In this blog, we discuss a scenario we came across where a liquor company (let’s call them XYZ Drink) approached RPMC to sell their product to spirit stores near a major city. They said they were a novelty drink, only being available for a limited time.
The scope of work was they wanted to use our B2B cold call service to dial these stores, inquiring if “they had any of their drink left in stock.” Now mind you, this is a brand new liquor company that no one has heard of. The stores have never purchased from this brand before. They then wanted us to call 10 different times by 10 different voices, saying “we saw XYZ drink was available at your store via instagram, do you have any left in stock?”
Just let that sink in.
XYZ Drink wanted us to cold call spirit stores, talking to clerks and owners to push them to buy this product that apparently they already have, or at least give the clerks and owners the impression that people THINK their store has XYZ drink. Why? To falsely inflate demand and encourage the store owners to buy XYZ drink.
Guess what. We didn’t take the offer. To us, this was a scam. We were offered a large sum of money to do this, but it couldn’t get by our conscience.
I had even asked, “Why don’t we just call to set up appointments with the owners so you can develop a long term relationship?”
The XYZ Drink owner said, “Well, because this drink is only being produced once and then we are phasing it out. There wouldn’t be a long term relationship.”
That’s the problem. As much as it would have been an easy job and we had the capacity to do it, there wasn’t a fiber in us that said that this is helping anyone, even us. Not only would we be lying, store clerks and owners would be duped into thinking this was a beverage everyone was interested in. They would soon find out that no one was interested, just 10 different people calling to request this drink.
In the 21st century, there is no room for salespeople to be slimy. The market has been jaded from salespeople over the last 20 years pushing products on consumers that they would regret later. Although there is still a wall built up against salespeople in 2017, it’s our job to break down those walls and build trust with the marketplace first, even if we are offering a novelty liquor that only lasts for 6 months.