Desperate salespeople

[Brian Turner]

I'm sure I've read somewhere before that a good salesperson knows when to talk to a potential prospect or not - but recently I've had a few sales calls from salespeople who want to argue with me, when I state I'm not interested.

I just had someone one the phone just now, asking for the person who deals with the marketing. As it makes clear on my website, there's me, and my name's Brian. That should also be on my records at Companies House.

If a salesperson can't be bothered to look for that very basic - and very accessible - information on who to speak to, I have no interest in speaking to them.

So I told the guy no, said good bye, and hung up.

He rang back trying to tell me that he's got something worth sending me - I've just said no, what is he going to offer that's so amazing that he doesn't have to do research or take "no" for an answer?

I'm tempted to collect the names of the companies in question and set them up on a shitlist of salespeople who don't care who you are, but want to argue with you anyway.

[Callsign]

That is helarious, I was buying a computer a few years ago for personal use. Same thing happened to me with one of their employees. I think his words were, You would be stupid if you didn't get the warranty, So I said "are you calling me stupid" He said No, I said well by me not getting the warranty you are calling me stupid. After about 20 minutes of me lecturing him like a teacher, he turned red about ready to hit me. He then proceeded to have his associate get me my personal computer.

It was entertaining

[bizal]

Brian

What makes you think that this was a high-end telesales person?

If he had looked at your company or ours and seen a turnover of less than 5M the odds of us being called by someone at Contact Foundry's level are slim.

i.e. low orders = low skill telesales, high value/ profit orders = high level well paid and well trained internal sales people who are looking for a career.

At the low end it is a numbers game at the high end they think of when will they get a chance to bid not if!

[Brian Turner]

Indeed, I don't think it was a high-end sales-person.

[despy]

During the dotcom days I worked in IT and we used to get five or six calls a day from recruitment consultants trying to push their services. They never listened and didn't understand the market (I had one call me to ask what something meant for another position at a different company!)

My old boss got a call one day and was asked if we were looking for staff. She simply said no and put the phone down. The recruitment consultant called back and demanded, "Did you just hang up on me?". This time my boss calmly said yes and hung up again.

[bizal]

The strange thing about cold calls is that most companies still do it. They hate it when they get a call, but find it ok to make them.

[Brian Turner]

Here's a funny report about someone threatened by the telemarketer for hanging up:
http://www.adventuresincustomerservi...emarketer.html

[JKander]

That report was funny, and how that guy let the machine get the call, and then called them back to try to sell them something. Couldn't they be arrested or something for threatening like that? I know that has to be illegal. One time a telemarketer called me, and I tried something I saw on Seinfeld, and I said "can I call you back at home?" and the person said "no, I can't do that" then I kind of stumbled and just said "yeah... exactly" and hung up. That wasn't how the routine went in Seinfeld but at least I tried.

[vpssupport]

Today we have had six sales calls from telecoms companies - these calls were totally out of the blue! One call from mango tel in London insisted they were going to send me a phone on thursday and wanted to know what time I would be home to receive it!!? Wow a free phone....but I have one well several actually why do I want another!!? He said it was totally free no catch if I didnt want to subscribe I could keep it including the bluetooth headset! But I didn't want a new phone he was asking for my personal details so I gave him my name and address and then he asked for my date of birth. I explained that I didn't want to give out my personal information and he went through the whole sales pitch again, so I listened and he asked again for my date of birth - I didn't give him it and he slammed the phone down. I am fed up with these calls they are a total waste of time, I have better things to do than engage in these aggressive sales techniques.

[Brian Turner]

Sounds more like a scam - offer a free gift, then collect as much personal information as possible.