I just received an amusing call from a marketing company asking to speak to ‘the owner’ of one of my websites. Right away I noticed that I felt defensive, wondering whether there was an issue, or this person was calling to try to sell me something (poor salespeople - they don’t stand a chance with me).
The gentleman proceeded to launch into his spiel about how they could help drive traffic to our website and how great their services were, and I had to interrupt. I asked him if he was aware that we owned a network of sites, and of which tactics and techniques we are already making use of in order to accomplish the ‘driving more traffic’ he was speaking of. Well, no….but if I just listened to their list of programs available perhaps I would discover some that were of interest, etc. etc.. Did he have a number I could call him back at, I wondered? No.
The truth is, there is always more we can learn, and I am always interested in new and better ways of doing things. Ophelia and I work very hard at learning and applying so that we don’t have to pay others to do that for us, and also it is a pleasure for us. We not only work hard at it, we absolutely love it, and without knowing this about us, this gentleman launched into his company spiel completely blind, which was offensive to me as a consumer. He obviously is just going down some list of websites in whois, and calling to try and sell them a product or program, hoping he will catch some fish, so to speak.
A more intuitive salesperson may have been able to catch on to this, since I clearly informed him that we were internet marketers ourselves, and perhaps some intelligent questions would have led to a far more productive conversation.
The lesson here is, if you are in sales or jsut in general when you are speaking to someone, be prepared. Learn a little about your subject before you speak to them; not only will it be flattering, you will enjoy far more productive and useful communication. Secondly, be felxible, which means LISTEN. People are not closed books; they exhibit countless clues as to what they are thinking, including their tone of voice, their choice of words and their body language if in person.
Effective communication means paying attention and rolling with whatever is currently happening, rathe rthan following some pre-planned script. But hey, this is just my opinion!
