My friend Brandon just posted this on Recording Review. I fully agree with him. I actually work in Pro Audio sales, I hate phoning people and hate getting calls for no reason.
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Home > Commentary; Rants and Jokes | Video > Sweetwater Just Ticked Me Off – A message from Brandon Drury
26Nov
Sweetwater Just Ticked Me Off – A message from Brandon Drury
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I used to be a Sales Engineer for Sweetwater. I get it. It’s not for everybody. What strikes me is that Brandon would rather spend the time setting up a camera, shooting a video, uploading it to YouTube, and posting it.
I could be wrong, but it doesn’t sound like he had ever even asked them not to call.
In their defense, while I worked there I had hundreds and hundreds of customers who LOVED the personal touch. They liked having a person who could answer their questions and who would even proactively call them to see if there were any new questions that had cropped up.
Some folks didn’t like it. They would tell me they’d rather I didn’t call. I’d say, “That’s cool.” And we wouldn’t call them again.
Others would go off in forums and other places online about it…taking the very passive-aggressive approach.
Again, I’m not saying we should take calls from people we don’t wanna take calls from, and Sweetwater clearly isn’t a match for Brandon (or a lot of people for that matter). And it sounds like his salesman wasn’t very effective.
Either way, I just don’t see the merit in flaming a company for going out of their way to provide an extra level of customer service. Also, I don’t answer the phone when I’m sleeping…maybe it’s just me.
[Full Disclaimer: They are an advertiser on HSC, but I wholeheartedly support them either way.]
Not when they call you 6 in the morning, knowing that there’s a time difference between where they are and where you are. Yeah, they’ve got my damn bloody address, and I’m sure I’m not the only customer ever living in this time zone. Common sense?
I don’t answer the phone when I’m sleeping either, but I don’t like it when it rings at my house waking me up.
What I like about them though is them being able to sometimes give me decent discounts on some of the high end gear.
The sales ‘engineers’ do act like they know every piece of gear, even tough they’re just directly quoting from the catalog. They way they sell is pretty much like a car salesman.
“So when do you want it?”
“You know you want it”
“I can ship it out to you today if you order now”
“I can only give you the discount if you order today”
Great video!
Realize this is old, but it’s new to me. I agree with Joe Gilder on this one. I am not affiliated with Sweetwater in any way other than I’m a customer, and just an occasional customer at that. The very rare call from Sweetwater is not even a sales call – it’s just not the typical “cold call”, it’s not just a bank of phone sales people going down a list… It’s the ONE guy at Sweetwater who was assigned to my account (“account”). The same guy who occasionally has emailed me to make sure whatever purchase I might have recently made was working out ok. Is there a selfish motive? Of course. They want my business. But, it’s selfish in the way that I’m selfish when I send a birthday card to my niece because I want her to remember her uncle/godfather. It’s way overkill to setup a camera and rant about a phone call from someone you _already did business with_ (not a cold call). Just tell them “hey, don’t call me, I’ll call you” and they’ll say “no problem”. I’m WAY more put off by people who go off on major rants on youtube. Just .02 from a fellow musician who may be unintentionally prompting another rant. Happy recording, and peace -
Sean