Walking Does Not Work - Kenny Madden Article
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@thanksajdotcom said:
If you want to see sales done right, you should have shadowed me for a week
Modest!
To get back to the OP, yeah, in principal I don't object to being cold-called. The problem is 90% of the people who cold-call me are arseholes - aggressive, ignorant, rude, and won't take no for an answer. Maybe it is possible to bully people into buying from you, but it has the opposite effect on me. The 90% ruin it for the 10% who are decent, to the degree that I now don't take any cold calls.
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@Carnival-Boy the problem that I have with cold calls, at least from an ideological standpoint, is that it is completely random. They have a random service or product and want to talk me, a random person into it. They have zero idea if they even have a product in a category that I might be interested in let alone one that I need now nor one where they would be a reasonable choice within that product category.
Cold calls are a huge waste of my time - not because I can't be bothered talking to sales people but because it's just random. A totally random interruption where I am expected to drop what I am doing and talk about a product that they have zero reason to believe that I might want.
It's the completely willingness to throw away my time that makes me upset. Cold calling is a sales tactic based on the total disregard for the value of the potential customer's time.
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I appreciate the struggles that sales people have, without cold calling how do you make contacts? It's tough. But there are better ways.
In the same vein that I have said with other things, calls are the wrong tool. Using the telephone is rude and impolite - it's an interruption without warrant. That's why cold calling is a 100% "never do business with that company" tactic. It doesn't just cost me as a potential customer, it risks losing me as an existing customer. Good long term vendor partners don't cold call you. The kind of business that is willing to cold call isn't the kind of business I want to be doing business with. I don't care how nice the person pretends to be on the other end, they didn't care about me when they made the call in the first place and they don't see me as an equal, but as a pocket book to be emptied. I don't want that kind of long term relationship with business vendors.
How else do companies get introduced when they want to get in front of you but you do not know who they are? That's a bit tough and the bottom line is that companies do not have some natural right to get in front of you if you don't want them to. They aren't entitled like that.
But if a company wants to cold call politely, there is SPAM for that. No matter how hated SPAM is, it is far more polite than cold calling. It's the same tactic, bulk unrequested contact, but at least it is done through a polite channel (async, non-interruption.) It's cold calling with a little respect for my time. Still not going to get my attention, but at least it is a little less likely to get your company black listed.
There are marketing channels for getting your name out there. Look at XenOrchestra or ownCloud. They've done a tonne of getting their names out there just be providing a good product, getting customers talking about their product and providing support and information about it when needed. They are not using a sales channel but a marketing and support channel and the responses are very, very different.
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I've been a salesman before and there are ways to do this stuff without being ridiculous. I've stopped, in person, into many businesses before (@Minion-Queen and I used to do this literally on foot long ago) by walking in and dropping off a business card or brochure. They normally have a receptionist whose job it is to take that stuff. They are sitting idle for exactly this purpose. We look to see if they are busy, we don't interrupt someone who is busy because that would mean that we don't respect their business and couldn't be a good vendor for them - something that someone cold calling by phone can't check.
We would drop off information and ask them to keep it on hand or pass it on to the right person who, if interested, could contact us. Sometimes they would grab that person right then, sometimes they would just take the brochure. It was a cold contact but we didn't use the phone and interrupt anyone, we didn't do a "blasting" but literally walked on foot and went in person to each business, generally with two people! We put way more of our time on the line for each contact than the customer did and we were careful not to interrupt.
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@scottalanmiller said:
But if a company wants to cold call politely, there is SPAM for that. No matter how hated SPAM is, it is far more polite than cold calling.
I have two problems with e-mail marketing versus phone marketing:
- E-mail is my primary communication channel, so I can't choose to ignore it. I will always read e-mail within minutes of it being received, whereas I have the option to simply not answer my phone. I can ignore my phone but I can't ignore e-mail. I appreciate everyone is different, but this is how I work.
- I check my e-mail when I'm at home or on vacation. So having to receive spam is a really pain. Whereas cold calls are to my office phone, and therefore only interrupt me when I'm in the office.
I've tried getting around this by having a separate e-mail address to give to people who I don't want to hassle me, but somehow spammers always get hold of my primary e-mail address.
But the absolute worse is firms that do both.
"Hi Carnival Boy, I just thought I'd phone you to see if you got the e-mail I sent you last week about our exciting deals on Cisco products. Did you get it?"
And then they get offended when I politely tell them that no, I don't read spam. -
@Carnival-Boy said:
I have two problems with e-mail marketing versus phone marketing:
- E-mail is my primary communication channel, so I can't choose to ignore it. I will always read e-mail within minutes of it being received, whereas I have the option to simply not answer my phone. I can ignore my phone but I can't ignore e-mail. I appreciate everyone is different, but this is how I work.
- I check my e-mail when I'm at home or on vacation. So having to receive spam is a really pain. Whereas cold calls are to my office phone, and therefore only interrupt me when I'm in the office.
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Those make sense. The thing that I like about email is that it is very easy to filter. Phone I literally filter everyone. So that solves that issue, but also makes me impossible to call
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@Carnival-Boy said:
But the absolute worse is firms that do both.
"Hi Carnival Boy, I just thought I'd phone you to see if you got the e-mail I sent you last week about our exciting deals on Cisco products. Did you get it?"
And then they get offended when I politely tell them that no, I don't read spam.Yes, you've already turned them down and they just keep at it. I'd do the inverse, they'd email me to see if I got their voicemail but I'd email that I don't listen to cold calls... but I don't read spam either so neither reaches me
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One thing that has always bugged me, that you might have an answer for:
In Outlook, right-click Junk, there are three options:
Block sender
Never block sender
Never block sender's domainWhere is the option to block sender's domain?
