The Frightening Truth About Shadow Marketing
I received my first assault of shadow marketing a couple of years ago. I was on my way back from the office break room with a fresh cup of coffee in my hand when an excited sales rep called out from the cubicle jungle, “Jen! You got a minute? I want to show you something.” Call it a sixth sense or intuition, but I knew something was going to be wrong. This excited rep was leaping out of his seat to show me this “awesome” new presentation he had made for a prospect. I think he used every single animation and transition that PowerPoint offered, but that was the least of my worries. The logos he used for the company were not just outdated, they were completely askew. He had pulled them from somewhere that was not our SharePoint site or Google Drive folder or even our own website (I’m guessing he Google image-searched for them). In any event, they were not our logos. This was not our standard presentation. The cadence of the content was not in alignment with our well-researched guided sales process. In short, the entire deck was an utter disaster. And, he was very, very proud of himself. Now, you might be thinking bravo to this proactive and creative sales rep for trying his best, but when I’ve invested countless hours and thousands of dollars in beautiful presentations specifically to avoid this very situation, it was really hard to keep that freshly brewed coffee in my…
Read More: The Frightening Truth About Shadow Marketing
