I can understand that, but...

I’ve had a lot of jobs in my day. I’ve been a dishwasher, cook, delivery driver, maintenance worker, welder, sports reporter, video game tester, book warehouse worker, book buyer and probably a few other ones I’m forgetting, but the worst job that I’ve ever had was my telemarketing job.

My stint as a telemarketer only lasted five weeks, but it was five of the worst weeks of my life.

It all started one day when Bill and I were working at the Captain’s Table in the kitchen, which is now the Garden Cafe. It was discussed that him and our friend, Brian, would be applying for this job at a new company in Grand Island. I had no idea what the job involved, but when I heard that it paid 6 something an hour, I was intrigued. Since I was earning around minimum wage at the time, I immediately took notice.

Bill and Brian had already landed their jobs, but I didn’t want to get left out, so I headed down to the telemarketing place and applied. I was taken in to talk with the manager, who was the mother of a classmate of ours, but whose name eludes me. She talked to me about the job. It would involve calling people and offering them a service let’s call Traveler’s Rebate, which is basically the extent of the service. TR would give you a five percent rebate on all you travel expenses if you sent them in to them. Our job was to sell the service.

I had never had a sales job before, but it didn’t seem like it was hard. We ran through a script where I pitched TR. Then we went through a part of the script where the interviewer acted like she had doubts, so then I read a rebuttal that started with “I can understand that, ma’am, but...” followed by another pitch to convince her to take our glorious product. She said, “Great.” and I had the job!

When my brother, Bill, told our Dad that he had taken a job at the telemarketing company, my Dad said that he was fine with it, “As long as you don’t call me.”

I told my boss at the Captain’s Table that I was quitting. He told me that he could keep my position open because “I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

I insisted that I probably would like it. It had to be better than getting all sweaty and greasy in the kitchen, right?

I probably should have listened to him. He was right about that and another thing in my life. I once told him that “I’ll be listening to heavy metal until the day I die!”

He said, “I don’t know. I think your tastes will change. You’ll be listening to something else.”

“No way!” I said.

Of course, he was right, but he was wrong about other things like when he told me that punk music would rot my brain, which it didn’t, although some people that know me may disagree.

So back to job. Here’s what I thought the job would entail.

I thought I would be wearing a nice shirt and tie. I’d be shown to my office where I would sit behind a desk and make some calls to people that were already interested in the TR service I was offering them. I pictured them saying “yes” to my sales pitches followed by big pay checks that I already had money spent. I pictured steady, calming work free of stress.

What I got was far from that. Like all the way in BFE far way.

Bill, Brian and I started on the same day. We went through several days of training in a nice office conference room where we talked about the job, went through scripts and discussed how to be successful in telemarketing. I honestly don’t remember what any of those tips were, though. The only thing I remember about that week was that I got paid, it wasn’t stressful and we got to watch a video of Geraldo Rivera getting smashed in the face with a chair.

Out of the blue, our trainer asks us if we’d seen it. He then showed it to us. It was a pretty good video that you can find easily on you tube if you haven’t seen it.

That was the highlight of the week that is still etched in my brain. Otherwise, I’ve pushed it all out.

Then on the last day of the week, we were ushered into the call room, or what is often referred to as a boiler room, which is a room full of salespeople on the phone trying to sell questionable goods or services.

There’s a good movie called The Boiler Room that does a good job showing this. There’s also a documentary called Anvil The Story of Anvil where the lead singer of this band, Anvil, takes a telemarketing job to earn some extra money. The guy who hires him is a fan of the band, and his company sells sunglasses over the phone. I cringed at that scene because he felt like I felt.

It wasn’t like I had pictured it at all. There were sectioned desks that each had a phone in them. It looked like a long table with mini walls to block the person from the left and right of you. We sat down in one and shadowed a person in the fine art of the script we were given. After a while, we switched and then I had to do it.

To say I was nervous was an understatement. I was really nervous. I hate talking to people I don’t know as it is, even when I’m calling them to have them help me for something. But it suddenly dawned on me that I would be calling total strangers from across the country.

Up to that point, I had never experienced telemarketing. My Dad usually answered the phone when it was a telemarketer. You could always tell when they called. He’d answer the phone with a loud, “HELL-O!” Then he’d just stand there and listen. Quickly, he’d get a irritated look on his face. I’d soon be facing people like my Dad.

I don’t remember the exact script we used, but it went something like this.

“Hello, my name is Bob, and I am calling about Traveler’s Rebate. May I please speak with So and So?”

(Wait for affirmative)

“Hello, Mr or Mrs. So and So, I wanted to talk to you tonight about Traveler’s Rebate. It’s a service that gives you five percent off of all your expenses when you travel.”

(Right here, there would be some more information describing the service and its “benefits” and then)

“So now that I’ve told you about the TR service, I’m offering you a 30-day trial to TR during which time, you’ll pay nothing and you’ll be able to use the service for all your travel expenses. If at the end of the 30 days you decide you don’t want it, all you have to do is call us and we’ll cancel it for you. Should I sign you up for Traveler’s Rebate today?”

