Bonehead Marketing at Its Absolute Worst

I've often complained in this blog about marketing groups that are totally clueless when it comes to customers. And that can be deadly when the marketing group is responsible for something that's important to the customer, like pricing. Check out this email from a Sales Machine reader:

Our company just launched a new add-on product and is hiding the fee in the invoice. They are giving the client the product, charging them, but not telling them about it. In fact, they didn't even tell the sales team about the product launch until after it went out.
Once the client receives the product, they can opt out the next time. However, we are still going to charge them and credit them later (later means about 6 months). Once our clients find out about this (unethical?) practice, I'm almost certain they won't be pleased. Your thoughts?

This is exactly the kind of marketing horse manure that I'm complaining about. Some idiot with a spreadsheet figured out that they can bump up the numbers by pulling a fast one on the customer base. The guy who thought of this plan should be fired. And the toad that approved it should be fired. Like immediately.

But, sad to say, that probably won't happen. Here's what will happen. Some customers will notice it immediately. They'll call up their sales rep and scream: "WTF????" And the sales rep will take the heat and be forced to mollify the customer using whatever tools he or she has at hand.

Other customers won't notice for a few months. And then they will. And they'll call up their sales rep and scream: "$%$&&$+!!#$$%" and then tell the rep where he can stick his orders in the future. And then the ex-customer will bad-mouth the sales rep to everyone he knows.

All because some idiot in marketing thought he had a bright idea to make some extra margin.

And what's actually going to happen to the marketing idiot? That's easy to answer. He'll get credit for a bump in the revenue and profit and probably get a promotion. Stuff like this happens every day. Marketing screws up big time, sales takes the heat, and marketing gets the promotion.

By the way, this kind of "jack the customer" horse manure is getting to be pretty common. I just ran into it at Intuit, which added a monthly support charge to my account that was described in a form letter that I never bothered to read carefully.

I got them to walk back some of the charges, but Intuit made an enemy of me, where before I was a fan (because I know their CEO.) What a bunch of idiots.

I keep wondering when it's going to stop. I mean seriously. When is marketing going to learn that they can't go around screwing the customer and expect the sales team to take the resulting crap?

Sales professionals (most of them, anyway) long ago learned that screwing the customer was a one-way ticket to loser-ville, but that's because they've got to build relationships in order to have a long-term career.

But the marketing idiots??? They can keep on wreaking havoc, screwing customers, and building their career while the poor sales reps clean up the mess.

It makes me sick.

READERS: Can you beat that email? If you've got a horror story, I'd love to hear it.