This is What Gives Marketing a Bad Name

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.