"Hi, you're bad at your job, buy our service" #SaleFail

Picture from FailFunnies.com

I took a really weak sales call last week, it went a little like:

Salesperson: "Hi Paul, I'm John Smith from Agency XYZ, we'd like to draft nine Facebook posts for you, free of charge, that will increase your engagement levels."

Me [In firm, confident tone, suggesting contempt]: "I think we're pretty well covered on that front."

Salesperson [slightly sheepishly]: "Oh....... ok. Goodbye."

Me: "Bye." 

Does this conversation sound familiar to you? I'm feeling a distinct sense of déjà vu. Sales calls like this come in far too regularly, and I'm convinced that rather than generate sales, those receiving these calls blacklist these companies.

@pdarigan boooo! Never ceases to amaze me how some agency peeps behave/think... (disclaimer; I am an agency bod)
— Paul de Gregorio (@pauldegregorio) March 3, 2013

@pdarigan Oh yes. And they get put on the blacklist straight away.

— Danielle Atkinson (@RoxyMartinique) March 3, 2013

Why do these calls fail? Well, there are a number of reasons:

You can't do your job

That's what that call said to me. John Smith was offering to do my job properly, because, y'know, I can't.

I know your community better than you do

I've spent almost two years getting to know the Girlguiding online 'community'. The more I've learnt, the more I've realised I have so much more to learn. The people that Follow us on Twitter and Like us on Facebook are a really diverse group of about 30,000 people, they are uniformally passionate and amazing people, but they have a range of interests, cares and concerns. This salesperson implied that the experience I have gained in almost two years at Girlguiding was worthless in the face of his amazing post-writing, hyper-engagement powers.

Agency is better than in-house

Now, this might be contentious. I fully believe that agencies are great for all sorts of work. They bring new angles, fresh perspectives, and they are outside of any 'bubbles' that you may have developed from long-term in-house work. Even with social media, they can be great for developing amazing campaign-focused ideas (and all sorts of other stuff), but I am firmly of the belief that long-term 'community management' is something that should sit in-house. Your community manager needs time to learn about your organisation, and time to learn about your online communities. Community management is not something that should be farmed out to an agency bod with several other accounts that s/he manages.

Result

Another agency/service blacklisted.

Lesson

John Smith from Agency XYZ may have had a great service to sell me (I doubt it, but it's possible). It's unlikely we would have bought that in, but still, it may have been worth looking at. The thing is, we never looked at it because the salesperson went out of his way to offend me. 

If you have a great service, optimise your sales pitch. John Smith offended me within about three seconds, and the call ended within 10 seconds. Damage done.

What do you think? Have you had any interesting, offensive or hilarious #salefail calls?