How Not To Sell A New Service

I had a really funny experience yesterday that I need to share with you because it highlighted many of the problems that companies have trying to sell new services. I was eating breakfast and reading the Globe and Mail newspaper, a Canadian national paper, a typical workday start for me.

After reading the first few pages I came across an ad in the first section from my bank promoting a new small business service to help get your business online. The package included a $100 certificate for Google Adwords and something called a Small Business Marketing Toolkit. The ad finished by telling you ask your account manager at your branch for more details. I was very interested in this as recently I have been wading through a number of options and trying to figure out how to promote my business online.

As it turned out I had to be at my bank later that day to sign some documents so after we finished the tedious process of signing (why do banks need so, so many copies of everything!) I asked asked my account manager about this promotion. She knew nothing about it which I thought was fair enough because she works in personal banking not small business. So, we went downstairs to find the small business account manager. Turns out she didn’t know anything about it either.

I was having a hard time not laughing by this time. While I sat across from them they then got the national branch service centre on the telephone to ask about this promotion. The first person they contacted didn’t know anything about it and they were transferred to another person. This person knew about it and said the packages were sent to the branch ten days ago.

Terrific I thought, now maybe I’ll get my Google Adwords $100 certificate. Unfortunately not, because no one at my branch had seen these. The two account managers then went to talk to the branch manager who was aware of the program and said that they were going to mail out packages to pre-qualified customers and would have hard copy soon for interested clients. I heard him tell the account managers that the program hadn’t been rolled out yet.

At this point I had to poke my head in their door and say how funny I thought this was. The program had been rolled out as it was advertised that day in two national Canadian newspapers. Further I laughed when I told them that this would make a great story about how not to sell because here you have a program that you spent a lot of money advertising and then wouldn’t you know it, an actual potential client walks in the door interested in the program, and the front line staff at the bank aren’t aware of the program.

The lesson here is that no matter what type of selling you are engaged in you must be absolutely certain that the product that you are selling is real and can be delivered, otherwise you will appear to your clients like you are trying to pull a fast one on them. When you do have your product or service ready to go to market, please, please, please ensure that all of your employees who have client contact are aware of what you are promoting otherwise you’ll live through my experience yesterday.


Dave Speed