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The Telemarketer's Leads - A Dumb Story

For a brief few months I worked as a telemarketer for a small firm owned by a young married couple. The husband was a bit of a hot head and kind of a jerk on occasion, but his wife was nice and had to put up with the guy. One of their clients was a mobile home company that wanted people to come to the lot and see how awesome their singlewides and doublewides were. As telemarketers we offered incentives like a cooler and camera (back when they weren’t part of your phone) and other assorted giveaways. We got a small commission if we could book the client.

My coworkers and I would call from a list of leads that our employers had purchased from someone. These leads were supposedly “qualified” ahead of time, meaning that they had been vetted to meet the needs of the client, the mobile home company.

Unfortunately, most of the leads were useless. The people we spoke to didn’t live in the right geographical areas or their incomes were too low. 
“Why aren’t you guys closing anyone?” the boss would ask. We explained that the prospects were enthused about the free swag they were supposed to get but only a few qualified for the promotion. Through all of this I managed to get a handful of people to commit to visiting the mobile home dealership.

Within a couple of weeks our boss was furious. He had apparently spent a lot of money on this list of “qualified” leads and could be heard throughout the office as he screamed into the phone about a “refund in full”. I don’t know if he got his money back but it didn’t take long before we were calling another list of names for another promotion. 
On the upside, I did learn how to talk to people over the phone and stayed on for a few weeks until a better offer came along because the pay was horrible and a couple of extra dollars for commission didn't motivate the team at all.

Chris Castanes is a humorous speaker and former comedian who helps sales people succeed through workshops and humorous presentations. He's also the author of "You're Going To Be Great At This!", a humorous look at sales. For booking information, click here. As president of Surf Financial Brokers   he sells life and disability insurance in several states.
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