This would be really useful, as a lot of spam has a unique e-mail address but always comes from a single domain (the domain of the marketing company). I believe the official reason Outlook doesn't give me the option is that Microsoft thinks I'm an idiot and need protecting from accidentally blocking a domain.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
One thing that has always bugged me, that you might have an answer for:
In Outlook, right-click Junk, there are three options:
Block sender
Never block sender
Never block sender's domainWhere is the option to block sender's domain?
This would be really useful, as a lot of spam has a unique e-mail address but always comes from a single domain (the domain of the marketing company). I believe the official reason Outlook doesn't give me the option is that Microsoft thinks I'm an idiot and need protecting from accidentally blocking a domain.
That's huge. When we ran our own email servers (Zimbra) and I think when we were on Rackspace we had the ability to do that and we did it liberally. That's how we discovered that Source Media in Manhattan was running a massive farm of email domains to get around that. We would contact them directly, even through Spiceheads who worked there and block any domain that we could find associated with them and no matter what they would just move to yet another domain and continue to spam us. They took spamming to a seriously malicious level. Blocking domains helped more than anything as they did not honour "do not contact" demands in any way.
It's really awful that O365 does not offer that as an option. I can see why end users would not get it, but the admins should get it but AFAIK they do not.
We didn't let end users do it either, but we had a zero spam tolerance policy so any company that spammed anyone would get blocked. It worked great.
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@scottalanmiller said:
We look to see if they are busy, we don't interrupt someone who is busy because that would mean that we don't respect their business and couldn't be a good vendor for them - something that someone cold calling by phone can't check.
If they have a receptionist who answers the phone, and you know that, you could ask to be transferred to that person's voicemail - in fact you're more likely for me to listen to your voicemail than anything else.
But as Scott mentioned - what are the chances that I want what you are selling at this moment in time, so really, it's mostly if not entirely pointless.
We would drop off information and ask them to keep it on hand or pass it on to the right person who, if interested, could contact us. Sometimes they would grab that person right then, sometimes they would just take the brochure. It was a cold contact but we didn't use the phone and interrupt anyone, we didn't do a "blasting" but literally walked on foot and went in person to each business, generally with two people! We put way more of our time on the line for each contact than the customer did and we were careful not to interrupt.
Why would you take two people if you don't have any expectations of actually talking to someone, other than to perhaps intimidate through numbers the receptionist to calling that IT person to get them to come out and talk?
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@Dashrender said:
Why would you take two people if you don't have any expectations of actually talking to someone, other than to perhaps intimidate through numbers the receptionist to calling that IT person to get them to come out and talk?
Just always seemed to work better, especially in a market where everyone tends to know everyone.
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Dropping off brochures doesn't work with me. They just go straight in the bin.
However, dropping off chocolates or sweets is always appreciated. I'm easily bribed via my stomach.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Dropping off brochures doesn't work with me. They just go straight in the bin.
Nothing works with most people. To me, at least, the most important thing is doing something that doesn't get us blacklisted. You might not want a brochure that was dropped off, but at least you aren't mad that we dropped it off.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
Dropping off brochures doesn't work with me. They just go straight in the bin.
However, dropping off chocolates or sweets is always appreciated. I'm easily bribed via my stomach.
I don't get these offers much, but a friend of mine does - the offer is to go out to lunch - vendor paid. My friend refuses them because he knows he won't be buying their product and doesn't think it's right to get a free lunch for something he has no interest in.
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@Dashrender said:
@Carnival-Boy said:
Dropping off brochures doesn't work with me. They just go straight in the bin.
However, dropping off chocolates or sweets is always appreciated. I'm easily bribed via my stomach.
I don't get these offers much, but a friend of mine does - the offer is to go out to lunch - vendor paid. My friend refuses them because he knows he won't be buying their product and doesn't think it's right to get a free lunch for something he has no interest in.
I'm the same way, I don't do lunches or whatever with vendors unless I am seriously considering the product or doing something of value for the company (like providing them consulting.)
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Here is a perfect world for me:
NO SALES PEOPLE
Products that I can openly research
Products that have online demos already setup that I can try anytime
Products with clear pricing
Products that offer a free version so I can demo them in my own environment
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I have vendors that reach out to me on a weekly basis want to take me out to lunch etc. I am always honest that I doubt I would buy anything. But most of them still insist on meeting with me. Because I work from home I refuse to let them in my office. They take me out to lunch go through their pitch and I tell them nope.
Taking me out for food does nothing to tell me about your product. Actually a vendor that does that before they get to know me I am usually pretty sure I would never use their product as they waste too much time, money and energy on their sales process. Which means it isn't being invested where it matters.
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@IRJ said:
Products that offer a free version so I can demo them in my own environment
Products that are open source and I pay for support, not code.
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@Minion-Queen said:
Taking me out for food does nothing to tell me about your product. Actually a vendor that does that before they get to know me I am usually pretty sure I would never use their product as they waste too much time, money and energy on their sales process. Which means it isn't being invested where it matters.
I have the advantage that sometimes I get to meet up with actual engineering teams rather than sales people. Once in a while these kinds of things work, but they are not arising from cold calls.
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@IRJ said:
Here is a perfect world for me:
NO SALES PEOPLE
This is a tough one for me. Sales people are important in identifying a need and getting an option in front of you. It's a tough one, but if you rely purely on research it makes existing solutions get an unfair advantage (which hurts everyone.) It means that there is a huge race for mind share or Google share and once achieved it is nearly impossible to unseat.
Not that that does not happen already with sales people, but sales people are a mitigating factor to that. Marketing and research are by far the primary means of getting information out, but sales plays an important role as well.
