The Sales Lady

The door bell mounted at our gate rings. The gate of my house is about twenty meter apart from my bed-room window. I tried to spot the person across the courtyard. It was definitely a lady. I came out and walked towards my gate. Oh No! It was the same sales lady who has been coming to our house since many years. She always says, “Look! This is the last phenyl bottle in my hand. Please buy it from me. My husband is in the hospital. I have to buy medicines for him.” Whether it is me, my wife or my children, she always repeats the same story since ages. We all know that it is just a marketing gimmick. We had rarely bought any phenyl bottle from her, that too quite long back. I do not know why, but she always returns back to our house, asking us to buy her last phenyl bottle. When we ask her to go back, she insists two three times again. We also ask her, why she makes a false excuse every time to make a sale. She just makes a face, but never says that her excuse is false. She never objected to our statement, that she is telling a lie. I do not know what kind of marketing this is.

I have seen “Insistence Based Marketing” by many vendors either coming to the door or trying to make calls. I must have received at least fifty calls in past six months from some people claiming to be representatives of a popular telecom company. These callers ask me to convert my mobile connection from a prepaid service to a postpaid service. The callers do not even know that I am already having a post paid connection. When I enquired from the parent company, they say that many tele-callers are appointed by local dealers on their own who make such requests. For the readers I must put on record, that I already have a “Do Not Disturb” facility enabled. Request to bar the calling number is of no use as the calling number keeps changing, even when it is from the same vendor.

The point I wanted to make here is related to corporate or business morals. This kind of insistence marketing is something that needs to be re-discussed inside every small or big organisation. I did consult few advertising and promotion related books that I studied during my management course. Push based promotion is required, but unless there is a pull the customer satisfaction can never be achieved. Yes! This is a Pandora-box of a long debate. So what! This issue definitely needs a discussion on the moral grounds too.

Dr. Sunil Ji Garg