THE DEATH OF THE SALESMAN

“When you're lying awake with a dismal headache
And repose is taboo'd by anxiety……
For your brain is on fire, the bed-clothes conspire
Of usual slumber to plunder you:
First your counter-pane goes, and uncovers your toes,
And your sheet slips demurely from under you.”

This was me– the song from Gilbert and Sullivan’s ‘Iolanthe’ filled my head plus a ‘new’ line
“and self-loathing corrodes your judgement”

This is unusual for me. My nights are normally full of enjoyable slumber and dreams in which I perform impossible missions with sang froid and daring.... but not on Saturday morning at 3am when I woke cursing, writhing and perspiring.

I was suffering as so many are with a nasty dose of acute brexitis and this was made much worse by an attack of gulliblonia as I suspected I’d been duped the previous day by a fast-talking, persistent salesman on the phone and I’d failed to say “no” or been dismissive to him. When I got out of bed my worst fears were confirmed. My broadband contract with BT was being cancelled and replaced with a cheaper deal with EE (their sister company with whom they’d merged) and I had, suspiciously, only one day‘s cooling-off period.

There are two rules I follow.
i) Never buy anything at the door or on the phone or from any cold call salesman.
ii) And always take your time. “Sign now or the offer goes” is the sales ploy of a desperado.

On this occasion with the lame excuse of not feeling very well I’d failed on both rules. Hence that self-loathing.

So I phoned BT. Mo is in India at one of those call centres and is a star. Brilliant English and a sense of humour. She told me not to worry. BT and EE were the same company and I’d been sold a perfectly reasonable deal. What, she wondered, was my problem? I explained the high pressured sales-spiel and the short cooling-off period irked me and that I knew something was wrong. She giggled when I talked about the sales patter and conceded those “sales guys” were really motivated to hit targets.

“So this deal is OK with a better router and half the price and it includes the BT TV deal as well?” It appeared not. That was the flaw. I told her my wife would be very unhappy if our TV went down whilst I was in the office chortling at cheap super-high-speed broadband. She giggled again and said she was totally with my wife.

So I cancelled the deal.

At the back of my mind I recalled a radio phone-in where a guy changed his mobile-phone provider to save money in response to a cold-call and it went horribly wrong. No reception and a lost/cancelled phone-number which he explained was on all his literature and his fleet of vans.

So if it sounds like a salesman on the phone terminate the call. Always.

“Start-ups Pivots and Pop Ups” by Richard Hall and Rachel Bell is published on October3rd by Kogan Page. The antidote to doubt and gloom. And definitely not a scam.

EVERY LITTLE HELPS

Tesco’s advertising claim promoting incrementalism is belied by its own seemingly unstoppable growth and is irritating because it belongs to that know-it-all neighbour with over-the-fence-homespun-wisdoms (“a stitch in time…”; “time and tide…”;) and because any Tesco executive who was asked how sales were doing in his sector and replied “oh, you know, steady enough, keeping our head above water but, then again, every little helps”, would be instantly fired.

Its growth is matched by its creativity in finding new opportunities and imaginative ways of executing its strategy – yes, Tesco creative …and no, it’s not an oxymoron.

Now it’s into second hand cars creating (for Tesco) a high margin business, for the consumer a lower cost and more trustworthy source of product and at a stroke have changed the automotive game.

To the global automotive business Britain is known as Treasure Island because of the premium prices they can get here.  And car dealers make more money out of selling second hand cars than new cars. Post-Tesco they won’t be doing so much longer.

Despite their success Tesco’s image has taken a bit of a battering over the past few years. In research consumers don’t always say very nice things about them. Ironically it has something of the image problem of second hand car salesmen.

And yet the image right at its core is one of reliability, low prices and, in Tesco Finest, the biggest food brand in the UK. Quite simply if you were as ubiquitous as they are, you’d be up for a panning too – as are the USA or Microsoft or BT. In short the Tesco brand is a strong one in terms of awareness and reach and is respected perhaps more than liked but when push comes to shove, one that has, at worst, grudging approval for its standards.

This move into cars could change the way they are seen by the sceptics. The Tesco brand beats small, expensive, undercapitalised local brands. And one other plus – Tesco actually know how to sell to women which virtually no car dealerships are good at.

It’s already doing advanced trials in reinventing banking and reinventing estate agencies proving that strong brands can reach the parts weak brands can’t.

The scale of change continues especially in sectors where margins are very high, where customer service is wanting and where product and service innovation is lacking. Tesco is an early player in doing what Virgin dreamed and talked of doing.

My guess is this is the beginning of a new wave of looking at things buying a lot of the stuff differently. Sorry Arthur Daley. You are history son.