It’s not every day that a cold call from a marketing company makes you feel awesome! In fact, usually I feel quite the opposite—annoyed, frustrated, etc. But today I feel awesome because for the first time, after many a trial, I have mastered the art of answering the marketing cold call. After several years of failed or partially- failed attempts, today I did it right.
Here is how the call went:
Marketing agent: I received your book’s name from “Book Scout.” It’s The Roadmap Ends Here: Entering Adulthood, correct? (He mispronounced the word roadmap, by the way, first cue that this is a cold call!) How are your sales going?
Me: Thank you for reaching out, but I am not interested in purchasing marketing services.
Marketing agent: We are not selling you anything. We just want to know how your sales of your book is going.
Me: Ok, let me get the name of your company again. I want to look it up on my computer now, before we speak further.
Marketing agent: [hung up].
Here is why this morning was such a victory for me:
I shared ZERO information with this person. In the past on a call like this, I would have mentioned that I didn’t sell the number of copies of books that I expected or that I find marketing services to be way too expensive to invest in at this time.
But, here, I gave NO information about myself.
And with that, the marketing agent had no information to use to coax me into using his services. He had no phrases that he could reflect back to me to make me feel like he understood my plight and could help me.
Because when an agent asks about my details, what they are really saying is: Please tell me about yourself and your product, so I can greater understand how I can target my marketing spiel to you.
No more, I finally had the spine to stand up for myself and honor my privacy.
In the past, when I did let some of my details slip out, I felt violated afterward for sharing information I felt was not really his to have.
This time I hung up the phone feeling whole.
It has taken me a few years to learn how to stand up to marketing cold calls, and prior to that, it took me a decade to stand up to men who were up to a similar scheme: wanting to learn about me, acting genuinely concerned, when really they were just garnering ways to gain my trust and get closer to me, including getting physical.
It feels good to finally see these schemes for what they are: schemes. It feels good to finally have the emotional wherewithal to hold back my personal information, to not invest emotionally (or financially!) in someone, until I have done some research on if they truly deserve my investment!
Mindful Nuggets 