I’m on the receiving end of other people’s sales pitches on a daily basis.

To be terribly honest, most of them aren’t very good. In fact most of them are appalling. Their only redeeming feature is that sometimes the ones I get in my Inbox are so awful that I can file them away to use them as fodder for one of my blog posts.

Which brings me to this week’s winner of Worst Pitch In Lee’s Inbox:

Dear Lee,

Please forward this Email to your purchase department

My name is [redacted] of [redacted] Sweden.

We would be very interested in exploring the opportunity working with you. We have reached good sale volumes and attention on our current line-up in Sweden. We believe that your region and channels would be a very good fit for our products.

Market exploration

In Sweden we have reached success through different channels. We believe that focus has been moving from pure tech stores to more lifestyle based stores. This is one of the reasons we developed [redacted], to target a wider consumer group. Your earphones is not only an item, it is a bit of a statement. So electronic chain stores, telecom- operators, clothing stores, concept stores and web shops are all groups we target. We also do bundling activities with operators and other manufacturers. Normally we get a higher attach rate if we can demonstrate and let clients listen to our products. On the web it is as important to show photos, packages and even our videos to create a marketplace that is of the clients interest. Overall we try to push a balance between technology and lifestyle, so that both these ideas are targeted towards our audience.

[redacted], Sweden highlights:

·         Cool brand thinking

·         High quality thinking, from sound to durability

·         Latest and greatest technology used

·         Unique styled gift boxes and other packaging solutions,  that stands out!

·         Good margins for distribution and retailers

·         Proud and Engaged end users

Aside from the sheer banality of the marketing talk in this pitch, here’s the piece that really clinched it for me:

“Please forward this Email to your purchase department”

Here’s the response that I was too polite to email back, but not too polite to blog about:

No, YOU email my purchase department.

You did enough homework to get my email address from our website, but not enough to get the addresses of our buyers?

You’ve got to be kidding me; there was absolutely nothing, NOTHING in either your generic pitch or the pictures of your generic products that would motivate me to pass your information on to anybody.

Call me when you’ve got something worth selling.

In stark contrast to the facepalm-worthiness of that email pitch I recently received a voicemail in the middle of the night from a salesperson in Dubai that was so professional, so together, and so clearly well-organized that I was actually compelled to call her back, if only to compliment her on the quality of her phone manners, regardless of whether or not we ever do business.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere, see if you can find it.