Did anyone else get the call: "Reaching out to early adopters"?

[jbcarioca]

I did outbound sales while I was in graduate school, selling Fiat. I rarely had people be rude, and actually sold a few cars. later I did outbound Tm for the NY Times. Oddly I even liked it. Many years later and from time to time I ended out consulting a bit for call centers. It is always a tough job. The Tesla ones have called me. I was polite, tried to be helpful and nearly upgraded my car. I do not mind having called from polite people. I hate robocalls and hate aggressive ones. Tesla is as good at this as is anybody IME, but nobody can do it with well-qualified people who can make much more doing other things.

 

[whitex]

Your analogy is horrendous, in so many ways, really, read it again and think about that (speeding/criminal offense vs sales call; govt vs for profit entity, competitive market vs no alternatives, etc...can keep going, its just not relevant.) I make terrible analogies all the time, I get it, just calling it out.

Ok, maybe one of these will speak to you - the guy calling you to solicit donation to your local fire department is not a fire man going to help you fireproof your home or answer. Or, the guy at the Apple store is not going to help you write the app for Apple phones, even though you paid for your phone and for the app development kit from Apple. The sales person at the Microsoft store will not be able to discuss a security vulnerability you just discovered, not even be able to put you in touch with the right person. The pollster who is calling to ask you a political poll will not even listen to your political concerns. Yes he's working for whatever political party, but his job is simply to ask you specific multiple-choice questions and record the answers.

Yes, I expect salespeople that represent a brand that I spent $150k with months ago, who is calling me to upsell me (which I also welcome) to also care, and extend themselves a bit to ensure my satisfaction with the brand. They represent the brand, not just their immediate interests. This is what I expect as a consumer, period. Not saying everyone needs to think that way, everyone can feel the way they feel, who am I to say what's right other than related to my own expectations.

So I was right, the problem is misaligned expectations. Your expectations are not aligned with reality of dealing with large companies. The personal, one-on-one touch is realistically limited to very small companies. Once the company gets large, it needs to compartmentalize functions - there will be techs than know how to fix something but have no clue what sales offers or even pricing on new products, then there will be sales people who's job is to sell you a car and have no clue how to deal your out of warranty product needing repairs other than to tell you to contact the service department, or if you have complaints, the customer service department - different function, different department.

 

[Trunk Gap]

Wow. You are so, so wrong. That's ok, I'm not here to convince you otherwise. Good luck.

 

[copyhacker]

do realize that if someone isn't selling the work that you do your work won't be necessary

Just revealing a personal "and probably unfair" bias, not attempting to state an objective fact. No offense intended towards anyone in the sales profession. Many engineering types tend to not be very good at speaking sales, and maybe this is the case at Tesla.

 

[Shock-On-T]

They should probably take a quick peek at the service record before a cold call. If a current owner is having service issues then a sales call is likely just a waste of time for everyone.

They may not have access.
Probably they are just in an office somewhere working through a list they've been given.