Just because I'm good at it, doesn't mean I like doing it
I had possibly the worst job ever this week. I had to call up businesses in the south/southeast and ask them if they would like to take a survey. I would hang up and have hung up on the poor bastards who do this for a living, but after a few calls you figure out what gets people to stay on the phone.
My 'shpeil' was, "Hi, my name is Davin, I'm calling from *.*.*. Consulting in Boston, how are you? - this is not a sales call - I'm calling to guage interest in promotional products. Can you either tell me if you have pens with your company logo on them, or can I speak to your office manager please?" It's hard, but I can say it all in one breath.
I was supposed to be asking for the office manager in an attempt to find out if they have/like or are interested in pens with their company logo printed on them. eventually I figured out the best I could do in most situations is to ask the receptionist if they have seen pens around with their company logo on them. Most people laughed at me when I offered a $500 raffle to entice them to take the survey. Even I wasn't sure if this was a legitimate offer, but hey, whatever pays the bills right?
I figured out a cute trick though, most people warn the office manager when a telemarketer is calling and put them into their voicemail. So what I would do is to get the persons name (e.g. Debbie) from the answering machine. Then I would call back and in my best Georgia drawl say, "Hah therr, Can ah talk tuh Debbie please" - and BAM! result - I would be talking to debbie!
For the last few hours of this job I got creative with the survey results and extrapolated data from my previous vict - er - quarry to create a few new results.
I'm sure that this won't matter because anyone who's stupid enough to pay thousands of dollars for people to cold call random southern businesses and ask if they use promotional pens will probably then spend hundreds of thousands to start up a promotional products company - even though any office supply company can make these items for relatively cheap.
My 'shpeil' was, "Hi, my name is Davin, I'm calling from *.*.*. Consulting in Boston, how are you? - this is not a sales call - I'm calling to guage interest in promotional products. Can you either tell me if you have pens with your company logo on them, or can I speak to your office manager please?" It's hard, but I can say it all in one breath.
I was supposed to be asking for the office manager in an attempt to find out if they have/like or are interested in pens with their company logo printed on them. eventually I figured out the best I could do in most situations is to ask the receptionist if they have seen pens around with their company logo on them. Most people laughed at me when I offered a $500 raffle to entice them to take the survey. Even I wasn't sure if this was a legitimate offer, but hey, whatever pays the bills right?
I figured out a cute trick though, most people warn the office manager when a telemarketer is calling and put them into their voicemail. So what I would do is to get the persons name (e.g. Debbie) from the answering machine. Then I would call back and in my best Georgia drawl say, "Hah therr, Can ah talk tuh Debbie please" - and BAM! result - I would be talking to debbie!
For the last few hours of this job I got creative with the survey results and extrapolated data from my previous vict - er - quarry to create a few new results.
I'm sure that this won't matter because anyone who's stupid enough to pay thousands of dollars for people to cold call random southern businesses and ask if they use promotional pens will probably then spend hundreds of thousands to start up a promotional products company - even though any office supply company can make these items for relatively cheap.
posted by keeper at 8:41 AM
2 Comments:
dude, if you're gonna admit to faking information on your spreadsheets, you might want to remove the name of the company you're working for from your post...
Thanks Breau - it would be really bad for my career if anyone saw this blog.
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