I want to tell two business-related stories. One has to do with sales tactics gone awry, and the other with customer service issues that leave you with a bad taste in your mouth. Both of these stories are completely true, and happened to us in the same week.
Triple Dog Dare Media is in the midst of obtaining a GSA Schedule 541–in other words, we’re trying to become a certified vendor of Web-based marketing sevices to the federal government. As anyone who has been through the GSA schedule process knows, it’s not an easy thing. You have to jump through a lot of hoops, fill out plenty of forms, and hope that you get it right the first time.
Because of the huge learning curve, Hope and I have been sucking up information left and right. We’ve visited web sites, talked to folks who have been through the process, signed up for email newsletters, and even attended a very nice GSA conference in Palm Springs over the holiday break.
Naturally, when we received a postcard from the B2G Institute inviting us out to the Marriott in Round Rock, Texas to learn about landing government contracts, we figured “Why not?” We knew we were going to hear a two-hour sales pitch, and that they were probably going to try to sell us on workshops or consulting services to expedite the process of obtaining a GSA schedule. Nonetheless, we figured we could pick up a few more pieces of the puzzle along the way.
Well, what a mistake that turned out to be. We showed up at this free workshop, and the sales pitch started. The guy who gave the presentation was supposedly a cofounder of the institute. I say “supposedly” because I don’t know if I can trust what he said, as we pretty much caught him in several exagerrations, fibs, and outright lies.
Whenever he posed a question to the audience and then heard responses that weren’t in line with his program, he would say something like, “Well, you’re at a free workshop in the middle of the day, what does that say about how busy you are?”
Later on in the presentation he asked if we had a written business plan or strategy. Some of us did, but many didn’t. He said, “You know, if you don’t have a plan, you can’t call yourself a business owner. You’re really just a guy who got laid off and is trying to make ends meet. You gotta have a vision, and you have to communicate that vision to others in writing.”
As much as I agree with the sentiment, I didn’t agree with his approach. It’s not like we had paid him to assess our business acumen! He was trying to get our money, for Pete’s sake–and there he was in full insult marketing mode!
Next he gave us an example of a woman who won a $1 million contract maintaining US government web sites. “Now, anyone can do web design. This is a no-brainer people!” Hope and I just exchanged a look with several other IT consultants in the room and shared a chuckle. This guy was scoring points left and right!
As the 2-hour workshop started winding down, our presenter started to wind up his pitch. Basically he was trying to get us to sign up for a weekend-long class on getting government contracts. He mentioned that Texas companies only secured 28% of the federal money for our state, that other folks out of state were grabbing up the lion’s share of the deals. What was wrong with us here in the Lone Star State–were we stupid or something?
He closed by saying, “Look, this three-day workshop is normally $5,995, but for you guys in Texas, we’re going to knock it down to $2,995. If you don’t have $3000, you really don’t have a business. You don’t have it today, and you won’t have it 10 years from now.”
Wow. There was no way we were going to part with our money at this point. We would figure out this federal government contracting thing on our own, thanks. The B2G Institute had a perfect opportunity to teach us a few things, maybe even enlighten us, and then lead us right to the sales close, but they opted for the hard, obnoxious sell.
You may ask, did it work? I watched as 7 folks (out of about 20) signed up for the program. Every single one of them had self-identified as baby business owners or gonnabe/wannabe business owners at the start of the program. I spoke with a few people who walked out without signing the paperwork, and every one of them were disgusted by the hard sell and were experienced business owners.
Okay, so here’s Part 2. We’ve been banking with Wells Fargo for about 4 years now. The relationship is okay most of the time, which is to say, that normally, we blissfully ignore each other except to make deposits or write checks.
One of our biggest clients wrote us a sizeable check last week, which we promptly and happily deposited. With money in hand, we met our obligations (including payroll) and went on our merry way.
The day after pay day, I was trying to make an online payment for a product and my debit card kept getting declined. When we investigated, we found to our horror that there was no money in our business checking account and that our line of credit was maxed out. What happened? We frantically started making calls.
Turns out that our client’s check had cleared our bank, then had been cancelled by their bank, Bank of America. There was no reason given. No one was notified. It just happened.
Well, our very wonderful client issued a second check, which we deposited, and we got everything sorted out after 12-14 hours.
The day after that, we get a letter in the mail from Wells Fargo, dated 5 days earlier. The letter stated that the check from our client had been withdrawn by Bank of America. This information was valuable, but had arrived several days too late to avert disaster.
So Hope got on the phone to Wells Fargo to find out if she could get signed up for instant email alerts. We figured a quick email would be cheaper for Wells Fargo (no stamps or printing of letters, no envelopes, etc).
Once again we were sadly mistaken. You would have thought we asked for the moon!
Hope spoke to three different people at Wells Fargo, asking about getting email alerts, and repeating the reason why each time. She was finally deposited into a voice mail survey.
We don’t know if anyone at Wells Fargo will listen to our issue. We don’t know if it’s even been played by anyone who can do anything.
Why don’t they put a form on their web site that allows us to sign up for daily email alerts? We don’t know. That’s life in the business banking fast lane.
Both of these things happened to us in the same week. It all struck me as a bit silly–here’s one group of people using obnoxious tactics to acquire new customers, and the other group not really paying attention to the customers they already have. Perhaps the first group thinks its information is so valuable we’ll claw our way forward, checks in hand, no matter what they say. Maybe the second group figures its too painful for us to move on to another provider.
Why am I telling you all of this? You can guess that I’m pretty miffed at the B2G Institute and the banks involved, but that’s not the point.
Having such an eventful week brought a lot of things into sharp relief for me. They certainly got me thinking about our core beliefs. Then I realized that we probably hadn’t shared our core beliefs with you, so I decided to do that.
Here they are:
Educate, inform, empower–then sell.
Technology should serve the business, not just be a cool conversation piece.
Respond to the customer, no matter what, as quickly as you can–but get the whole story!
Take the Obnoxious out of marketing and sales.
Basically, I try to do the opposite of a lot of folks in our industry. Everyone knows that software development can be a dicey proposition (70% of all projects fail for one reason or another), and we just refuse to be the kind of firm that abandons a customer if a project gets too sticky.
Do we stand by these core beliefs 100% of the time? I have this theory that standing by core beliefs is like server uptime. You can try to reach 100%, but you’ll do just as good if you achieve 99.999999% proficiency. (And perhaps I’m being too hard on Bank of America–maybe one of their core beliefs is to act irrationally and make grief for others.)
That being said, if you find that we’ve violated a core belief, feel free to contact Hope Doty (our president) at 512-751-9107, or Thomas Myer at 512-750-3835. We will listen, we will act, and we won’t be obnoxious.
Thomas Myer is the Top Dog of Triple Dog Dare Media, an Austin TX Web consultancy that helps customers turn their online marketing dreams into reality. You can go to http://www.tripledogs.com to get more tips on online marketing, or become a member of the Lead Generation Center at http://www.tripledogs.com/leads to learn how to maximize your lead generation efforts.
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