Another Sales Failure

Last week I wrote about a door-to-door sales experience that bothered me (posts here and here).  This weekend another salesperson knocked on my door, and it didn't go much better. 

The salesman said he was from a well known cable company whose service I had used in the past (I'll save them the embarrassment of mentioning which one).  I let him know that I'm happy with my current cable service, WOW.  I told him it's a great service, there are almost no outages, and I pay a reasonable low rate.  When I told him how much I pay each month he said it was a shame that I didn't qualify as a win-back customer, because if I did he could have offered me a lower rate than what I currently pay.

What a horrible thing to tell a prospect!  He just interrupted my weekend to tell me that I'm not a priority to his company!  Unlike last week's sales rep this guy was an adult, so I didn't feel obligated to explain his error to him.  Instead I said "well, that would've been nice" and closed the door.

Who's To Blame?

Monday I wrote a post about a teenager's use of shady sales tactics.  I got several comments here and on LinkedIn, and everyone agrees that it's incredibly sad that teenagers and young adults are taught to use sleazy sales methods.  I couldn't agree more.  There will always be companies that view sales as a zero-sum game, and unfortunately they often hire eager young people to do their dirty work.

But shouldn't the kid take a share of the blame?  After all, he's the one tricking people to into buying magazines they don't want. 

We don't overlook an adult's use of rotten sales methods just because that's how his company trained him, and I think the same standard applies here.  If a 10 year old tries to trick me into buying candy bars I can blame her age, but a teenager should know better than to manipulate people for his own gain.

Does anyone agree with my assessment, or am I judging this kid too harshly?

Shady Salesperson

Friday a teenager rang my doorbell.  Usually when kids come to my door they're trying to sell me crap that I don't want, but as I prepared to say "no thanks" he let me know that his motives were not financial.  He told me he was in a group for young entrepreneurs, and as part of an effort to practice speaking in public his assignment was to go door-to-door and introduce himself.

They were having a contest, and if I voted for him it would help him win a trip to Europe.  He was very charismatic, and since entrepreneurship is near and dear to my heart I agreed to vote for him.  I figured he'd then direct me to a website to vote, and he could then begin planing his European vacation.  That's when he informed me that to "vote" I would need to purchase a magazine subscription! Not surprisingly I turned him down.

There will always be individuals and companies that are willing to do anything to make a sale.  This kid tried to dupe me into purchasing a subscription to a magazine I didn't want, and I'm sure his methods worked on plenty of other people.  I'm guessing the kid was duped into believing he has a real shot at winning an all expenses paid trip to Europe (assuming there is a trip) if he can sell more subscriptions than anyone else. 

I hope the kid learns one day that tricking people into buying from you doesn't make you a salesperson; it makes you a con artist.

Should Companies Focus on New or Existing Customers?

I've read two very interesting articles this week about customer focus:

In Keep Those Customers! on Inc.com Howard Greenstein says that companies focus so much of their energies on obtaining new customers that they ignore the customers they already have.  Christopher Penn, Vice President, Strategy and Innovation at Blue Sky Factory Email Marketing, quantifies this perspective:

A good marketer in general can move 10% of the attention they create into qualified leads. With good customer retention, good service, good product, you have a huge amount of control about keeping your customers. They’re yours to lose.

Not everyone agrees.  In Dear Catalog CEOs: New Customers, Kevin Hillstrom at MineThatData.com points out that no matter how customer-centric your company is there will always be customer turnover.  He addresses the idea of building customer loyalty directly:

If there were easy ways to increase customer loyalty, everybody would be doing it and loyalty would dramatically improve and the economy wouldn't be a mess, right?

His suggestion: "Focus a disproportionate amount of time and energy on finding new customers."  His point is that there are far more ways for companies to acquire new customers than ways for them to improve their customer retention rates.

A successful company should strive to both earn new customers and to please existing customers, but often resources are spread thin.  Which should be the priority?  Should companies give the majority of their focus to existing customer relationships or to creating new customers?