In the last month, I've received no less than 15 phone calls from the telemarketing arm of a publication I subscribe to. It's gotten to the point where I recognize the phone number and ignore all of the calls from these people.

I understand the need to remind people to renew their subscriptions, but in that case one or two phone calls and a voice mail is more than sufficient. The interesting thing is I was wavering on whether or not to renew this particular publication, and the ongoing badgering from their sales people is not helping their cause at all. There is absolutely nothing they can say to me on the phone that is going to influence me positively and their ongoing consistent calling makes me want to give the whole thing up just to get rid of them permanently.

If that's not bad enough, several years ago I decided not to renew my membership in a professional organization for many reasons. Again, I got emails and phone calls asking me to renew and I told them I wasn't interested. Then I got on the "Lost member contact" list, and I started to get calls from their board members to interview me about why I had chosen not to renew.

I really had no interest in this--all I wanted to do was have them go away quietly, but this was not meant to be. When I got a personal message from the president of the national association insisting that he had to talk to me to convince me why I was making a mistake in not renewing, I'd had enough. I told the local membership person that if all contact from the organization didn't cease and desist immediately (this had gone on for several months), I'd consider it harassment and take legal steps. That did the trick.

We all want to keep our customers, and we want to find out why customers defect. That makes sense. But badgering people who obviously are not interested in responding, doesn't. For one thing, it makes me wonder if the organization in question is so desperate they can't afford to lose a single subscriber or member. For another, my behavior tells you what you want to know. Asking the same question again except slower and louder doesn't make me any more responsive. The problem is not that I didn't hear you--it's that I've chosen not to respond.

Even worse, the bad experience I've had with these two organizations will stick with me for a long time--much longer than they'd want, if they thought about it. And I'll warn others about them as well.

Is that the way you want your customers to think about you? Think about this from the customer's perspective. No badgering allowed.

As a marketing and brand consultant, I am often asked to review value propositions of organizations, small businesses and individuals. One common mistake I see frequently is the value proposition that is so broad and all encompassing that it says virtually nothing.

Examples: We solve organizational problems. Or: We improve people's lives.

What on earth does that mean? What kind of organizational problems do you solve? Are you a psychologist or a leadership expert or a relationship coach? Or do you help me transport information more effectively throughout my organization? How do you improve people's lives? Have you found the cure for cancer or the common cold? Do you know how to solve world hunger or prevent global warming?  Or have you found an easy way to get through airport security quickly?

The people who spout these lines tell me they don't want to limit themselves or cut off potential audiences. They want to leave themselves enough flexibility to grow or to address new areas in the future.

That's great, but in the present your statements are so broad as to be totally useless. I don't know what you do, who you do it for, when I should call you or why you are different from other alternatives I might be considering. In other words, I don't understand the value you provide, which is the point of a value proposition to start with. 

If you target everyone and everything, you target no one. There is nothing on earth that is applicable to everyone without some clarification and modification--not even air and water.

So instead of trying to get your arms around the whole enchilada how about coming up with something that's focused, concise and to the point. Tell us what you do and who you do it for. Let people know right away whether or not they should be listening further, and just as importantly, who they might know who might be a good prospect for you and your services.

Give us something we can digest, one bite at a time. You'll do more with less and go further, too.

We've all heard a lot about identity theft. But have you considered the problem of corrupted information being attached to your online identity?

I recently had an interesting interaction with a financial institution. Before they would discuss my account with me, they wanted to confirm my identify by asking a series of personal questions. In theory, this sounds reasonable. In reality, it was a nightmare.

I was told the answers were taken from multiple sources of publicly available information about me. Hmm--in that case, it seemed like other people besides me would have been able to determine the answers, right?

As it turned out, NO ONE would have been able to answer these correctly--because the answers they were looking for weren't factually correct.

We started with my age and driver's license number. That was simple. Then they asked about one of my prior addresses. Also simple (and something someone else could have answered). From there, it went downhill. I was asked about a prior employer and given 4 possible choices. None of them were accurate, which I told the customer service rep. She didn't know how to deal with that and said I had to pick one of the 4 answers. But there was no correct answer, which meant we were stuck. She had no idea how to move forward from there.

She finally agreed to send me login information by mail. I went to the website, entered the login, and lo and behold, was subjected to a similar authentication process. The first 2 questions were fine and I answered appropriately, but the third one was again a multiple choice question with 4 incorrect answers, so I was stuck again. Another phone call.  Since they had an established paper address, we got around this by having them physically mail forms to the address they had on file, but it appears there is no way for me to establish an online account with this firm.

Here's the problem: Somewhere along the line some incorrect information was attached to my profile. This was picked up by the authentication program and passed along as gospel. I don't know where they got the information from (and neither do they), so I can't go back and fix the mistakes. The bank's process is to require correct answers to all the questions, so therefore they couldn't authenticate me. 

We got around the problem that time, but the incorrect information is still out there, somewhere, and sooner or later this will likely happen again. As a business, consider that your need for security needs to be balanced with how best to serve your customer. Online systems like this are far from perfect. What's your backup plan?  How will you handle these situations?

I was not eager to go through the hassle with this institution again. End of story: Case (and account) closed.