speaking with you right now.
This horsebleep about "overcoming objections" when you're calling me cold really grinds my gears. It's the proverbial trying to teach a pig how to sing. All you are doing- as you attempt to "overcome my objections"- is pissing me off. Nothing else. If I'm already your customer and we know each other, that's different. Even then, be tactful and be smart when you try to persuade me to see things your way.
You can make money and new customers by cold calling.It's not easy and it's DEFINITELY not for people with thin skin.
There is ZERO magic involved. Aside from effective voice projection, modulation, tone and some common courtesy, success is in the numbers. People are either in the market for something or they are not. And even if they are in the market, they might not tell you because: 1.) They don't like what you're saying on the phone and how you're saying it. 2.) They don't know you or your company and 3.) They do know some people AND some companies who do make what they are in the market for.
Be a pro on the call and you have a shot.
There have been numerous exceptions in the marketplace over the years (Most people were not "in the market" for a portable digital music player when they bought their first iPod). There are examples in the business-to-business arena as well...though I can't think of one off the top of my head...that's how rare they are).
Find people in the the market for what you are selling. The other 95% + you speak with, be polite and thank them for taking your call and move on.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Free beer with that?
We've all heard the stat that says something like: Of the 6,446,118 restaurants that will open in the US this year, only one will survive...and only because they serve free beer after 5 PM.
Seriously, first-year restaurant failure numbers are frightening.
The rest of the private sector start-up small and medium size business (SMB)numbers aren't a helluva lot better.
After obligatory niceties, I've asked plenty of new SMB entrepreneurs about to tip their toes into the pool the following question: How to you plan to get customers? Their answers range typically from "it's in marketing section of my business plan" to "what do you mean?".
People you know who run a business, have employees and have run the company for some time- these are folks with some serious intestinal fortitude. People who you know who have spent their career working for others but CONSTANTLY complain and tell others their plans to start their own business...they are intestinal parasites.
Hail, hail the small business owner.
Seriously, first-year restaurant failure numbers are frightening.
The rest of the private sector start-up small and medium size business (SMB)numbers aren't a helluva lot better.
After obligatory niceties, I've asked plenty of new SMB entrepreneurs about to tip their toes into the pool the following question: How to you plan to get customers? Their answers range typically from "it's in marketing section of my business plan" to "what do you mean?".
People you know who run a business, have employees and have run the company for some time- these are folks with some serious intestinal fortitude. People who you know who have spent their career working for others but CONSTANTLY complain and tell others their plans to start their own business...they are intestinal parasites.
Hail, hail the small business owner.
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Pass me the Sanctimony, please.
"..It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!"
I make a point of not using other people's words in this space..especially quotes. I put considerable effort in defining "financial conflict of interest" and NOTHING my grey matter could summons trumps this. Thank you, Upton Sinclair.
Two pieces of legislation are currently in the House and Senate that both essentially address the same thing: Intellectual Property. Understandably, forces and factions on both sides are lining up to protect their interests. What KILLS me when situations like this occur (and they do relentlessly) is how organizations espouse that it is THE PEOPLE they care about and not their own financial interests. The stories of the "poor people" or "the artists" who will be victims if the legislative outcome goes one way or another.
Business, politics...you name it. It's not me I'm concerned about, crows the carnival barker du jour!!! Pass the Kleenex, please...I'm falling to pieces over here.
As human beings subject to the helplessness of a finite lifespan and an entirely unpredictable tomorrow, we are hard-wired to care about ourselves and our loved ones closest to us more than anything else. (even more than random "artists"!!). And unless there's an abject collapse of the worlds financial system, money can sometimes eliminate or at least assuage the inevitable problems and heartbreaks that are part of all of our lives. Many of us care about money ONLY for this reason. Obviously, untold numbers of others obsess over money for less benevolent reasons. Either way, people care about it.
And then we deny it...why?
