How Cold Calling can Trash a Brand
Here’s an interesting story about a local roller-blind dealer. Do you know the ones where they have colour-bond roller shutters for your windows that look like garage roller doors and have locks on them? Yes they are the ones.
There are several reasons why we’ll never buy that product. First, both of us fear being trapped in behind locked steel shutters if there was ever a fire. Another reason is that we both think they’re ugly and obtrusive. Finally, we’re not that unhappy with our state of affairs at the moment, which means there’s no crisis in our lives driving us to look for a solution that equates to buying their product. Also, if this product is meant to be a defense against intrusion then its pitched directly at people’s fear. Mark my words, a burglar should fear me and bring their own roller-blinds!
And yet, for the last few years, with a growing regularity this roller-blind dealer phones. Someone is paid to spend time on a telephone to ask if we’re going to buy their product. No we’re not. And with a growing insistence (or desperation) we’re made to feel like we have to justify to a strange company why we aren’t willing to buy their product. A smart company would realise that cold calling wastes resources and trashes their brand.
Companies who cold call take a certain risk. How many times does your phone ring during a crisis and surprisingly someone is just offering you the cure at the timely moment when you need them most? Never. Now think how you feel when your home phone rings and its a marketing call that has dragged you from recreation (or even work)? And how the hell did that company come by my phone number and name in the first place - I’m guessing they may have purchased a list with these details?
Two years ago if someone asked me about roller-blinds I’d have said something a bit more positive. Now I’m just a walking negative advertisement. That’s because the dealer fails to accept that people don’t want to be disturbed with SOMEONE ELSE’S business. There are a hundred companies just like this roller-blind dealer making the same cold calls. This saturation (around dinner time) is not going to get any more lucrative. Smart companies market in smart ways. Or at least focus those dumb ass ways effectively to the right segment.
So blanket cold calling across suburbia is not effective marketing. Seriously, 101 on how to get people not to buy your product is to never take no for an answer. No means no. Seriously. Even if I had the money I have a hundred other priorities to put that towards and roller-shutters don’t even register. I don’t have a current crisis? Therefore, are you selling me a luxury I want? No. But good businesses should know that, right?
And if you ever do this old school bit of marketing then at least research your market segment. Don’t just phone everyone who lives in your suburb. [end of marketing advice]
