I've done many, many different jobs in my twenty-odd years of working life - from the fun (working in night clubs) to the disgusting (drawing lots to see who would unpack the hamper from the old folks home in an industrial laundry). But by far the worst job I have ever done was back in the summer of 1996/7 when I spent three horrible months as a door-to-door salesman.
It is a job choice borne out of desperation. Surely, no one ever chooses to become one of the most hated of all salesmen. Even telemarketing is marginally less annoying. At least you can hang up on a sales call or screen your calls, but have them at the front door and it's a lot harder to get rid of them.
But I did learn a great deal in those three months about motivation, drive... and ethics. And how much I hate dogs. Really! Hate! Dogs!
I can still remember one particular door I knocked on. This day, I was flogging discount membership cards for a local video chain - ten free hires, that sort of thing. A little old lady answered the door and I started my patter. I was batting away the objections with ease, coming back with further reasons why she shouldn't miss this great deal. Every uncertainty she had was easily answered by the sales script in my head. I was charming and disarming and she was crumbling under the weight of my persuasive smile.
And then the sale was closed. She had said yes and went back inside to get her purse. That's when I decided this was crap. I knew she didn't want the card. I knew that she'd regret the purchase later when it sat, barely used underneath a magnet on the fridge until the expiry date. When she returned, I decided to ask her a couple of follow up questions. This was enough to take the sale out of close and back into negotiation. And by asking the right questions I quickly got the lady to admit that she had no use for the card. I politely informed her that the card was probably not for her and said goodbye.
I didn't get my commission on that sale and I don't think I got my target for the day either, but at least I didn't feel like I had manipulated someone into a purchase they would regret.
No matter how much we hate telemarketers and door knockers, marketers won't stop using them. We hate them, but they work. If we're honest, part of the reason we hate them is because they work. We hate the fact we got tricked into buying that lemon of an electric razor. We hate them because they make us feel uncomfortable or guilty saying no.
They work for precisely the reasons I didn't go through with the sale to the little old lady. It is about badgering, about convincing someone to buy something that they otherwise would not have wanted. Does anyone buy anything from a door knocker that they were otherwise
planning to pick up in K-Mart? It's all impulse buys of stuff we didn't
know we wanted or needed! It plays on social psychology of people not wanting to be rude which forces them to hear your entire pitch even if they would have quickly ignored or moved past a different marketing medium, such as a magazine ad or an email. The human element makes the pitch so much harder to ignore and reject than any other form of marketing. That is why charities and others still use clipboard-carrying young people outside shopping centres, because social convention makes us behave differently.
Human direct marketing techniques such as these are "push" marketing at it's purest. You are almost literally pushing the sale onto the customer. It is because this can be so effective that so many marketers still use these techniques. If it works, stuff the consequences of unhappy customers or annoyed people, right? Yet modern technology and the differing conventions of the web have demonstrated that "pull" marketing can have far better long term benefits. A "push" marketing customer is less likely to come back, jaded by the experience and regretting the sale. A "pull" marketing customer can become a loyal fan for life, actually wanting to participate in your marketing and willing you to contact them. But there are still those brands that are treating the social media space in much the same way as they would telemarketing or door knocking - spamming Twitter feeds, manipulating Facebook followers and butting in when it is least appropriate.
So where is the line? I know I agree with many who argue that marketers are annoying in social media, for example. But I am also a marketer who sees the benefits for my employer of marketing within social media. When is closing a sale right and when should we just back off? Can a marketer ever truly say that jumping in on a conversation or knocking on a door is wrong if it actually delivers the results they are paid to provide? Is guilting or charming or intimidating someone into a sale like a door knocker a reasonable tactic? When should marketers put ethics above results? And should they?