Entertainment giant Viacom will tell you their primary concern is for "the artist". Really? Go ask 1,000 entertainers how much Viacom cares about them. If the likes of Viacom publicly said that "our profits help MANY people and we are getting ripped off" they'd have my ear.
I make a point of not using other people's words in this space..especially quotes. I put considerable effort in defining "financial conflict of interest" and NOTHING my grey matter could summons trumps this. Thank you, Upton Sinclair.
Two pieces of legislation are currently in the House and Senate that both essentially address the same thing: Intellectual Property. Understandably, forces and factions on both sides are lining up to protect their interests. What KILLS me when situations like this occur (and they do relentlessly) is how organizations espouse that it is THE PEOPLE they care about and not their own financial interests. The stories of the "poor people" or "the artists" who will be victims if the legislative outcome goes one way or another.
Business, politics...you name it. It's not me I'm concerned about, crows the carnival barker du jour!!! Pass the Kleenex, please...I'm falling to pieces over here.
As human beings subject to the helplessness of a finite lifespan and an entirely unpredictable tomorrow, we are hard-wired to care about ourselves and our loved ones closest to us more than anything else. (even more than random "artists"!!). And unless there's an abject collapse of the worlds financial system, money can sometimes eliminate or at least assuage the inevitable problems and heartbreaks that are part of all of our lives. Many of us care about money ONLY for this reason. Obviously, untold numbers of others obsess over money for less benevolent reasons. Either way, people care about it.
And then we deny it...why?
Entertainment giant Viacom will tell you their primary concern is for "the artist". Really? Go ask 1,000 entertainers how much Viacom cares about them. If the likes of Viacom publicly said that "our profits help MANY people and we are getting ripped off" they'd have my ear.
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Blow Up the Blow Out
If you are considering transacting business with a company in the midst of a self-proclaimed "BLOW OUT SALE!", run briskly toward the exits.
With the exception of actual liquidations, the aforementioned marketing tactic is knuckle-dragging lobotomized bravado at it's finest.
Retailers love the proverbial "blow out". They also love to tell you when items are "on sale". As I've told my lovely wife an infinite number of times- after she's detonated our plastic collection- she is prey and the merchant is an especially famished velociraptor. Oh, sure, they need to move some non-performing items but flowering it as an "on sale!" item while making sure you (the prey) see all the other lovely nuggets..it's like shooting fish in a fish market.
I drive by a New/"Pre-Owned" car dealership when I go to my gym. Not once has there been a day in which some "unbelievable, limited time offer" wasn't going on there. This hyperbole isn't relegated only to retail or car dealerships. I routinely see every conceivable item in every industry described as "incredible" or "astonishing". Not sure where you folks stand on this but I reserve use of these adjectives for things/events such as extraterrestrials playing kickball in my backyard or somebody whose will to live defies the most lethal agents of expiration.
THOSE things are astonishing; not download speeds that are twice as fast!!
Well..must be going; cases of Sam Adams Winter Ale have been marked down to $16 balloons at the continent-sized Wal-Mart Super Center. I mean, really, you can't beat that price.
With the exception of actual liquidations, the aforementioned marketing tactic is knuckle-dragging lobotomized bravado at it's finest.
Retailers love the proverbial "blow out". They also love to tell you when items are "on sale". As I've told my lovely wife an infinite number of times- after she's detonated our plastic collection- she is prey and the merchant is an especially famished velociraptor. Oh, sure, they need to move some non-performing items but flowering it as an "on sale!" item while making sure you (the prey) see all the other lovely nuggets..it's like shooting fish in a fish market.
I drive by a New/"Pre-Owned" car dealership when I go to my gym. Not once has there been a day in which some "unbelievable, limited time offer" wasn't going on there. This hyperbole isn't relegated only to retail or car dealerships. I routinely see every conceivable item in every industry described as "incredible" or "astonishing". Not sure where you folks stand on this but I reserve use of these adjectives for things/events such as extraterrestrials playing kickball in my backyard or somebody whose will to live defies the most lethal agents of expiration.
