The caller spoke in fractured English and his intonation was flat. At times I was unsure if he was asking me a question or making a rhetorical comment.
The purpose of his call was to win my organization back to his firm. There was no probing as to why our organization canceled our contract. The focus of the discussion was on price.
When I explained to him that one of the reasons that we canceled was due to uncompetitive pricing, he asked us to compare pricing with our new provider.
I reluctantly agreed and suggested that he call back in a week.
One week later, my new friend called me back. I recognized his voice but unfortunately I was unfamiliar to him.
My superficial friend seemed to have suffered amnesia. He asked: Who is the decision-maker at my firm on telecommunication services ? Was he available?
Well I had heard enough. I promptly and politely ended the call.
Here is what the sarcastic B2B marketer will take away from this experience:
- If you want to shoot yourself in the foot, use the same quality of telemarketers and the same approach in B2B as you would in B2C. Focus on the offer (i.e. discounts) and don`t spend any more money on a more professional telemarketer.
- Don`t bother investing in a CRM system for B2B. There is no need to take notes from previous conversations or understand previous touch points. If the prospect gets aggravated after repeating the same conversation from the week before, no problem, there are lots of fish in the sea. Don`t worry about antagonizing people: there is no Do Not Call list for business-to-business.
- Who cares about customer churn! We can always bribe our ex-customers to win them back. They will stay with us as long as we can contractually tie their hands. So if the cycle begins the day after the contract ends, not a problem, we win these guys back (again)!
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