I don’t care about your records

I got a phone call from a magazine that I didn't subscribe to... but I receive for free. The man on the other end said, "Hi, I am from 'Magazine' and in order for you to continue to receive this magazine for free, we need to make sure that we have all the correct information." "I don't want the magazine," I replied. "We have changed the format and I would love for you to try it one more month," He said. I agreed to hopefully get him off the phone quickly. He then proceeded to ask me a myriad of questions about my buying decisions, my purchasing budget, and the number of employees my office has. All this for a magazine that I don't want. I was just hoping to get him off the phone. I finally said to him, "You know, I really don't care about your records... especially for a magazine that I don't want." He jumped to his last question and asked, "For auditing purposes only, what is the color of your eyes." I was floored. I don't care about his records. I don't care about his auditing needs. It is just not important to me. Bottom line - your customers don't care about your records unless they have a vested interest in you keeping in contact with them. Even then, they like to give limited information. They simply don't care whether your records are up to date. They don't want to take time to make sure you know who the decision maker is or what your budget is. They don't care about you. Solve their problems and they start to care. Stop worrying about you and start worrying about them and the whole world changes. 

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Corey Smith is the Vice President of Innovation at Fisher’s Document Systems where he maintains a blog on business and technology.