THOSE things are astonishing; not download speeds that are twice as fast!!
Well..must be going; cases of Sam Adams Winter Ale have been marked down to $16 balloons at the continent-sized Wal-Mart Super Center. I mean, really, you can't beat that price.
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Zero Out for Sanity
About 46 seconds into a recorded infomercial, I decided there must be a better way to renew my prescriptions over the telephone.
The poor pharmacist..he nervously laughed and said "corporate" is insisting that he (and other pharmacists) are also required to attempt to upsell while engaged with the customer standing in their physical proximity.
This is where we currently stand in the world of BigCo marketing; and this practice started WELL before the economy hit the skids back in the year 1388.
I won't tell you the name of the mega-pharmacy chain that just pinned me to the wall (though it does rhyme with Height Laid) though I find it astonishing that a company with this type of marketing muscle has been reduced to this type of horsebleep. After re-reading the sentence I just plucked, why should this surprise me? The aforementioned one-to-one "marketing" example is EVERYWHERE. People who are compensated on a par with heart surgeons to "increase growth"...this is the best they got.
If the U.S. is no longer in the business of actually making anything anymore we better be Rock Stars at the other stuff, e.g., any type of services.
So how's "Customer Service" treating you these days/daze?
I repeat: If the US is no longer going to manufacture stuff, we need to be nothing short of spectacular in any type of commerce that would be categorized under the heading SERVICES.
Now pardon me while I prepare for my two services related visits later today with: A.) My primary care physician, his staff and Managed Care and B.) The Registry of Motor Vehicles. I'm not expected to survive.
The poor pharmacist..he nervously laughed and said "corporate" is insisting that he (and other pharmacists) are also required to attempt to upsell while engaged with the customer standing in their physical proximity.
This is where we currently stand in the world of BigCo marketing; and this practice started WELL before the economy hit the skids back in the year 1388.
I won't tell you the name of the mega-pharmacy chain that just pinned me to the wall (though it does rhyme with Height Laid) though I find it astonishing that a company with this type of marketing muscle has been reduced to this type of horsebleep. After re-reading the sentence I just plucked, why should this surprise me? The aforementioned one-to-one "marketing" example is EVERYWHERE. People who are compensated on a par with heart surgeons to "increase growth"...this is the best they got.
If the U.S. is no longer in the business of actually making anything anymore we better be Rock Stars at the other stuff, e.g., any type of services.
So how's "Customer Service" treating you these days/daze?
I repeat: If the US is no longer going to manufacture stuff, we need to be nothing short of spectacular in any type of commerce that would be categorized under the heading SERVICES.
Now pardon me while I prepare for my two services related visits later today with: A.) My primary care physician, his staff and Managed Care and B.) The Registry of Motor Vehicles. I'm not expected to survive.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Keggar Wisdom
I was on the phone today with someone who described himself as “an executive recruiter”. Being able to often tell a person’s approximate age by how they present and speak on the phone, my guess is this young man was about 8 months removed from his last college keg party. He assured me on the phone “that his company KNOWS sales”.
That was really interesting to me because I don’t have the faintest idea what that means.
I’m not going to blame his lack of experience for making such a preposterous claim. I hear people and companies saying such things all the time.
If someone wants or needs what it is you’re “selling”, they will do so independent of anything you do or say. The sole exception is they believe you to be an utter nincompoop and request someone else to handle the transaction and subsequent account management.
Anything beyond that I will defer to the “keggar kid” whose company know sales.
That was really interesting to me because I don’t have the faintest idea what that means.
I’m not going to blame his lack of experience for making such a preposterous claim. I hear people and companies saying such things all the time.
If someone wants or needs what it is you’re “selling”, they will do so independent of anything you do or say. The sole exception is they believe you to be an utter nincompoop and request someone else to handle the transaction and subsequent account management.
Anything beyond that I will defer to the “keggar kid” whose company know sales.
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