A company should be able to explain, succinctly, its value proposition to its target market.
I just received a cold call from a telemarketer from e-Advertising Experts (http://www.eadvertisingconsultants.com/), who did an incredibly poor job at trying to explain to me why I should buy their service. Contrary to popular belief, I do not mind getting sales calls. I headed up marketing and sales for a couple of high-tech companies in the 1990s, so I know how hard it telesales can be. But I always give the caller a chance to make a convincing pitch.
It appears that e-Advertising Experts sells search engine marketing and search engine optimization services, but I’ll never really know. I purchase search engine services from Yahoo Overture, Google AdWords, and others. My law firm has patent and trademark clients in the search engine space, so, believe me, I understand the service that is being pitched to me.
After a very long-winded introduction, I went to the homepage of e-Advertising Experts (on my own, I had to ask for the website address). After getting to the demo page, and suffering through more boilerplate sales talk, I asked, simply and directly, “Tell me how your service differs from Google AdWords, which I already use.” More scripted replies. I stopped the caller again and said, “Wait, I have done telesales and know how hard this is. I’m trying to help you. I am your target market. I do spend money on services like these. Please explain to me how your service is better than or different from Google AdWords.” After some more scripted replies, the caller then went on to explain that she was new and didn’t know a lot about the company, and then she went back to her script. I stopped her again, at which point she offered to connect me to the complaints supervisor (which was something she was presumably familiar with). Again I said, “I am not complaining. I’m trying to help you. I very well may buy your service, but I do not have a lot of time to talk. You should tell your boss that you need to have answers to questions like mine available to you when you are talking to your target market. At this point, I no longer have time to talk, but if you mail something to me, I will read it and I will consider it. And if I am interested, then I will call you back.”
At this point, the caller from e-Advertising Experts hung up on me. Which is what I recommend doing if e-Advertising Experts calls your company.
