Tag: telemarketers

By Posted on Posted in Activism, Advertising, Demographics/Psychographics, Marketing Techniques and Philosophies, Marketing Trends/News, Politics Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Aaargh! Tomorrow is an election day in Massachusetts. We’ve been getting calls for months, but today, its completely out of hand.

–> In the past two hours, from 6 to 8 p.m., I have received FOUR calls. Two from Democratic Party volunteers, one human from the National Writers Union and one NWU robocall. This doesn’t count the barrage of calls over the past week and earlier today.

In an era where the NSA can read our phone logs, I don’t understand why the Democrats and their allies can’t run a “merge-purge” to eliminate duplicates. That technology has been part of the direct-mail world since the 1970s.

If Republican Gabriel Gomez wins tomorrow against Democrat Ed Markey, I’d wager that it was because the Dems over-called to the point of harassment, and turned people off. Since there are more Democrats than Republicans by a huge margin, more Democrats than Republicans will get annoyed.

Personally, I have a low regard for Mr. Gomez and a reasonable degree of agreement with many of Congresman Markey’s positions. And so I will vote Democratic tomorrow. But I also have a ery low opinion of repeat intrusion marketing. I will vote for Markey despite the campaign’s tactics, and not because of them.

As a marketer, I hope the campaign can survive its own excesses.

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By Posted on Posted in Marketing Techniques and Philosophies Tagged with , ,

This is an approximate verbatim transcript of the phone call I just ended.

Me: “Hello, this is Shel, how may I make your day special?”
Her: “I’m from and I wanted to let you know that our sales manager will be in your area on Thursday and would like to make an appointment.”
Me: What does your company do?”
Her: “We have a free credit card terminal for you.”
Me: “I’m happy with my current merchant account provider and I already own my own terminal.”
Her: “Our system includes a digital receipt system where you don’t need paper receipts. What would be a good time on Thursday to meet with her?”
Me: “I need to see information before I set up any appointments. Can you send me something and I’ll call you back if I’m interested?”
Her: “Well, it’s on a laptop, you have to see it.”
Me: “Can’t you e-mail it?”
Her: “You can go on our website–”
Me (interrupting): Wait a minute. You call me up out of the blue and try to sell me something. You want to waste my time with an appointment. And you’re going to make ME do the work to research you, you won’t even send me information?”
Her: (no response)

At that point I hung up. I wonder who would actually buy from this idiotic process.

Let’s get one thing perfectly clear. These people think they are marketing, but this is not marketing. Marketing is about building relationships, providing or adding value, solving problems. This boiler room telepressurer (I will not dignify her by calling her a telemarketer because she’s not marketing; she’s confronting people who don’t want her message) is doing one of that.

I’ve written six books and hundreds of articles about how to market effectively. People like this give the whole industry a bad name, and then we have to work that much harder to overcome prejudice against us.

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