Would you say “marry me” before you ask “what’s your name”?
It happened again—the first words out of the robocaller’s synthesizer box were “press 1 for your free directory listing.”
Guess what—if that’s the first thing I hear from you, it’s also the last—because my phone will be back in its cradle before your robot even finishes the sentence. CLICK!
It’s like telling me you want to marry me the moment we first meet—before we’re even introduced. And guess what. I’m already happily married and I’m not in the market. Even if I were, that’s not how I’d want to be approached.
Sure, I’m in business, and I love free listings—useful ones, anyway, like Literary Market Place (which typically brings me a very small stream of very large clients). But I’ve also wasted a lot of time over the years filling out free listings that have zero benefit, like the gazillion Who’s Who books I got listed in back in the 1980s and 1990s.
So…when your call ID shows up as something unrecognizable (RL2 Services Co? What the heck is that?), the first thing I want to know is “who are you, really?” The second thing I want to know is “what’s the catch/the actual cost?” Then “how much time is this going to take?” And of course, “who reads your directory, how many readers are there, and how targeted is this to what I sell?”
No robocall is going to answer those questions.
I will listen to the first few seconds of a robocall, because sometimes it’s the bank’s identity theft with a security alert on my credit card, a school district telling me classes are canceled for weather, or something like that. I don’t love them but I have learned that once in a while, they’re real. But try to sell me something, anything, with a robocall and I just think you’re stupid, disrespectful, and annoying.
And some of the live operators are no better. I’m very protective of my cell number and give it out on a need-to-know basis. I got a human being calling me who told me he was calling because of a survey he filled out. I responded, “I don’t give my cell number out on surveys. Who are you really?” His response: CLICK!
Does this company really think it’s going to get on my good side with this?
I’ve had others who can’t deviate from a script. Honey, if I’m going to do business with you, we’re going to have a two-way conversation. If you’re human and you talk at me as if you are a robot, I will treat you like one. My turn to CLICK!
I continue to be amazed at the clueless, deceitful, or just plain disconnected marketing “strategies” I encounter. Presumably, businesses do these things to attract new clients. But it would be more accurate to call them “client repelling strategies,” because they do the opposite of attract.
If you would be pushed away by bad marketing when it’s done to you, why do it to others who will feel the same way?
I hear ya Shel,. Anything free is – for me at least – bait for what’s usually crap. What ever happened to the Do Not Call List?
Well, no, Trish, or at least not always. There’s tons of really good stuff out there for free. Some of it has been so good it has led me to buy the upsell. I probably listen to a dozen freebie teleseminars in a typical week. Of those two or three might be deeply moving, another five contain good useful information, and a couple would be useful if I were more of a beginner. And some are so bad I don’t make it to the end of the call.
Of course, there’s also tons of crap–but price tag or fan base doesn’t always denote value. I read a book by Danielle Steele that I thought was terribly written and worsely (my newly invented word for today) plotted. The one episode of Seinfeld I watched was remarkably unfunny, and those folks were paid millions per episode).
But how did I get on all those teleseminars? Because the organizers built a relationship with me. They didn’t spam me or hide their identity, etc.
I’m also leery of those free directory listings. Do you have any particular criteria you use to decide which listings are worth it? Are there any features which would intice you to pay for a directory listing? I’ve looked for articles about this for listing my own practice, and would be interested in any insight you might have.