Everything Old Is New Again
Or should I say, some things just don’t change, as baffling as it may be to some of us who do.
One of our readers, and a prolific blogger, Eric Karjaluoto, recently pointed me to two of his posts that coincidently have a common thread: bad habits die hard. One talked about his buying experience with an unscrupulous and unfortunately old-time-stereotypical car dealer—the point of the post, "Blogs Can Kill Brands," was actually about the impact blogging can have on a brand. The other, "The Inversion of Advertising," examined the time warp some ad agency execs seem to be stuck in. One exec still equates “interactive” with banner ads and nothing more, Eric said in his post. Hello? This is 2008, Web 2.0, and all that. Both posts are worth a read, as are the many responses to each.
As if those two stories weren’t enough,
I recently heard a woman talk about how a friend of hers works in one of “those” companies: where a female salesperson works diligently to build a relationship—and sale—with a prospect, only to have her male supervisor take away the account just before it closes and give it to a salesman, who then closes the deal over lap dances at the local strip club. It’s hard for me to imagine that this still goes on. But then again, unfortunately, it doesn’t surprise me at all.
Not long ago I received a telemarketing call. When I explained to the salesperson that I would have to find out the correct contact for her to speak with and get back to her, she curtly snapped at me that her company uses an autodialer, so there’s no way for me to call her or for her to call me back. With that I asked her to remove me from her list, yet two days later I received a call from another snappy telesales agent from the same company. It seemed like someone loaded the local phonebook into a dialer, hired some agents, and wished them good luck. The scariest thing is that this company, which had a terrible sales strategy and curt phone salespeople, was actually a sales training company. Do they really expect anyone to purchase training from them? Buyer beware if they do.
After covering sales, marketing, and customer service for nearly two decades, one thing that’s clear is that some people will hard sell at all costs, no matter much evidence there is to the benefit of taking a more customer-focused approach. And others will stand fast with “this is how we’ve always done it,” even though the changes happening all around them will soon leave them so far behind that all they’ll be able to see the backs of their customers as they run to catch up with that company’s more forward-thinking competitors.
Do you have any stories of companies or people stuck in a rut of out-of-date strategies or bad behaviors?
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