How to sell your services, without offending your customer

Recently I was approached by a guy from a start-up marketing agency.

He approached me through the company I work for, knowing that I managed the marketing.

I was sent a video, which I thought was an interesting sales technique. It was a video made exclusively for me, analysing a strategy that he assumed I had. Ending in a pitch for his services.

Sounds great, right? Except the video was pointing out what he thought were my faults in my strategy.

I’m sure this wasn’t his intention at all. Instead, I think his intention was to point out my problem areas. My pain points. But he hadn’t considered the bigger picture. The size of the company, the budget and the overall marketing strategy.

Instead of creating a video that informs or inspires me, he created a video which insulted me.

He attempted to educate me on basic marketing techniques that I’ve been using in business for years (and studied for three), he then went on to suggest if I did certain things (that I’m already doing) that it would make me hundreds of thousands of £’s.

The fastest way to lose a sale is to insult the person you’re selling to.

If you truly want to provide value, talk about what you can do, the difference you can make, not what you assume your prospective customer isn’t doing.

Find out what your customers' problems are, and offer solutions.

If offering advice is part of your sales strategy (which I think is a great idea) - make sure you do your research first. Consider your audience in your pitch.

If he’d contacted the business owner with the same pitch, someone that knows very little about marketing, rather than the marketing manager, he may have got the results he was hoping for.

Make suggestions, not assumptions.

You should know, I’m not against outsourcing at all (as a marketing manager I outsource as much as possible). But this agency showed me they don’t truly understand marketing. They don’t truly understand what it means to know your customers and give them what they want.

Oh and one more tip: don’t start your pitch with: ‘you’re missing out on over 100k, all you need to do is..’ no one falls for that.