(I waited for a response here. If Yes, we’d go to the part of the script where I turned on a tape recorder and got the mailing address for the sucker, I mean, customer.)

(If No, I asked the following question: “May I ask why?” then I used the following rebuttals)

“I Can’t Afford It”

“I can understand that you are concerned about the cost, but it’s 30 days free to try. After that it’s only (some amount) a month. So can I sign you up for the 30-day free trial?”

“I don’t travel much”

I can understand that you don’t travel much, but...

“I’m not interested”

I can understand that, but I would hate for you to miss out on this opportunity.

And there were other rebuttals for anything the customer would argue against.

From the start, I knew that I probably wasn’t going to like this job. I stumbled through my first attempt at the script while impatient people, who I had interrupted during their supper or TV time, were waiting on the other end.

I don’t think I sold any that night. You could chalk it up to nerves or you could chalk it up to that fact that I just didn’t have what it takes to be a telemarketer. Very quickly, I started to notice the qualities that one needed to succeed.

1. A great phone voice.

I don’t have a great phone voice at all. It’s not bad, but not great. If you were to call me, you might accuse me of sounding aloof or disinterested. Maybe you’d think that I sound bored. Other times, I’ve been accused of sounding rude. You might be right on all counts. What was so very frustrating about this liability was that a lot of fat people around me (not really exaggerating) were hauling in the sales night after night. I firmly believe it’s because of their phone voice.

Every night, the company would put up some prize to those who sold the most that night. I shouldn’t have even bothered to keep track of my paltry totals because I got no where near to competing for the prizes. I’d be stuck at 2 sales after 2 hours and a lady at the end with a great voice would be sitting at 16 sales! 16! I think the most I ever got in one night was about 5. That’s it!

2. No fear

It’s very true that showing fear is a sign of weakness that all forms of life can detect. If you are petrified that the people you are calling will answer the phone, that’s another sign that you shouldn’t be a telemarketer. Every number I would dial would be like a shot to my self esteem. The phone would ring, and I would dread the inevitable pick up. Not getting an answer was nice because you didn’t have to speak to anyone. The bad news was that the less people I talked to, the less likely it would be for me to have a good sales night.

The best nights were when they’d hand me sheets of people they couldn’t get to answer the phone. Most of the calls would go unanswered with me having a great night with very few people yelling at me.

We had a process that we could go through if the caller not only didn’t want the product, but had been called before and now TR wouldn’t leave them alone. If they asked to not be called again, we could take them off our lists and they’d be put on a Do Not Call list. Usually, people would ask us. Or if you were like me, you would pitch it to them.

Usually, those calls would go like this:

Me: “Hello Mr. So and So, I’m called on behalf of TR and... (insert sales pitch here).

Customer: “I know about the TR service. I’ve told them several times that I don’t want it. I just wish you guys would stop calling me!”

Me: “Well (with a huge sound of relief) I can help you with that! I can take you off of our calling list if you’d like!”

Customer: (Sounding much friendlier) “Oh yes! Could you!”

Then we’d have a nice 5 minute chat of verifying information followed by thanks galore by the grateful customer. This felt great! Then I hung up. This was followed by the crushing realization that I would have to start the whole process over again as I looked at the next number on my sheet and proceeded to dial.

3. Personality

Some people have natural personality on the phone. I do not. I tried and tried to sound cheerful and confident, but failed at every attempt.

I was fairly miserable in this realization until a classmate named Joel got a job there. He was confident and cheerful. Plus, he had the balls to stray from the script. We’d sit there and hear him yucking it up with a customer with phrases like “What I’m going to do is send out this packet to you. You can take it, look it over and if you think to yourself, ‘Hey! this isn’t what I want!’, then you can just call us up and we’ll cancel it for you. No problem!”

This was similar to the script, but it in no way was close to the script’s cold delivery. We were always told to stick to the script, so I reminded Joel of that.

“We’re supposed to stick to the script!”

I was always a little anal retentive. Besides, if I was miserable, he should be miserable, too!

4. No shame.

It’s hard to be a salesperson when you have shame. If you feel bad when you call someone, that should be a very good sign that this may not be the job for you.

As I was reading my pitch, I would think to myself that if there was no way I would ever pay for something like this service, then how would I expect another person to buy it?

I would start my script and try to sound cheerful, but I couldn’t keep it up. I knew they’d probably say “No” and I knew that it was a crappy product. So I was resigned that they would say no and then die slowly inside when I’d have to flip to the rebuttal section and try to change the customer’s mind when I didn’t have the heart to get them to change it.

I think it would be different if it was a service that I believed in or was easier to sell. I remember running into a guy who was a telemarketer in college. He loved his job, which was getting people to sign up for a credit card. He said people just jumped at the opportunity to get the card. Must have been nice!

