Zoom sales person anecdote

I recently retired, and didn’t bother updating my LinkedIn page. I got pinged by a Zoom salesperson on LinkedIn who said in part:

I’m curious to know if XXXXX have a strategy in place to either WFH or transition back into the office?

If you’re open to it, I’d love to learn about your team’s communication gameplan and see if we can help create a mobile & reliable solution that incorporates phone, video/audio conferencing, webinars/events, and chat. Thoughts?

I used the automated LinkedIn button to say I wasn’t interested, but she came back with:

Appreciate you getting back to me. If you don’t mind me asking is there a specific reason why?

With 4,600+ Zoom meeting minutes in the last 30 days at XXXXX, I figured the organization would want to benefit from economies of scale and standardizing security profiles on Zoom. Curious to know why we are seeing this usage and if we can help with specific use cases within your current tech stack.

Do you have 20 minutes to sync up for introductions this week or next?

And when I told her I was no longer at the company, she came back, again, with:

Appreciate it and I apologize for my persistence. I hope you know it comes from good place :). If you know of anyone who is still at XXXXX that you think I should speak with let me know. Have a great day and thanks again!

This is just one salesperson, so maybe perhaps not indicative of the company’s tactics as a whole. I don’t know if she’s just being aggressive or if the Zoom sales team is being aggressive.

Interesting that she reached out to me, as I never did create a Zoom account with the company email myself, and certainly haven’t been on any of the 4600 minutes that people at my previous company have. One would think that Zoom would or should be able to reach out to the emails of the accounts used for the Zoom meetings - emails she presumably has since she has that 4600 meeting minutes data. And, weird that she’s using LinkedIn as the lead collection mechanism with that kind of data.

19 Likes

Interesting that she reached out to me, as I never did create a Zoom account with the company email myself, and certainly haven’t been on any of the 4600 minutes that people at my previous company have.

Or maybe she wasn’t with Zoom at all, but was phishing for information about you, or about your ex-company?

Saul

15 Likes

I’ve never been a salesman, but as a consumer, I’ve been pitched numerous things in head-scratching ways. Never underestimate the chance for a salesman to use every tool available to them – even if it’s the wrong tool.

I was pitched home/auto insurance by a former co-worker of mine… who didn’t do due diligence to research that I was already a (relatively long-time) client of his new company. ¯_(?)_/¯

Bottom line: As a shareholder, I could care less how the sales folks are selling, so long as they’re doing so.

1 Like

I’ve never been a salesman…

Bottom line: As a shareholder, I could care less how the sales folks are selling, so long as they’re doing so.

I was a professional salesman who attended sales training at IBM, NCR, and at an insurance company. The worst a salesman can do is to waste his time pitching non-qualified contacts. At the insurance company the mantra was, “If on the second visit you have not make a sale, don’t waste your time, drop the prospect.” A “prospect” is someone who has been previously qualified. What you described sounds like a fishing expedition, not a professional sale.

Denny Schlesinger

2 Likes

Most high growth companies carpet bomb;
CRM’s telesales is legendary. Each rep has to make a mind boggling amount of calls/emails to get the sales funnel going.

Some botch it up bigly.
WSJ ran an expensive campaign targeting their existing customers in the 2000s.
LexisNexis ran campaigns with returned mail flooding mail room.

Source: I actually saw the bins of returned mail at Lexis…leading to a project to revamp marketing process.

1 Like

Or maybe she wasn’t with Zoom at all, but was phishing for information about you, or about your ex-company?

Well, this contact was through LinkedIn and her profile, listing Zoom as her current employer, looks legit.