Dan Kennedy Sales Spam
As you may know, I am often ambivalent towards the multitude of self-styled ‘sales gurus’. There are a number I quite rate. Tom Hopkins’ is one such winner. Yet my mind changes channel with those that let their so-called ‘personality’ interfere with their message. Particularly when this ‘personality’ comes across as a quasi-religious, life-coach kind of vibe.
For some unknown reason, I’ve been singled out for spamming by a site that sends me ‘personalised’ email, probably thinking I’d take more notice, yet mistakenly calls me by my initial, thinking it’s my first name. Anyway, during a coffee-break moment, I clicked through to www.dankennedy.com.
And I was greeted immediately by a fairly lifeless video of said ‘guru’, telling me how wonderful he was. The word humble is not one he’s familiar with. And this is where my irritation kicked in. Is it because I’m English that I get turned off by people blowing their own trumpet? After all, my mother always used to tell me ‘empty vessels make the most noise’. If someone else had been saying it, a certain softening may have occurred, but I guess ego gets in the way. It was mainly about what image he’s cultivated, when I’d have preferred to know an example or two of what people say he’s done for them.
Anyway, trying to dismiss the Americanism of the approach, I read on. Lamentably things didn’t get any better.
The theme on this particular day was Sales Management. I couldn’t bring myself to determine further whether the feeling growing inside my head was an isolated apparition, as the vacuous journalistic soundbites of the advice grated too much. Perhaps there are some nuggets around the site, but there were none on this page. Here’s an example from the “best” paragaph:
“In managing sales people you’ll actually be dealing with three distinctly different situations. One – coaching the willing sales person to peak performance. Two – trying to motivate the mediocre performer and three – frequently cutting out and replacing the poor performers.”