I received a rather casual sounding call at my office from a fellow at Northwestern Mutual. It seems that this guy had just gotten done talking to my good friend X. X, being someone I have never met face to face and only know through social networking. The fellow was surprised that X hadn’t called me about his call! X had, allegedly, dropped my name as someone who may be interested in the financial services that Northwestern Mutual has to offer.
At this point, I hang up on the salesman from Northwestern Mutual. Obviously, X would never have dropped my name because they barely know my name. This sales tool was lying. So the investigation began.
I checked my phone log and found the number for the Northwestern Mutual salesman. With a simple internet search of his phone number, I found his Northwestern Mutual profile page. Marcus. Hello, Marcus. Let’s figure out how you found my work number and developed your lie.
It was a pretty simple connection, actually. Marcus was connected with X on LinkedIn, the social site for finding job connections. Marcus had been going through and grabbing the names of people who were connected to X from LinkedIn, the names of the companies they worked for, looking up the main phone number for their offices, and making up a false back stories about being referred to call them by X.
Number one, I’m pretty sure this is a misuse of LinkedIn’s user agreement. Number two, those are some pretty shady sales tactics. Marcus used social media in the worst and most destructive manner possible. He exposed himself as ignorant and tarnished the name of Northwestern Mutual at the same time. He burned the social media bridges he was using, instead of making smart use of them and growing actual connections.
A happy customer tells one person, an unhappy customer tells everyone. And I’m not even a customer! If I was ever in a position to use any sort of financial service, I certainly wouldn’t go with or recommend Northwestern Mutual. Also, I think I’ll blog about this.
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