Sending Constructive Criticism Messages to Your Prospect

It's not really a good idea to give constructive criticism to your prospect but if you consider your company a consulting firm; then messages like this is ethical especially if your main goal is to educate your prospect.  It is not all about having more clients but more on having decent deals through building relation to your clients.

Here’s a situational analysis from a prospect who didn’t know how to value our talents and skills.  Because they are big, they don’t follow what is written in the quotation and terms of making an audio commercial for their mall.  This audio production is suppose to be used for their motorcade.  This prospect is a known mall in the Philippines.  On the other hand, I’m also one of their customers since I always buy my clothes in their mall.  Now this is how I sounded........

Your marketing department told me that you prefer a female talent after hearing my first audio production that you asked for.....  Our forte and specialization is narrowcasting and broadcasting (I was once a broadcaster/FM DJ).  I'm sure you have an ad agency who has given you already of an image for your targeted market but when I was asked to make the production, there were no information about your image.  You should have told me about your requirements before I did the production.  We practice fast service, provide professional VOs and high quality audio production that's why a multinational company with so many branches in the world has trusted us (not to mention the name).  I was the one who made their standard script for all their store openings. We've been their audio production supplier since 2006.  But when I gave you the production I made, you changed your minds.  Two revisions are fine with me but 3 is too much for a three-thousand-peso deal.  I can still take it for the last time.  I hope you understand our market value.  We are not asking you a high price. There was no narrowcast/broadcast order made from your side and you keep on asking us to produce the commercial.  I respect your SOP but I hope you'll put value on our effort and time spent for this production.

Here's a talent's market value analysis:
If you want a professional voice over talent (broadcaster or former broadcaster), the lowest talent fee whether you get a female or male VO is around Php 3,000 for narrowcasting.  Narrowcasting focuses on a particular place or target/niche market.  Most broadcasters are not aware of it.  This is why they are having a hard time lowering down their talent fees because there is no industry in narrowcasting yet in our country.  So if we get the female VO at 3k, then you also have to pay us for the production and scouting of talent at 3k.  Now the total is Php6,000.  Here's another problem, you have to give me one week to get a talent and still needs to be auditioned.  This is a waste of time on your end.

Let's put it this way, again, our forte and focus is narrowcasting.  People prefer the internet and this is our problem in our industry.  Meaning, radio listeners are decreasing.  Why don't you just try looking for other suppliers and see the big difference.  If you get a better deal then that is fine with me....

When I make an analysis, I want to make sure that it has real value because if it doesn't; then I'll lose my credibility.  I'm not perfect, I still screw up but I always try my best to make things perfect.  I'm the only one doing narrowcasting in the Philippines and you can google it...  So if I make a recommendation, I hope that you will respect it.  If not, you just have to look for other suppliers.

Constructive Criticism:
Few years back, I used to host most of the 3-day sale event for your mall so I understand your market.  About two years ago, someone from your team told me that your mall is shifting to a different market and that's the AB crowd.  Back then, I got confused.  I was told to speak in straight English when I hosted an event there back then.  I got no choice but to follow because it's your SOP even I see a lot of CD crowd.  For me, if you change the image of your mall, you can't still control the CD crowd entering your place, right? Can you ask the guards to check the market if it's an A B C or D class? And if so, can you also tell to your guard, "Guard, wag mong papasukin yung mga masa ang itsura (Guard, don’t let the CD crowd/masses come in)."  If you do that, then that is discrimination. You already have regular customers and why change the image?  You mean, you just have to change a market approach even it is not being appreciated? You think speaking straight English will be appreciated by the CD crowd?  Maybe yes, maybe no.  You better go back to Taglish.  I sounded so corny when I last hosted there.

Analysis on your target market:
Ok, you cater to the AB crowd so what I did is a VO delivery that I believe your market can appreciate. But based on your practice, I'm puzzled with the way you deal with your market.  David Ogilvy once said "your market is like your wife, so don't insult her intelligence.  You want to have an excited message delivery but you are targeting the AB crowd.  Take for instance Manny Pacquiao.  He came from the CD crowd but now considered an AB class person.  If I tell him about your "Sale," with excitement, you think, he will appreciate it?  Be on his shoes, how will he be excited about if he can afford to buy your stuff even if it's not a sale.  He's rich and he prefers going to a mall that has no long lines of paying an item.  It's already a mindset that if it's a sale, the CD crowd will take advantage of it. So why make it an excited delivery?  On the other hand, narrowcasting is more of the hearing approach and broadcasting is more of the listening.  When you play a 30-second commercial on radio, maybe about 70% of the listeners will learn your ad message. But in narrowcasting, people don't listen, they just hear the audio commercial.  It's all about having an attention getter to make them listen.  This is why narrawcasting has a different approach when compared to broadcasting.  Actually, we practice finding the average staying time (AST) and our goal is to repeat the commercial 4 times.  Why? It's called AIDA (attention, interest, decision and action).  It takes four repetitions before a commercial gets into the brain either through listening or hearing.  In a motorcade case, no need to know the AST because you loop the commercial spot.  So that's fine.  If you want this audio
item to be played in your mall on a loop, that's also fine.  But it bothers the market with so many repetitions. This is why we committed to give you a free one-hour canned program.  It's a mixed down of music and your commercials that sounded like an FM radio program format once you play it. It's your prerogative to play it or not.  Another thing, if you expect your market will just hear your commercial, how come you are very particular with a voice talent?  You think your market will complain because they don't like the voice over or the delivery of your message?  What I'm doing here is trying to please you and not your market.  Well, that's the typical way of doing business.  But in advertising, we care more about the needs of our client's market.  If you can give us an explanation on your marketing style and I learned that we won't fit with your standards; then we'll just drop this deal.

Please make sure that the script that you sent us is final.  So we can proceed to the final production.

If you have other comments, please call me in my cellphone ______....

I appreciate your time in reading and knowing our side.  Have a nice day guys!!!

This deal didn't pushes through.  I gave them 3 kinds of audio commercial delivery for their "Sale" event and yet all them were taken for granted.  They are big but disorganized.  Evaluating our audio production has gone to different people.  They listened to it.  Most of them are not broadcasters.  Marketing, broadcasting and narrowcasting are three different fields under advertising.  Before they called me, they already heard our audio production sample works.  They should know how to value and understand ones business.  I don't want to name the mall but dealing with them is like hell.  Most suppliers don't want to deal with them because of their terms of payment.  They pay their supplier 90 days.  If you are small, you'll not gonna survive.  We can consider the small ones but they are big.  Why pay after 90 days if you can pay on or before 30 days?  If you put all the accounts payable for suppliers together and put the money in the bank for a while; then expect a big value of its interest.  That interest is another source of profit.  It doesn't really sound an ethical business dealing.  It sounded so greedy.  That's why I asked them, is it's a 90 day term or not?  They said, it's COD.  If it's a 90-day term, then I'll back out.  Although it wasn't a 90-day term, still they made a bad dealing.  What a company....