Another Voice
My heart bleeds for cold-callers — it must be the most depressing job in the world
Of course there do exist thick-skinned individuals who would care nothing for the feelings of those they called, and cheerfully brush off every rebuff. And there are people so clever at persuading others to part with their money that a reliable harvest of hits would compensate for the inevitable misses. There might even be cold-calling salesmen with a product to sell which they genuinely believe in and can honestly recommend. But it’s in the nature of cold-calling that the product is not attractive enough to sell itself and potential customers have to be tricked or badgered into buying it; and it’s in the nature of this sector of the economy that salesmen will be recruited, not according to the persuasiveness of their telephone manner, but their desperation for work.
Three baleful components therefore conspire to create the moment when you’re busy doing something else, and the phone rings. The first is a product for sale which you do not want. The second is a struggling human being with no talent for salesmanship. The third — you — is a person who has not chosen to be approached and does not wish to buy. The outcome is failure: failure to make a sale. There thus occurs a brief, minor but perfect vortex of unhappiness: 60 seconds or less in which two people who do not know each other intersect, leaving one irritated, the other disappointed, and both with their spirits slightly lowered.
My late grandfather, in some ways an unworldly man, bought a hand-made wooden ladder from a carpenter selling his handiwork door to door. ‘He hadn’t made a single sale all month,’ he told my grandmother, who had scolded him because they already had two ladders, ‘and said nobody was buying wooden ladders any more because mass-produced iron ones had become cheaper. So I bought one to encourage him. Look, it’s beautifully made.’
One day, perhaps, when I grow old and mad, I’ll buy a fitted kitchen over the tele-phone, just to cheer someone up.
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Nigel
April 25th, 2008 7:34pmAs you say it's a soul-destroying job and one which only the desparate are doing. I usually always try and be courteous in refusing the product/service unless they are extremely pushy. I recall one cold caller thanking me for being so polite and I felt sorry for all the gratuitous abuse he must suffer. There's nothing big or clever in being foul-mouthed to these people.
Adrian Fry
April 27th, 2008 11:11amSurely the answer to telephone cold callers is an answering machine. The vast majority won't leave a message.
Pete
April 28th, 2008 5:10pmI did a year cold calling (when I was 50!). It opened my eyes not just to how rude the British are (especially to my colleagues from India) but also to how gullible enough people are to merit this sales technique.
The company (a well respected one) was devious almost to the point of cheating in its sales technique. The product was, (as Matthew correctly points out) a poor one (Credit Card Payment Protection Insurance).
Matthew and Nigel are wise to be polite. The rudest have their numbers re-entered into the autodialler and the team-leader would often award a prize to the person who spoke next time to the customer if he got him/her to swear or say a particular word. Daft I know, but things like that helped pass the time and mitigate the effect of having a bad-mannered customer on the end of the line.
Both Matthew and Nigel are wrong to believe that the cold-caller is always leading a miserable existence. I worked with a great set of (mainly young) happy, well adjusted people. The working conditions were excellent, the pay okay (commission was top-hole) and the pension scheme, whilst not up to MPs or MEPs, was better than most.