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I think there is a serious marketing and sales lesson to be learnt in this post, so this rant is on the company blog and not my personal one….

I am really p*ssed off. During my day to day job, I like to think I understand marketing to a fashion and I am a big believer in getting permission and creating a relationship with clients. I also subscribe to the fact that advertising and interruption based marketing and selling, such as cold calling, is become less effective.

Now, being a director of The Escape, which is common knowledge, I get a far share of sales calls, which my colleagues kindly shield me from and even these are becoming more sophisticated in their ‘interruption’ tactics, such as saying they are returning my call, or even that they are a personal friend.

I have just taken one such call from someone called Victoria Jackson from 4Com. I have just check out their website and it seems they offer ‘world class business communications solutions’, which I am guessing is phone system and contracts.

Fair play to them, they have a job to do and I am sure Victoria has targets to meet. I on the other hand don’t deal with telephone systems companies, that would be our Operations Director. So, when I replied that I had never spoken to her before after she said I spoke to her three months ago, she suddenly became very arrogant.

When I asked what she was selling, she said she wasn’t selling me anything, to which I replied that I would like to be taken off their database and stop getting these calls. And then…. here is the kicker…. she had the audacity to say…

So you don’t want your business to be successful then?

When that angered me she went on to ask if I was “having a bad day”.

Well of course I was instantly interested in buying their products… NOT!

If someone says no, should you shout louder and push harder until they cave in? That doesn’t sound like the best of starts for a business relationship does it?

Of course, you can always take Victoria’s stance and down right patronise them.