Slick and Sleaze Sales

This must be the week to get on my bad side.

Yesterday morning I answer the phone and some woman says to me, I have 7 carpet jobs for you. Of course I am overjoyed to hear such good news and go into my information gathering phase.

She says, I have these homes that need their carpeting cleaned and they are looking for a price.

Now my guard is up, we don't clean homes and we don't advertise that we clean homes, so I start asking more probing questions and out comes, well Mr. Galo, I am from everycontractor.co and we have customers looking for your service. I inform her that we only do commercial and industrial facilities and she immediately, with no hesitation at all, says we have customers for that too. Now I am amazed that she just happens to know for a fact that she has commercial consumers lined up and ready for me, so I pull up their website while she is yakking away.

They require a $900 sign up fee to get these 'leads'. When I tell her that this is very expensive for jobs that I will have to quote on and only have a chance getting her next, ultra fast reply is, " I can work with you on that fee and get it down to $600 if we do it right now, over the phone"

Now my inner alarm bells have gone to foghorn, klaxon scale.

You want me to give you my credit card info over the phone? and for $600 per year, I can get job leads? How many leads per year will you guarantee me? How many other companies in my area will also be getting these special leads?

She hung up.

This morning I get a call from Matt.

Matt is a business consultant working with janitorial companies in my area. Matt is offering free consultations, Matt will come to my office and work with me on a plan to create more business, increase my sales, reach more customers and improve my bottom line.

All for FREE ? I ask Matt

Yes sir he replies, I have a proven method that will boost your sales.

What do you get out of this Matt? Doesn't seem to me that you are eating well or paying the light bill giving this kind of help away for free, how are you making a living doing this Matt?

"Mr. Galo, your advertising of your services will be the vehicle that increases your sales and with my help we will create an ad that does that for you."

So, Matt, you run these ads then and that's how you make your money as a consultant? Where are these ads going to run? Business newspapers? Radio? What is the field?

That's why I want to make an appointment with you Mr. Galo, so I can take just 45 to 60 minutes of your time to demonstrate how a creative ad we design for you will work in growing your business.

Matt, you haven't answered my questions.

I'm with the Yellow pages, Mr. Galo

Matt, do you know what I do for a living?

Cleaning, right?

We clean commercial and industrial buildings Matt and do you know where all those yellow pages books are? They are in the recycling center Matt and I don't mean last years, I mean this years. Your folks deliver those shrink wrapped packages of books to the lobbies of these buildings every year and we get the calls to toss them in the recycling bins.

Matt, if no one is using your books, why should I spend money advertising in them?

Hello? Hello? Matt are you still there? Hello? Hello?