Sometimes Im Ashamed To Be A Sales Person

If you follow this blog, you know I like talking to sales people trying to sell me something. Its always interesting to be on the customer side and to be able to look at how I am being sold to. Often, I talk to really great sales people. They are professional, they listen well, they execute their sales process well. Even though I may not buy, Ill find a way to point those people to an opportunity, or at least thank them for their professionalism. Then I get the calls like I got today. The call actually started well, it was short. The sales person was trying to sell me some marketing services. Like every company, we are interested in opportunities to extend our reach and attract interest. The sales guy told me about their great capability to create content, interesting designs, powerful graphics, and compelling messages. He further talked about getting that content into multiple channels in a cohesive way.
I was interested in what he had to say. I asked him to send information and some references I could talk to. We set a follow up for next week. Within a few minutes, I got the email-things were going well. He was meeting my expectations-though I did set the bar pretty low.
I received a series of word documents. I opened the first one. It was poorly written, confusing, had major formatting problems and even a few spelling errors. Hmmmmmm………..
I opened the second, it was no better, same with the third. I was beginning to wonder. Here is a company that presented themselves as creating compelling content, powerful messages, and high impact materials. If their own marketing materials represented them so poorly, would they represent my company any better?
I was curious, I opened the list of references. The sales person, in the email, had told me to feel free to contact any directly. The references were 4 pages of testimonials-but only by 4 people. Three pages were two testimonials from the same person. The formatting and flow was terrible. It looked like exactly what it was, a cut and paste job. There were peoples names, but no contact information-I guess the sales person wanted me to work for the information.
I clicked on the first link, hoping to be taken to the references website. The site I was taken to was one that declared the companys offerings a scam! It had many testimonials about how the company took your money, but either failed to deliver the service or delivered the poorest quality of service.
Hmmm…, this is an interesting approach, never saw this one before, I thought Id seen just about everything. I read the dismal reviews. What they said about the companys marketing programs was actually reinforced by the poor quality marketing materials the company had developed for itself. The other reference that I could link to took me not to the references web site, but to a completely different company, having nothing to do with the reference. 0 for 2, so far. I decided to stop wasting my time....
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