Dove Foundation Ruffles My Feathers

Bad marketing choices will cook this bird’s goose.

I received a telemarketing call this morning from a company called The Dove Foundation. They wanted to speak with the lady of the house (there isn’t one), then launched into an explanation about how they would call back to discuss better entertainment choices for children (there are none of those in the house either) — everytime I tried to give this guy information that could help him realize I was not in their target demo, he talked over me.

By the end of the call I was just trying to tell him not to call again and remove me from his list — but all he wanted to do was spit out his script, speeding through it and shouting me down whenever I tried to speak.

I’m in marketing. I like the sales process. I enjoy speaking with other marketing professionals. I was truly trying to help this guy — but he just wanted to spew his script to anyone on the other end of the line.

I don’t give much thought to telemarketing.

I guess it can be effective for some companies, but it’s a choice that seems to upset more people than it sells, so why bother? If you make one sale out of a hundred calls, do you think it’s worth the effort?

Let me put it another way…
If you pissed-off ninety-nine people out of every hundred you called, would you still want to make those hundred phone calls?

When was the last time a co-worker told you about getting call for a great deal on lawncare or replacement windows? It’s more likely they told you about some rude idiot who called you during Friday night’s episode of Monk about some crappy product you didn’t want or need. Now you’ve got two people who hate you, and your telemarketer didn’t even speak to one of them!

I don’t think of telemarketing as the evil thing so many others believe it to be. Basically, I don’t believe telemarketing itself is “bad” — I just think there are lots of “bad telemarketers.”

For instance, I’m on the National Do Not Call list. By rights, this guy from Dove shouldn’t have even phoned me. But again, I really don’t care. I just joined the list to reduce the number of calls I receive. If I truly don’t want to be interrupted by phone calls, I simply don’t answer the phone.

We’ve all visited businesses where we received less than great service — heck, usually it’s less than average service — but we tend to blame ourselves. We say “I never should have gone there in the first place”, “I should have stuck with the other-guys”, etc. But with telemarketing, you’re reaching out to people who may not have heard of you — people who never considered your product before. The whole idea is to make a good impression, and see if you can get them to consider your product or service in the future.

The Dove Organization didn’t do this.

They most likely selected the telemarketing company that came back with the lowest bid for executing the project, and the highest quantity of phone numbers they could call (apparently because the telemarketers didn’t care if the numbers were qualified buyers, nor if they were on the Do Not Call List.)

So, instead of telling you about a company that may or may not have a solution for finding better entertainment choices for your children, I’m telling you about a company whose name I now associate with a phone call that pissed me off.

I wonder how many other people they called this morning?