How Not To Sell Volume 1

I guess it is sales and marketing education day here at The Quip. No sooner did I complete my post about following your brand online that I get the e-mail below. This was the whole message:

Every Month, We Show 30 Million Cable Customers Why Cable TV Is a Great Educational Resource for Teachers, Students & Families of All Ages!

www.EducationConnection.tv

I guess the sender was under the mistaken impression I would be so impressed by his ability to write one coherent sentence that I’d feverishly click, Pavlov’s dog-like, on the link.

Talk about a stupid way to introduce yourself or make a pitch to someone via e-mail. There’s no mention of who he is, why he thinks I might be remotely interested in his product, or even a cursory explanation of why I should bother myself for 30 seconds out of a busy day to explore the url he sent.

Seriously, this is the equivalent of the following cold call:

Potential Customer: Hello?

Caller: We have a product. Want to buy it?

I’ve been on the receiving end of some incredibly bad sales pitches. In one, the salesman pulled a filthy, dirty, broken toy tug boat out of a box, placed it on our very expensive wooden coffee table and tried to make some point that included the pilfering of said toy from his kid’s sandbox. Honestly I don’t recall a thing he said after that nasty piece of crap hit the table.

In another, the salesman was so coked up he was almost unintelligible as he ran through what should have been a twenty minute pitch in about 45 seconds. He was talking so fast he raised my blood pressure and caused a nervous eye tick in a co-worker.

Both of those, however, stood a better chance of getting business from me than this ridiculous e-mail. There are ways to sell, and there are ways to convince me you’re a moron. This achieved the latter.

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