Are the people who work for me "telemarketers" as you mean the term?

In My Humble Opinion
1

A female acquaintance of mine just asked me for help getting a job. I’m probably not going to oblige because she just pissed me off, but I’m interested in seeing if any of y’all would agree with her reasoning. She didn’t want to apply for the job with my company I offered to help her obtain because she doesn’t want to be a telemarketer, feeling it immoral; I think she’s confused and irritating.

Here’s a description of the job. It’s for a position on a team of inside sales people like the one I manage; the same facility, in fact, just not my team. Inside sales people at my company do the majority of their work on the phone, but for several reasons I don’t consider them telemarketers. For one thing, they rarely if ever call people at home; the exceptions are people who work out of their homes or who specifically request for a callback there. Our customers are small businesses who have an account with our company and either already doing an average of $20-$200 a day* of business with us. When members of my team call a customer, it’s to (a) introduce themselves as that businesses account rep; (b) act as a proactive customer service agent, making sure the business has everything it needs to continue using our service and find out about any budding concerns before they become a problem (e.g., every few months, a rep will call someone in the accounts payable department of a business to see if they have any questions or difficulties); and © to probe for new opportunities and close new business. My reps always give customers their first and last names, their voice mail numbers, and their company email addresses; more ambitious reps (those angling for a field or management job) often give their cell phone numbers as well. (When I was an inside sales rep angling for a promotion, I gave a few of my most valauble contacts my home phone number as well, but that’s not required or even expected.) Employees are judged not merely on their sales numbers but also on productivity–how many unique customers they contact per week, how many hours they spend on the phone, how many pricing contracts they set up, etc.

During training, we coach new hires not to think of themselves as telemarketers, and we never refer to inside sales reps as such. Do you think we’re making a meaningful distinction? If not why not?

  • Not the actual number, but in the ballpark.
2

Marketing (=sales) by telephone = telemarketing. Not necessarily soul-crushing or obnoxious, but telemarketing nonetheless.

So not common or garden-variety telemarketers, and therefore a distinction worth making, but I think it’s a bit delusional to treat them as if they are not members of the same species.

3

I define “telemarketer” as those invasive intruders who use the phone I’m paying for to interrupt my activities (which do include sleep at odd hours, my husband being a second-shift worker) to try to sell me something or scam me.

If you’re dealing with people who’ve requested those sales calls, ethically OK. I personally wouldn’t do phone sales, since I’m a lousy salesperson. I absolutely would not work in a call center that did unsolicited outbound sales pitches. As much as I hate being telemarketed to, I have ethical issues with doing it to someone else.

4

I do not consider inside sales people to be telemarketers. Telemarketers cold call the public. Of course salespeople use the telephone. All salespeople are not telemarketers.

5

They are telemarketers but not the kind that people hate. “Soul crushing” is not in the definition of telemarketing, simply selling things by phone.

6

Reductionist Etruscan!

The meaning, and specifically the connotation, of a word cannot necessarily be derived from its etymology or even its constituent elements. “Pornography,” for instance derives from the Greek *pornē, “*prostitute” and graphein, “write”–but most pornography these days is in video rather than written form, and a prostitute’s memoir that includes no description of sexual activity is not pornography. Likewise, using the phone to sell to business clients is not the same as telemarketing.

On another, off-topic issue, marketing is not the same as selling; marketing is communicating the value of a commodity to the public. Some parts of selling overlap with marketing, but the skill set of people in our marketing department is not the same as the skill set of our salespeople (just as the skill sets of the dedicated customer service agents is not quite the same as the skill sets of our sales people, but they overlap.

7

I have vendors that do something similar to me. Not many, but a few. I consider them telemarketing even though they are vendors. If I want additional services, I’m fully aware of what they provide. So, unless we’re actively working a contract together, it is telemarketing.

8

Your acquaintance is a moron. Who asks someone for help finding a job, then calls their job immoral? That’s some very powerful stupid.

She’s wrong, anyway. Your employees are account reps, and there is nothing immoral about their positions.

9

Actually you might not be fully aware of what your vendors provide. In fact, drop the “might not be”. I’m sure you’re not, just as our inside sales reps aren’t fully aware of what even their best customers do, because they don’t work there.

A few years ago there was a change in federal regulations that affected some of the services my company provides. There were penalties for not changing the way things were done, but those penalties would not have been assessed against us, but rather a customer who didn’t comply with the new rules. On the assumption that the federal government might well not communicate the new rules properly (a generally safe assumption), our reps were all told to (a) go through their customer lists, find anybody whom they already knew to be using that service, and letting them know about the rule change & offering to assist them in avoiding any penalties; and (b) mentioning the rules change to any customer who might be using that service whether they were using us for it or not.

Of course it’s your privilege to be vexed by whomever you choose. But I’d say the vendors annoying you are doing it wrong, in that they appear to be doing hard selling. That doesn’t work well if you want a long-term relationship.

10

That’s telemarketing. It’s not Rachel from Card Services level of telemarketing, but it’s still telemarketing. See, the thing is, up until you got to c, it was just customer service. When you start probing for new sales opportunities, it becomes telemarketing.