The people we called ran the whole spectrum of customers. Some were nice. Some a little angry. A few were really angry. Some would just hang up. Some would just set the phone down and then walk away. Others would tell you that the person in question was “not home right now” and “could you call back later”? I’m sure that a lot of these were just people that didn’t want to talk, but we were just going to keep calling them back at another time. Why not just tell us not to call?

Besides the customers, what made the job even more stressful were our managers. I’m sure they were under pressure to get more sales from us, so they would often listen in to our calls. You could always tell when they’d start listening because the line would suddenly have an echo and a delay on it. You’d start talking and hear “I-I-I can-can-can understand-understand...” in your ear, which made trying to make the sale even harder.

As one of the least productive employees there, I had to talk to the managers a few times to work on my sales technique. If they offered anything instructive, it obviously didn’t stick because I don’t remember any advice except for when I told them that I sometimes affected a southern drawl when calling people in the South.

You’d get these sheets of names, addresses, and phone numbers every night. Usually, you’d stay in the same area all night. I noticed that a lot of times, I’d be stuck in the South where I’d hear a definite Southern drawl. After a while, I started to talk with a slight drawl to fit in. When I told the manager this, his response was “Well I hope you’re not making that too obvious.”

At that point, I really didn’t care what they thought.

I mentioned the “Nice” people I sometimes got. In almost every case, they were nice because they didn’t want the service, didn’t need the service or couldn’t afford the service.

I talked for what seemed like 15 minutes to a nice Southern elderly black man who sounded interested in the service, but he already took bus tours. I tried and tried to get him to see my way, but he’d argue back to me about how great a deal he was already getting. He would make his point and argue, “You can’t get better than that, can you?” I finally had to concede that his deal sounded better. He should have been selling these deals.

Then there were the people that liked the service, but didn’t need it. I pitched to a man that sounded pretty interested, so interested that I started to lean forward to hit the record button on my tape recorder so I could record the sale. He said, “That sounds great!” I leaned forward even farther to hit the record button. “But I’m a student and I don’t travel!”

Rats...

Then there were the people that didn’t need it at all.

You’d pitch and hear, “I’m unemployed.” Sorry...

“I’m in a hospital bed and can’t travel.” Oops...

“We’re dealing with a death in the family right now.” Ouch...

I’m not making those up. They all were responses to me.

My brother, Bill, was actually one of the better sales people, but he hated it. He told me that he lost ten pounds while working there because he wasn’t hungry and his stomach always rumbled with acid at the thought of calling people.

Bill averaged about 5 sales a night, which was good enough for a promotion of sorts. This didn’t involve any pay, though. He was recruited to start selling a new product that didn’t involve the traveler rebate program. He doesn’t remember the full extent of it, but he said it was similar to Amway where you’d have to order your goods through a catalog, but you had to pay a fee to have the right to order through the catalog.

It was much harder to sell this service.

Bill said that after several nights of not selling anything, he called a woman that clearly didn’t want the service. When he asked, “May I ask why, Ma’am?”

She said, “Because I don’t want it. It’s Christmas and I’m trying to watch a Christmas special, and I can’t because you’re interrupting me!”

At this point, Bill said he felt his stomach gurgling with stomach acid from nerves.

Bill quit a day or two after that. Our friend, Brian, quit almost at the same time. Surprisingly, I was the last man standing, but I quit a day or two after Bill left. The paychecks were nice, but the stress was just too much to handle.

A friend of ours in college told us he worked a summer at a telemarketing place. He really hated it, but instead of quiting, he just reached a point where he started messing with the customers. If they gave him more than one excuse, he’d go through the rebuttal script for each excuse until it got to the point where people were screaming at him. You’d think people would hang up at this point, but some people just don’t like to hang up on someone, even if it’s a total stranger that you will never meet.

You would think that I would have sympathy towards telemarketers because I’ve been there and done that, but the opposite is true. It’s because I had this experience that I have no patience for them. I know when I get a pitch, that I’m going to get a rebuttal if I try to give excuses, which kind of irritates me. I know that they are just doing their job, but I know it’s something they probably don’t believe in. I have trouble pitching things people actually want, like Julia’s Girl Scout cookies. I sometimes feel bad when people give me money and they actually want the cookies!

I’ve just resorted to “I don’t want it” and hanging up if they try to give me more than one rebuttal.

Years ago, I was pitched AOL, which I didn’t need because we got free Internet from our apartment building. After getting a few “I understand that, but...” lines, I finally said, “Look I HATE AOL ok?” That finally did it.

I don’t think I’ll ever get a job involving a phone again unless it’s a job where people call YOU and want YOU to do something for them. That I can handle. I was so scarred by my telemarketing experiences that I put off learning how to answer phones at Pizza Hut when I worked there in college until finally a manager forced me to answer the phone. It’s amazing what a difference you get in attitude when the “customer” actually wants to talk to you.