Making Buying Impossible
It is part of my job to find different vendors for a wide array of interactive Marketing activities, and I’ve started to notice that Sales People don’t seem to want to sell anything to me.
I try to be objective and think that it may be that since most companies let some people go at the beginning of last year; the sales department may be overworked. Maybe they don’t want to listen to the arrogant guy with an accent on the other side of the phone, or perhaps the company I work for doesn’t seem like a big fish; but whatever the reason is, it has started to bother me.
If there is one thing everyone in marketing, sales or the school of common sense learns is that you want to “Make buying easy”, as simple as that. If I’m calling you and leave you a voice mail asking you for a quote, means that someone did part of your job already (you got to love marketing), all you have to do, is either make the damn quote or give me a call back; TODAY. As simple as that, I don’t care if you had to leave early to pick your sick kid at school, you can at least acknowledge me from your blackberry before going to bed that day, or ask a co-worker to return my call, send me smoke signals, anything.
I feel bad for the employers of said sales people. Because I really want to either know more about your product, or I just want to plain buy the damn thing, but the company gets hurt by the incompetence of such people.
What to do about it? I sure don’t want to go and buy an inferior service/product based on the incompetence of the sales department, but I also don’t want to rely on a company that I don’t seem to be able to get in contact with.
I can hear the voices in my head (my brother mostly) telling me, call his boss and get him fired, and a side of fries (discount) while at it; and that sure sounds like the perfect solution, but in my experience, that guys/gals boss already know what kind of employee he has, and hasn’t been “able” to get rid of it, so chances are, the perfect solution won’t work in an imperfect world.
What to do, when I throw money at you and you are too incompetent to pick it up?
-Frank.
February 16th, 2010 at 1:09 PM
Some random ideas:
1) The call to the manager. It may be difficult. But it is a good idea – not for the firing part. Sometimes the manager phone is not on the web – they re-direct you to the closest sales representative. You can always try to call as if you are in different office location (lets say, an office in Florida). Maybe if you get a different sales rep and explain to him that his co-worker didn’t did his/her job but you still want to learn more about their product you will find a more competent salesguy.
2) Find their reseller. Maybe they do have an indirect channel.
3) Find their product used, on ebay. Don’t laught – sometimes it can be found. A few scratches, but at deep discount. Have done so.
4) Tweet about it. Some companies pay someone to watch to negative tweeting about a company and they try to respond to it. If they don’t — maybe they should pay for their insolence for not watching their online image.
5) Competition is not such a bad idea. Some products do deserve being bought from the competition. Maybe you can research if there is something different or even better out there. At least you may get some service when you need it.
6) Call the small guy. Some small firms can custom build tools for the same price as a new one from big company. And they will do it with a smile and will beg you to keep doing business with them.
Now the fun thing is that you seem to think I go around like Beavis and Butthead chanting Fire, Fire, hehe, Fire, Fire.. On the contrary… I just go around chanting: “When in doubt, Don’t hire, Don’t hire.”, or I should say: Only hire the very best, and correct your mistakes early.