More on bad-faith marketing

I’ve always felt that the best marketing leaves the (potential) customer feeling in control. You’ve set out your stall to look as attractive as possible, and it’s up to them to browse. Of course you’re working hard behind the scenes to encourage them to buy, but they don’t feel pushed into it. But if you ignore the customer’s need for that sense of control, you end up with a completely different dynamic.

A few weeks ago there was a knock on my door, which I answered because I thought I might need to sign for a parcel. There were two men there, one with a Yellow Pages. I took the Yellow Pages, started to close the door and then realised that the other man was there about something else. I was busy, but I’m too polite to close the door on someone if they have something to say to me.

He said he was there to apologise for the noise, because his firm had been doing loud work on the house opposite mine for a couple of days. I was touched that he bothered to apologise – that house has had many months of work done on it and nobody connected with the work has ever thought to thank the neighbours for their patience before. But it turned out the apology was a ploy to get me listening to his sales pitch.

The sales pitch, for Safe Style UK, could have been summed up in a few words: “Your windows are old. New windows would save you money on your energy bills. We’re doing a special offer on new windows.” Instead, he went on and on without a break. Unfortunately, I think I made the mistake of mentioning that my husband and I were already looking into getting new windows. This was a green light to keep banging on.

I thought he might pick up on my “I’m sick of this” body language, but he just kept going. He explained how older windows are much less energy-efficient. He explained about how greater efficiency can reduce your household bills. I told him that I was already aware of all this, but he carried on reading bits of his leaflet to me. I went from interested to increasingly uncomfortable.

He asked for my name, which seemed fair enough, but then wanted my husband’s name too, which I didn’t feel happy about giving without his consent. I asked what he was going to do with my name. He pointed to his piece of paper and said “Don’t worry, all this goes in the shredder.”

Twice I said “Can you just give me the leaflet and go away?” and made a grab for the leaflet (because, despite all this, I was still interested in new windows!) but he kept an iron grip on it. Then more questions. Would I be interested in a price? Maybe. But he couldn’t just tell me the price there and then. Could he come back later today and give us a quote? No. Could he come back at another time and give us a quote? How many windows does the house have? And so on.

I did finally get my hands on the leaflet, but I ended up actually shutting the door in his face because he would not leave. He waited a minute or two and then started banging on the door again. I didn’t answer. I felt genuinely quite frightened and upset.

Obviously I then decided that I want nothing to do with Safe Style UK, so I rang the number on the leaflet and asked them to take us off any databases they have and to leave our house alone in the future. The man on the phone apologised: “I’m sure Liam didn’t mean to offend you.” I’m sure he didn’t. But he had no clue how intimidating it is to have a stranger on your doorstep who ignores your uncomfortable body language, then ignores explicit requests to leave, then bangs on the door after you’ve shut it in his face.

And the irony of all this? I want new windows! My husband recently completed the Carbon Conversations course and getting better windows is probably next on our list of carbon-cutting home improvements. We can afford it and we’d like to get it sorted in the next few months.

So a person who was selling windows came to the house of someone who wanted to buy windows, and the upshot was that the potential customer felt upset to the point of actually crying, rang the company to complain, considered ringing the police and decided that she would never, ever buy windows from that company.

How could it have gone right instead?

Respect my time

If you ring me or knock on my door, you interrupt whatever I’m doing and you have no idea whether or not I’m OK with that. You force me to drag my attention away from my work and to focus it on what you’re saying. I’ve written before about how telemarketers are slow to get to the point, and the same goes for door-to-door salespeople. This is even more annoying, because I feel as if you don’t respect my time enough to be concise. It also means that I struggle to understand what you’re actually offering, which means I can’t make a decision on it...

Don’t push me into an immediate decision

...which means that the other sales tactic, of trying to push me into making a decision in an artificially short time period, goes badly. With Liam on the doorstep, I was initially keen for him to go away purely so I could read the leaflet he was holding, find out what the deal was on the new windows and then think about whether to go with his firm. I couldn’t understand what the prices were, or how the process worked, from what he was telling me, and he wouldn’t stop talking to give me time to think. But he wanted me to commit to an appointment without letting me see the leaflet. He wanted me to commit to an appointment the same day without letting me read the leaflet.

I think the commission system is partly to blame. Commission means that as the salesperson, you have to keep the potential customer in your sights – they’re “yours”. If you take a softly-softly approach, telling them about the company and leaving them space to make up their own mind, it won’t count as “your” sale and you’ll get no commission when they contact the company a few days later.

Don’t withhold information

I did read the leaflet after Liam had left. I just wanted to see how much they were charging for windows. He actually gave me two different leaflets in the end and neither of them have so much as a whisper of an actual price. To find out how much the windows cost, you have to make an appointment, let the likes of Liam into your home to look at the windows and then get a quote. In other words, you have to consent to another thinly disguised sales opportunity, but this time they’re actually inside your home. Brrrr.

I’ve written before about times when money is not enough. Safe Style UK wanted to know whether I was the owner of the house. They wanted my name, my husband’s name, my address, the age of the house and how many windows we have. They wanted all this information from me, but they refused to tell me the price of the thing they were trying to sell me. Liam was basically a human webform, taking but not giving.

Listen to signals

Long before I shut the door in the salesman’s face, I was giving off increasingly obvious signals through my words and my body language that said “I’m not comfortable with this. Time to back off.” He ignored those signals all the way through to the closed door and beyond. I think some people are less good than others at reading those signals, but it’s clear that his training, or his desire for a sale, made him ignore mine. Part of the reason I was upset afterwards was that he drove me to override my own social training and behave in a way that I would normally consider very rude.

A really good salesman might even have picked up from my replies that I was more interested in the carbon side of things than in the money-saving aspect, and tailored the pitch accordingly. But being capable of listening to a request like “Can you just go away?” is a minimum requirement, not just for sales professionals but for all decent human beings.