Becoming Dolly Parton to Thwart Insane Telemarketers

Fun fact#1 -  I can mimic a variety of accents and phone personalities.  Now you may wonder, why the heck does that matter?

Well recently, I've had a couple of persistent telemarketers routinely call my office every other day in the hope to get connected to me or to one of my colleagues (both in Boston and Paris).

Fun fact #2 - I routinely use those accents and personalities against telemarketers - just for fun (I would say that I am trying to teach them a lesson - but they obviously don't learn).

Telemarketing is defined as "the act of selling, soliciting or promoting a product or service over the telephone." Now, let me be crystal clear - when done correctly, to the right audience, with the right tactic and message - telemarketing can be highly effective.

So what makes these gnat-like telemarketers so bad that I pull out my Dolly Parton accent?

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again

 and expecting different results.  - Albert Einstein 

Without naming names, I'll explain a bit about why these folks are destined to fail (and remain insane):

• They never explain up-front what they are offering.
• They never clearly explain who they are.
• They lie and say that the person that they want to speak with has spoken with them (trust me, they haven't!).
• They refuse to give proper contact details for actual call-backs.
• They ignore requests to be taken off of their call list.

At least in ambulance chasing lead generation, which I recently blogged about, they at least try to form a suitable reason as to why they are calling,

What these insane folks don't understand is that people like me know all the tricks - I check caller ID, I run a google search on you when you have me on the phone, I look you up on LinkedIn to see if you are SOMEHOW connected to me, and when you violate my request to be taken off their call list, I will submit a complaint to the FTC.

By the way, here are the links that you may want to identify do-not-call violators:

• The National Do Not Call Registry  https://www.donotcall.gov/

• Federal Trade Commission, Q&A regarding National Do Not Call Registry.....http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer…

So what could they do differently?

Learn my business needs - if you read my company's website, it is pretty clear that we are not a classic business - and probably don't have a classic B2B business need.  How does your business service actually apply to my business model?  Show me that you understand me (and my company).

Stress your value up-front to whomever answers the phone.  You may think that you have reached an assistant - but you could be speaking to a director, vp, or to an assistant.  And if you don't understand that each has power in their own right within a company, then you need to grow a brain.  Most assistants run their offices, most junior people have friends that are mid-level people, and word travels fast amongst departments when the encounter idiots.  Plus, when you make rude comments to said "assistant" when you can't get past the initial gatekeeper, those comments WILL be relayed to the the person you are targeting.  NOTE: I don't like being called a liar by a sleazy British biz dev guy who doesn't realize that he is actually speaking to his mark.

Identify yourself clearly.  This one snarky telemarketer chooses to identify him by the initials of his company versus the full name of his company.  In the era of Google, that will not stop me from knowing who you are.  

Analyze why you haven't succeeded thus far with your telemarketing.  If I am just a "task" in your Salesforce.com calendar - and between appointments, they have not thought of why they still haven't connected with their prospect (me), shame on them.  Especially when you have tried at least 20 times to reach me.  Just a clue: there may be a problem to your approach.  Just sayin'.

If the telemarketing community decides to not follow these "hints", get ready for some more Dolly Parton.

The shelf-life of contact data

Have you ever had bad milk in your fridge? Or rotten veggies? They stink - and you have no way of using them (despite how much you may want to).

Same goes for lead data - I've advocated in previous posts, a routine cleaning of leads - but what is the real shelf-life of a lead? When does a lead start to smell like rotten milk?

In the era of downsizing, restructuring, and acquisition amalgamation, how realistic is it that someone will be at the same email address in six months? By leveraging drip marketing campaigns, you can relieve the burden off of your insides sales team to maintain this data point - instead, you can let your automated system do the work for you in contact communications and the ultimate smelling of bad milk (hypothetically).

Think about it - let's say you have 10000 new leads per month - if you enact a drip campaign based on interest, you have 10000 follow-ups that don't have to be handled by hand.

As for marketing automation, I had a recent discussion with a peer about the fact that he routinely receives emails from "bots" (as in email robots). His commentary was that he hated bot communications - and that he could spot them a mile away.

I partially agreed - how many times have you received a routine email that contains some sort of variable data field that is inaccurate - and therefore, when received, you roll your eyes?? But isn't the reason that you roll your eyes is because of bad data - not the fact they came from an email robot?

In light of how vast the universe is - and the fact that everyone is trying to do more with less (i.e. be more efficient), why not have an email robot handle the smelling of the milk?

By looking at the data that I've had access to, the true shelf-life (on average) of a lead is six months - within six months, something has changed....the lead has changed companies, the company has been acquired, the sales rep has left your company. This is why you must automate this type of follow-up - so that you are not dependent on people. After awhile, people/leads start to smell like bad milk.

An automated system never minds smelling bad milk! :)