Dear CEOs and Sales VPs who are very proud of your company’s growth. That’s awesome that you’ve accomplished so much. Congrats. I love how you’ve mastered the use of chatbots that screen potential customers so you don’t have to pay real employees to speak to people. Chatbots make you sooooo cutting edge. It’s so cool how a bot can take up five minutes of my time before it asks for my phone number so a sales specialist who has worked at your company for 17 days can waste another ten minutes of my time. You. Are. Doing. Great.
Listen, I’m sure there are people who aren’t really busy and who appreciate that you “want to make sure we are a good fit” so it doesn’t cost you money. I know they understand.
I’m sure your customers all have so much time that they don’t mind hopping on a “quick” hour-long demo given by Kaiyl (pronounced Kyle) who is your Senior Product Expert. Kaiyl’s been with you about a year and previously built an impressive career selling Cutco knives. His entrepreneurial spirit means he can easily relate to me and all of my concerns can “absolutely” be solved by him. Who wouldn’t want to talk to Kaiyl?
I know you have customers who don’t mind being ignored when they say their preference is email in the first stages and completely understand that you’ve designed your sales system to make it as streamlined as possible for your company. The bottom line is important, right?
Oh I know, customers are dumb. They don’t know anything about marketing or how to run their business. But, you’re going to teach them. They just need to listen to your account executive speak without breathing during a demo. They absolutely need to watch your demo before they get pricing because there is no possible way they could make any type of decision without listening to Kaiyl shared anecdotes of how “many” of his customers have used your product. I mean Kaiyl just got promoted to have his own clients so he can totes share the experience of the one client he inherited from Hntr (pronounced Hunter, but vowels are a waste of energy).
Or do people care about those five minutes? Do they actually know a little bit about their industry, have done some homework and, get this, appreciate being listened to? Could they possibly be pressed for time and prefer an email exchange? Could they be a parent working from home and have a kid (or dog) screaming in the background? Could they be opening a new business and trying to get things done during the work day? Is there the slightest chance in the world that they have spoken to others like Kaiyl and just want to skip the fanfare?
I don’t know. The odds sound greater than winning the lottery to me. But what do I know?
Like I said, congrats to you on your business success. Don’t pay any attention to me, I’m already working with your competition.
P.S. Hntr was fired for not making his quota. It turns out, people thought his attitude was obnoxious and didn’t want to buy from him. Poor Hntr. And Kaiyl just left on a surf vacation and no one’s heard from him since Tuesday.