Know When to Apologize and Move On
I caught this post on TechCrunch about Lois Whitman. Go read it real quick.
Back? OK cool… If my math is correct, she’s probably in her 60’s. I base this on the 1966 employment mentioned in her bio at the HWH founders page. If you figure she’s been in the job pool for forty two years and was approximately twenty years of age in 1966, then 60-something is probably about right. Over forty years in the job pool. That’s over twice the amount of time I’ve been gainfully employed, yet she makes a rookie mistake like this?! Why? How?
Something just doesn’t jive here. Don’t get me wrong, there is no age discrimination here. To the contrary, I’m all for people staying in the job market for as long as they possibly can. Even my own father started his own new business (two actually!) when he left the corporate world at the ripe young age of 62. I was behind him and cheering him on the the whole way. Why? Because I know he has what it takes. He has the entrepreneurial spirit and the knowledge needed to take a business, run with it, and be successful. He relies almost completely on word-of-mouth referral marketing (speaking of which, feel free to fire up a comment and let me know if you need an amazing home improvement, master gardener, or real estate guru).
When I think about what my father created, how long it took him to create it, and how he actually went about creating it, I see relationship building at its finest. Compared to Lois Whitman’s approach, there’s just so much that doesn’t make sense. Given Lois’ response, I find it amazing that her clients even continue to do business with her. Add to that the backwards line of thinking she displays on her blog and you’ll see some further insight into why she’s spamming: a) because she has to, and b) because it’s what she has always done.
Think about it: when she started in PR, it was all about phones, newspapers, letters, print media, and the like. The cost of the media was on the producer, and you blasted it out to as many places as you could! Contrast that with today’s permission-based marketing culture and it’s no wonder she’s leaving voicemail messages all day every day. I think Lois has some great information to communicate, but I’m afraid she will be stumbling over her own elitist attitude for quite some time unless she decides to change it now.
Personally, I’m glad Mr. Arrington brought this to the attention of TechCrunch’s readers. I think it can be used to teach a valuable lesson:
Know when to apologize
All of the negative press and bad feelings could have been avoided from the very start by not blasting thousands of email messages out, but this particular incident could have been completely avoided if Lois would have simply apologized. Think about the message she communicated. It sounded like something along the lines of, “I’m better than you. You suck. You’re lucky to even be considered email-worthy by me because your pitiful blog is nothing but pitiful. How dare you question my spam.” It could have easily said something more along the lines of:
“Let’s move on”
She had the perfect opportunity to start building a relationship, but what did she do? She sabatoged herself and ruined any chance of procuring a great opportunity to market her customers’ products. Imagine if her response had sounded like something more along the lines of, “You’re right. I’m sorry. I should have sent you information about Samsung’s new line of mobile phones. I would love to set up a conference call sometime or perhaps join you for dinner at the show this year. Let’s put this behind us and move forward.”
It’s not rocket surgery. It’s being a nice person.