The Hard Push Technique....turn on or turn off?

A common marketing technique being taught by a number of different groups and marketing teams is the hard push tactic, where you give the prospect no real chance to refuse, create a massive sense of urgency and try and ensure they have no choice but to do as you wish.

I encountered this the other day with a member of the Dream Team marketing group. Now I am not in anyway trying to trash this course as I understand for some it is a good learning curve, however I have it on authority of another member that they do teach this technique.

For me it began with a couple of emails after I had enquired about the course. I was interested to see how they were teaching people to bring in 20 to 30 people a week into whatever business you were promoting. I asked that the person selling the course call me before 5pm to let me know more details. I didn't hear anything further until I walked in from being out in the wind and rain at 7.30pm, soaked to the skin and the phone rang. My dinner was in the oven and would be another 20 minutes and the cats and dog needed feeding.

The guy asked what I was promoting and of course said what a great company it was and how the course he was going to introduce me to could explode my business. He said there was a live conference call at 8.00pm that night. I explained that I was interested but that I couldn't really attend the call that night. The guy then got very pushy saying that if I was serious about my business I would miss by dinner and attend. I said I was not prepared to do that but would attend another call if there was one in a day or so. I was told that there was no further calls for a week or so and my place had to be specially reserved. I was basically told that I would never succeed in online business if my dinner came first and he hung up.

The next morning I emailed him to say I was no longer interested in pursuing the course as I had been totally put off by his attitude. I received a response saying he was sorry but that is the sales technique he had been taught on the course and it usually worked. Despite what he had said the day before there was another call that night.

I attended this apparent 'live' call to find it was a pre-recorded scripted call giving very little information and all hype and no real content. All I really discovered is that if I paid around $1000 for the course I could attend 4 live calls which would be at around 1am GMT, be taught how to get my own website which I already have and no real details of what the training entailed. I emailed the guy mentioned above to say I was not really interested as 'live' call had been a waste of time and totally uninspiring and that I did not think I would get anything out of it. His response - that I was a failure and would never succeed and I had wasted his time.

Now I have since talked to a couple of others involved in the Dream Team and both have been very friendly and pleasant but both acknowledged that the course probably wasn't for me and that the hard push tactic was one of the techniques taught (as well as memorising sales scripts for the phone etc).

This tactic and the guy's attitude totally put me off. This did not create a sense of urgency but left me feeling I was being bullied into something. I would think very carefully before using this hard push idea to gain sales...yes try and close the sale but not by bullying your prospect.