But I know what “no” means. I also know what “don’t call back means”.
For those of you who own or operate businesses, there’s something kind of neat (from the owner’s perspective, not my sales perspective) I’ve come across twice in the two months working here:
Have a specific voicemail set up for unsolicited vendors. Just have it say: “This line is for unsolicited sales calls. Please leave your contact information. It will be directed to the right person, and if we need your service, we’ll call you.”
Leaving my info on that makes me stop calling frequently.
When I worked at my family business and answered the phones, I would just tell telemarketeres that I might be interested and then put them on hold and see how long they would wait.
Do people ever respond positively to unsolicited sales calls? Personally, I don’t care if I’ve been looking for “X” and unable to find it available locally, an unsolicited caller selling “X” is automatically someone I do not do business with. My loss, I’m an idjit, but that’s the way I am.
Yes, they do. It’s not a great percentage, but it does happen. It helps that I sell a very specialized service; I can’t imagine trying to sell copy paper or something like that.
It also helps that I’m usually trying to buy stuff from my clients, not sell to them.
Before leaving to start grad school, I worked at a company whose name sounded like it was the name of the guy who started the company. It’s the equivalent of, say, Bruce Wayne.
I actually only dealt with other employees, but some would pull the same kind of bullshit. If I wasn’t giving the answer they wanted, they’d bluster something like, “I’ll have you know that MY FATHER was close friends with Bruce Wayne, ok? Just get this done!” or, “Excuse me, I guess you aren’t aware that Bruce Wayne and I go WAY back, miss. I don’t think you want me to call him and let him know one of his employees is damaging his reputation!”
Classic attempt at a name dropping power play, yes? Too bad we were allowed to (politely!) respond with the actual facts:
“Bruce Wayne? I’m sorry, but I’m not familiar with that name; does he work here?”
:: cue snarling about him being the owner/founder ::
“Oh, I think there may have been a misunderstanding. The company was re-named Bruce Wayne after Robert Wayne, the founder, partnered with James Bruce.”
Nice timing! As I was reading this thread, I just got a phone call:
“Hello TOC, I’m with company XYZ, calling to verify that you will be attending the conference we emailed you about.”
Sure enough, there is an email from them, in my spam file. Hmm, no thanks, and no, I don’t think I’ll be calling you back with names of any co-workers that are interested. Dang it, that means my work email address AND phone number are out there.
To clarify: I work at an agency that does telemarketing for other companies. We don’t sell anything, but typically book meetings for sales guys to go in and do their thing.
I mainly work with training providers and government agencies. Out of 100 calls in a day we expect to book two meetings, but depending on the offering we can get up to six or seven on a good day. However, we don’t use smarmy tricks like the ones mentioned upthread, we just say that we’re interested in opening up a dialogue, and if we’re stonewalled we’ll give up - you’re not important enough for us to waste our time on. Luckily we get very few arseholes on the phone who enjoy wasting our time.
Well, of the 98 calls that don’t result in a meeting, probably 80 of those would be because the decision maker isn’t in. Those calls tend to go like this:
Me: Good morning, it’s Double Foolscap here calling on behalf of Wassamatter University. Could I speak to Brian McPersonnel, please?
Reception: One moment, I’ll pass you through. Voicemail
The only person affected is the receptionist, and how is my call different, time-wise, to any other call they get?
Edit: Plus, we may waste their time, but we don’t string it out purposefully just for shits and giggles.
Slightly off topic but I used to work for a small company where we all wore various hats. Mine were mostly sales, credit control and general manager in the bosses (frequent) absences. As a small company we didn’t have a receptionist so anyone who was free would answer incoming calls.
So one day this guy calls wanting to place an order for delivery the next day. I’d had run ins with him before as he was a serial late payer and an arrogant prick to boot. So I get his account on screen and sure enough he’s 45 days overdue on his previous invoice - the conversation goes like this:
Me: I’m sorry but I can’t release any more goods until your account is up to date.
Him: But I need delivery tomorrow.
Me: I’m sorry but I can’t do that.
Him: Put me through to your sales manager.
Me: I am the sales manager.
Him: Well put me through to your finance director.
Me: We don’t have a finance director.
Him: Well who is in charge of credit control?
Me: Um, that would be me actually.
Him: (getting exasperated) Well who is the boss there?
I work for a small non-profit that provides Adult Basic Education, and we get calls all the time.
For the salesmen trying to sell paper, toner, ink I’ll tell them that we don’t have printers, copiers, or fax machines --we totally paperless.
Or I have been know to tell them that the state buys everything, and they should call Harrisburg. One guy asked me if I had Mr. Harrisburg’s number. “Sure, look in any phone book, it’s there.”
But it gets really tiresome and annoying, so I now have everyone trained to say, “I’m sorry, we don’t accept unsolicited calls here.” And then hang up. We ususally have too much work to do to be bothered.
