The cold call

In this guest post, NRMA marketer Jason Stidworthy says people trying to sell him services based on using data to target customers aren’t doing it themselves. He reveals what happened when he answered the phone to a sales call.

Most vendor sales calls these days push the message of using our data to develop targeted customer communications. Why? Because customers will relate better to messages tailored to their specific needs.

As a marketer I’m completely sold on the idea of using data for more effective targeted communications and our marketing is moving in this direction. But I’ve come to question whether vendors actually practice what they preach. Do they use their own technology or other digital technologies to better target potential clients or do they rely on the scattergun approach?

Recently, I was feeling particularly mischievous and I thought I’d test my question on the next random sales phone call. I rarely pick up my desk phone because 99% of the anonymous phone numbers are sales calls. But this day was different – I was going to engage the sales person and determine the level of research they had completed on my business and whether I had been specifically targeted based on the available data (what they preach) or if it was a random scattergun approach.