This content has been archived. It may no longer be relevant
I was packing up my things to go home for the night and my office phone rang. “Hmm”, I thought, “I better not pick this up or I’ll be late getting home as promised and then they’ll be trouble”. So I let it ring to voice mail.
But of course curiosity overtook me so once the voice mail light lit up I checked it.
“Nigel, it’s John from XXX company. Thanks for being interested in our best practices. I’d like to show you how our award winning software helps companies like yours to sell more. Please call me back on 123-123-5555 and I would love to set up a demo of our software.”
So it was a voice mail that sounded like a hundred other voice mails I’ve received. Not terribly notable. But before I hit the delete button something struck me:
Company XXX is putting a lot of marketing effort behind positioning themselves as a social selling company. A company that helps other companies implement social selling. In fact, they are having a major event shortly with lots of sales experts talking about social selling and Sales 2.0.
So how could this sales person call me and include nothing about me. Could his script not be customized with just one more element than my name? Was it just too much effort to look at my Linkedin profile and know who I am?
I mean if you look at my Linkedin profile or Google me you would know in about 10 microseconds that I have spent the better part of a decade going on about social selling and Sales 2.0. Could this information not be included in this sales person’s voice mail?
How about just “Nigel, it’s John from XXX company. I know you’ve been very involved in Sales 2.0 and social selling for quite some time and I wanted to get your thoughts on our software.”
I don’t think my ego is the biggest on the planet but I do like people to notice one obvious thing about me before they try to sell me their amazing tool.
So a plea to all companies helping push the social selling and Sales 2.0 movement forward: please have your sales people “walk the talk”.
This has happened to me several times before. It leaves me with my mouth hanging open and ends up with me being late getting home.