As the march continues inexorably towards a more digitally integrated world, there is a growing tendency to forget the proven contact growth methods and business builders of the past, I mean no-one uses them any more right? Wrong!
Let us start with email lists. We are a small business by relative standards but we still receive upwards of 60 marketing emails every single day. Those not caught by our extensive spam filtering are often quickly dispatched without being read simply because we do not have the time or patience to sift through every carefully constructed monologue in the hopes of finding a new partner or supplier. Of course another point is the fact that those partners we are looking at working with often already know who they are via more direct methods.
OK so how about marketing phone calls. My personal experience of these is:
- They are often rude – they will talk over you and not listen to your pleas that you are not interested.
- They are ignorant of your position; they have a name on the screen in front of them and will not speak to anyone else – I am a partner with my business, but am often hung up on when I refuse to pass the call to my partner.
- They have a set speech which is either shouted AT you or spoken at full tilt so you literally have no way of stopping the tirade in order to tell them that they are wasting their time and yours.
- They can very seldom elaborate on the service as this obviously was not part of the pre-prepared script that they were given to work with today from a generic call centre somewhere in the world.
- They will not take NO! for an answer and can become bullying, loud, abusive and threatening when told no for the fifth time.
Given the past experiences above, do you really think I am going to take your marketing call?
Let’s try text! No let’s not. We started receiving random texts from our mobile phone supplier and already receive them every time our sons academy wants to tell us something that we already know. What delusional fool had the idea that texting us after we have been dealing with spam emails and marketing phone calls all morning would be a good idea? Oh and if you do engage in this pointless exercise, word of advice – learn about timezones! 10 pm in the evening we finally get sat down with my family and a marketing text comes in – guess what happens to it?
So how do you connect with us and our business if you genuinely have something that you think might benefit us? Well you could start by connecting with us on Linkedin or social media, comment on discussions that we are commenting on/starting. How about looking at our website to see what we are about? You could also try getting off your behind and meeting us IN PERSON at a networking event – and no this does not mean just throwing us your script and business card and saying ‘let’s talk’ – genuine human interaction!
Even in today’s technology driven world, people still buy from people; not robots, not outsourced phone centres and definitely not from unsolicited standard emails and texts. When you learn the difference, you will have our full attention – at least you will if we can see a benefit of working with you. Until then I am afraid your message will continue to suck.
Lesson of the week, just because it is an older idea does not mean it is obsolete. An informative, well designed, non-pushy website will help you to grow that initial contact because that is the next place people will look to find out more about your service/product. Debayne Web Design – a personal approach to help you with your sales message – Weaving the Web your Way.
