I have been doing proactive sales via telephone since I was 14 years old. I used to volunteer to call blood donors for the Red Cross and let them know that we were short of supply in their blood type. I was pretty successful at doing it so they kept me. It wasn’t my favorite job but I got to hang in the office with the paid staff and they thought I was the best thing that ever got on the telephone.
One of my first jobs was finding jobs for people. I worked for an employment agency. When I wasn’t busy interviewing potential clients I was on the phone calling companies to see if they had any job openings and seeing if they would let me try to find them a new employee. I was pretty good at it.
When I went back to college I had a part time job in a phone bank calling people for the Special Olympics, trying to renew their magazine subscriptions. I don’t know how much money Special Olympics got in this deal but I worked myself to death. I wasn’t really good at talking with housewives about renewing their Redbook or Women’s Day but I was hellacious renewing Playboy subscriptions, especially to men in the northeast. I even had a guy who wanted to send me flowers. Management couldn’t figure out why I was so good at it. But I was.
At some point in time, when I was working for a large manufacturing company, selling replacement parts, they decided it would be a good idea if we called out customers to see if they needed anything. They didn’t know this, or maybe they did, but I had been doing that for about six months at the time. I had started calling customers because they were always in a good mood when their equipment wasn’t broken. If their equipment was broken they were frantic and desperate. In my job I had to jump through hoops for those people, but if I called them and their equipment was running fine, I could have a nice, leisurely conversation. And I would. I found out that when you talk to people who work in maintenance they have lots of time on their hands if everything is running well. I was tired of getting yelled at by the people who had equipment emergencies. I chose to call customers who didn’t need anything right now but might need something in the future.
And that was always fun. They would tell me that they didn’t have anything to buy from me right now. I told them that was okay but I wanted to make sure that they knew who they should call when they needed anything at all. And they did. Nothing is better than having someone give you a call when they need you. And that was when I could really perform. I had a vested interest in this customer and I wanted to make sure that they were taken care of.
And I have been doing this for 25 years.
I knew that I was destined to make my living on the telephone. My mother, while she was a housewife, would talk on the phone for hours, about nothing. She would hang up from talking with her sister and call her best friend. She would hang up from her and another friend would call. It was crazy. When I got in high school and started using the phone, I couldn’t understand that nobody wanted to sit on the phone and just talk. I remember trying to explain this phenomenon to my friends but they were always ready to get off the phone as soon as our business was finished. I wanted to talk.
Of course, nowadays companies look at doing social media marketing and email marketing because telemarketing is such a dirty word. A lot of companies have gone to robocalls instead of paying someone to take care of their business. Personally, I think one of the best ways to develop a relationship with a customer is to talk with them. And if you can’t get in front of your customer personally then I really do think you need to call them. You need to respect them but I think you need to call them.
But, I don’t think telesales, or telemarketing is a job for everybody. There were people all throughout my career who had no business talking to people on the phone. Those people should not have been in customer service either. Some people just are not good at it.
A case in point. I got a call yesterday from a company I do business with. They call about once a quarter and review my business and give me recommendations of products they have that would work for my business. Usually this is a painless process. They are usually very pleasant and try their best to be helpful. The guy yesterday though should not have been on the phone. First, he did not ask me if I had time to talk with him. They normally do and I didn’t really have time to deal with him. But I was in my car and had a few minutes so I didn’t ask him to call back another time. He was reviewing my account and told me that I had a couple of products that needed to be renewed and he had a couple of ideas on new products that we could use. I was fine with that. Since I pay attention to emails that tell me of new products, etc., I am pretty educated. One of the first things he brought up was that I needed to completely redo my website and I would get so many more customers basis that. I explained to him that I only used that website for information purposes and I didn’t feel that it brought any business to me. He pounced on that and told me I needed to redo my website and I would have all kinds of new customers. I told him I appreciated the information and I would consider it but at the moment I was not going to do anything with that website. Well, that’s when he about attacked me on the phone. I couldn’t say anything without him pouncing on me. Finally, I told him that we were through that conversation and let’s move on. Then he was telling me that I had to redo my emails. I told him that I had seen the email and was going to take care of that issue but wanted to do a little more research before I changed products. He attacked me. I tried to cut him off but he went off on me about cutting him off. So, I said, “well, if you think that was cutting you off, try this.” I hung up.
I plan to call this company and let them know about the situation and have them take me off of their call list. If they don’t then I’ll block their calls. I don’t want to do it anymore.
And it’s people like him that give telemarketing or telesales a bad name. It’s robocalls that give telemarketing or telesales a bad name. That’s why I refer to what I do as “proactive sales” or “relationship sales”. One of the best compliments I got was a guy who answered his phone and said “oh, it’s you, I was afraid that it was going to be somebody trying to sell me something.” I just smiled because I knew then, and know now, that I am very good at what I do.
