I have been attending the WPPI conference in Las Vegas this week, keeping Congress company. I have been to lots of IT-related conferences in my career, but only a handful of conferences outside my current industry. So I was interested in learning more about how this conference was organized, how it was run, meeting some attendees, and dropping in on a few select sessions to evaluate the speakers and content. Unfortunately I missed the trade show portion of the conference, which seems like a rookie mistake, but to be fair I did ask about it and simply got sidetracked and never even realized where it was being held until I saw them packing up. Hey, the MGM Grand has a lot of space, so it was easy to miss, trust me.
The other day I was walking through the conference center where most of the session rooms were located. We were between sessions and lots of people were milling about. I happened to walk by one table that had the letters ‘SEO’ on a sign, which caught my interest. Remembering how I missed the trade show I figured that this might be an impromptu vendor session so I stopped at the table. There was a man doing a lot of talking to a handful of people, one woman sitting behind the table talking to others, and a few other people just listening.
On the table were some DVD’s, so I picked one up. The back of the jacket described the contents of the DVD, a presentation on SEO topics. I was further intrigued by the DVD, and I slowly started to walk away, holding the DVD, reading it, when I heard the accusatory shrill from the woman at the table…
“Hey, that’s not free, you have to pay for that DVD! You can’t just walk away with that!”
I was stunned. Not free? I thought to myself. It’s a four dollar DVD, with some promotional materials, how much did they think I would pay for this? While I search the table for an answer on the price, I also respond back:
“I’m sorry, I did not know they were here for sale only.” Her response?
“Nothing on any of these tables is for free (motioning to all the other tables with other people milling about nearby, and she is starting to laugh at me, and others are joining in, laughing at me, making me feel like I am a total dumbass)”
I apologize again, but decided to NOT offer an explanation as to why I would be so brazen as to walk away with their precious DVD. I finally see a price ($60!, but only because you get a coupon for $30 off the $90 list price!), and then I understand things a little more clearly. First, the guy burned a seminar to the disk, and he set a perceived value price of $90 to the disk. That means he is looking to make a sale, and not simply hand something out in order to generate interest. No, he is looking for cash now, not later. Of course, if you go to his website (I won’t dare mention the company as I do not want to give them any additional publicity) you will find that he offers consulting for $300 an hour on how to use SEO for your business website.
Thinking quickly I then spotted a stack of business cards and said “How much for one of your business cards?” I think the woman got my message, that I was not amused by the way she and the others were treating me. She politely told me they were free, so I took one.
While walking away I tried to understand more about what the hell just happened. I mean, why did I think I could walk away with something? What kind of an ass was I? If I saw a musician with a bunch of CD’s for sale, I would have never thought I could walk away with one, why was this different?
Oh, right. Because at the majority of my professional conferences companies will hand me hundreds to thousands of dollars of free software in the hope that it will generate future sales. Sure, this guy is an artist, and artists will always put a value on their creations and try to make money in anyway possible. I get that. But that is no excuse for treating me as if I (1) was a thief, (2) an idiot, or (3) that I was someone that could only offer them a few dollars in cash, and nothing else. I went to that table to find out more about what they did with SEO, and see if there would be a way that I could help them with what they were doing. Apparently, they don’t need any extra help, they just need some cash, and I was of little use to them.
After that little experience it made it even more clear to me the value there is in treating people with dignity and respect, and not assuming you already know everything there is to know about someone.