Such a call would make me reconsider my choice to do business with a company. As in, the company has had its one bite at me, and if I receive a second phone call, I’ll find another company to do business with.

Give me a brochure to peruse at my leisure, not when I’m trying to juggle other items on my agenda. I don’t want a business to have a rep call me to check on me…and this includes things like the auto shop calling to ask if we were happy with our repair job, even though it’s not a sales call. But fishing for more business will irritate the hell out of me and it will destroy any good will that the business has built with me.

It’s like those people who drop by your house without an invitation or even calling first, and expect you to entertain them. Maybe you are happy to have them liven up your afternoon, and have nothing better to do than feed them pie and coffee. But maybe you’ve got a doctor’s appointment and you’re already running late.

The only time when such calls are acceptable is when the customer clearly understands that giving a phone number will result in those calls. Is there some sort of way of opting out when the customer first signs up?

11

Sure; it’s called “telling the sales rep not to call again.” :smiley: But a customer who’s spending a hundred bucks a day with our company doesn’t want to opt out of account management, as they (quite rightly) don’t want to call the general customer service number and get a random person when they have a problem with the service, or want to upgrade the services they’re getting, or have a billing problem, or…well, you get it. Not to mention that they want a discount. Not to mention

The first call a rep makes to a given number is supposed to go something like this:
*
Hi, is this Gothmog? I’m Skald the Rhymer, your account manager for Habiliments Inc. Are you the person who handles the sword, shield, and & armor purchases for the Hordes of Mordor? Oh, good. I’m calling to make sure you know who your go-to person is for billing issues, resupply, and so forth. Here’s my phone number & email address. Oh, I’ll be dropping my card in the mail; is 3141 Irrational Number Lane, Mathematica City, Minas Morgul, the right address? Okay. Do you handle the accounts payable too, or is that someone different? Oh, that’s *Khamûl? Okay, I’ll drop him my card too, thanks. Do you need anything, or can I let you get back to torturing Gondorians? Alright, then, have a good day!

Subsequent calls go something like,

*Hi, Gothmog, returning your call. You ordered 200 black horses for the invasion of Rohan, and also saddles and bridles. Did you mean to leave out stirrups? Ah, I didn’t think so. Okay, I’ll add that. Do you have any other major offenses planned? Oh, you’re going to beseige Minas Tirith once you’ve enslaved the Eorlingas? Okay, I’m emailing you our trebuchet catalog and also information on incendiary weapons. Give me a call back once you’ve read – oh, you want to talk about it today? Sure I’ve got time right now if you want, or after lunch if that’s more convenient.
*

12

No, but I kind of like you, so that might color my opinion.

So, they call existing customers to introduce themselves, ask if everything is okay, and to tell them about a one-time special offer for select customers only? If these are active customers, that is possibly annoying, but not telemarketing.

If these are anyone who ever left a contact number on a request for information in the last 25 years, yeah, that’s telemarketing.

But your acquaintance was right; if she’s not going to do the job, she shouldn’t embarrass you by interviewing for it.

13

I’ll echo these characterizations of both your acquaintance and your employees.

14

Exactly :nodding:

15

Well, I am very pretty.

Not exactly. We don’t do sales, so there’s no such thing as a one-time special offer for select customers only. If I overheard one of my reps using that phrase, I’d call them in for a private confab as soon as the current call was over. The customers who rate having account execs call them are very frequently customers who can negotiate an individually better price, or who will benefit from assistance in dealing with federal regulations, or whatnot. Also ther eare certain things customers get for free and need replaced on a regular basis, so if nothing else the reps say,

Hey, I see that you’re using our sword honing device. Do you need a grease refill? Okay, I’ll send it out right now. No, of course it’s free, we’re not monsters.

I’m not the person who called her a moron, but she was certainly foolish. I get that she wanted help interviewing for a pure customer service gig, but saying, “Skald, your job is immoral” was unwise (as I am not Evil!Skald in the real world).

16

I’ll echo the echo; that is an account rep. And even I would be fine doing that kind of work, would probably like it, in fact. And I not only hate sales, I have years of working sales support and various customer service jobs to fuel that hate, hehe.

This is not sales, it is not telemarketing.

By the way, if you’re hiring, Skald… :smiley:

On a serious note, I do wonder if I could do that kind of work from home. I’m a geek, my sweetie’s a geek, we are connected 100 percent of the time even if the power is off…only thing we’re missing is a backup generator, and we’d probably have THAT if ever lost power for longer than 20 minutes, hehe.

17

Your people are using telephones to induce sales of products. What they are doing is the definition of telemarketing: the marketing of goods or services by telephone.

18

No cold calling? Not telemarketers.

Having done both telemarketing and inside sales, having an ongoing relationship with a customer makes the call a whole 'nuther ballgame.

19

Baloney. This is no more valid than somebody claiming that he’s not a homophobe because he’s not afraid of gays; he just doesn’t like them. As Skald said earlier, words are more than their etymologies.

20

If one is providing services on an item already purchased, how is that sales? Why isn’t it, say, customer service instead?