ColdCalling stories/advice

sounds like you are going door-to-door.

when I hear "cold-calling" I think of telemarketing, which my one story includes half a day of calling people in Oklahoma, from Austin, telling them I was with the Fraternal Order of Police and asking for donations.

I threw my headphones off midway through the day and walked out without telling anyone.

I got paid for the whole day...

 

I hate cold calling. I did it for about two years with a couple of different companies. Are you making any money cold calling?

 

When I was in college (early 90s) I sold newspaper subscriptions for the Houston Post, then the Chronicle. After a few years my boss made me a manager and I ran my own group of salespeople.

I didn't do businesses, I sold to residences. I don't have the time to go into specifics, but there was some crazy stuff that happened. I had about half a dozen guns pulled on me; once I had to run. About a dozen dogs bit me; all of them under twenty pounds, which is why I can't stand little dogs to this day. I also hooked up twice.

I was never a pressure salesman. I always played it cool and relaxed. I was very good at what I did and won several awards. I had a super low cancelation rate because people were happy when I walked away. I didn't specialize in a certain demographic, either, which you find that most salespeople end up doing. I could sell to poor folks and rich alike. The money was really good for an undeducated kid right out of high school- $35-$40k and this was fifteen years ago. I got tired of the grind and working outside and ended up moving on to a job selling insurance/finances for a few years. It was much better money and it was inside in the air conditioning.

There's a really high turnover rate because 1)People fear failure/rejection 2)People fear public speaking and 3)There's no skillset required- you show up for the interview and you're hired. Most people just aren't cut out for sales. I kind of miss sales in a way but I like the stability and lack of pressure of my current job in IT.

 

Man, those little ones are the worst.

 

I used to work at a recruiting company. We would cold-call people at their workplace and try to get them to interview for other positions in their field(s).

We had to log 5 hours of ‘talk time’ before we were allowed to leave for the day. Not 5 hours of having the phone off the hook and calling, but 5 hours of actual time connected with someone – the automatic timer on the phone wouldn’t start until the call was connected. A lot harder than it sounds, believe me.

Anyway, it was just me and this chick in the same office – we couldn’t get our own office until we made a big placement. After a while, we both hated our jobs so much that we just stopped trying altogether. We had all kinds of tricks to get our 5 hours a day.

• We would call each other and just leave our phones off the hook while we hung out, surfed the net, read a book, whatever (sorry, no penthouse forum story – we were both involved).
• We would prank call people, since the caller ID # was just an automated switchboard # that didn’t even mention our company name. One Vietnamese gentleman in particular would get 2 or 3 calls a day from her. Bless his heart, he wouldn’t even hang up. He would just talk and talk – even though he didn’t speak or understand a word of English….
• We would call automated #’s with LONG recordings and just put them on speaker phone while we hung out and listened to the radio.

We seriously stole money from that company every 2 weeks. I can’t believe they paid us for 3 months to do this. Ah, the good ol’ days…

 

That sounds thread-worthy ... (sorry, I need something to help get me going the Monday after DST)

 

I just finished what was holding me up for time, so I'll elaborate a little.

The first time was a tipsy housewife in League City. I'm not sure if she was married or not, but I went to the door and she invited me in. I was 19 and she was probably around 26-28. She was chugging wine from a box and offered me some. I turned it down, but she came and sat right next to me on her couch. She came on pretty hard and I did what came naturally. She didn't buy anything from me, though.

The second time was in Nacogdoches about a year later. We would go to colleges at the beginning of semesters to sell subscriptions. I knocked on an apartment door an there were three girls sitting around talking. I gave em my pitch. This one blonde asks me to come into her room while she gets some money- she pretty much tackled me after I got into the room. She was a freak. Oh- she also didn't buy either. I hooked up a few other times in Nacogdoches when we would go, but that was the only time it happened when I was on the job. The other times were at the bar after work.