Telemarketers Are Some of My Favorite Folks

The phone rings, thankfully you have just finished dinner, but you think, "dang it, who now..." because you were just getting ready to relax. As you note the number on the caller ID you realize, "oh great, it's one of those, I'm not gonna listen to them now." So you don't pick up the phone. What you miss out on is the deal of deals, but you don't know it, a free trip, tickets for you and yours to travel to Alaska, a place you've dreamed about, and you didn't answer the phone.

If you had you would have heard Sheri say, "we've received money from our sponsor to put these tickets in the mail to you today, all you have to do is take a free tour of the Westmont estates before the ship leaves and we can guarantee you this price, four hundred dollars includes all meals and board on deck two." (example fiction, taken from a real call)

Somebody has to do it, the revolving WD-40 of our economy, the jobs that people don't usually consider as careers, when we go to school we want to be a doctor or a lawyer, possibly an engineer, architect or computer tech; most of us don't think of careers in community service sales, marketing or telemarketing. Truth be told there are plenty of telemarketing jobs, we all know the turnover is high, but have you ever asked yourself about the sales which take place over the phone?

Sales which wouldn't have taken place were it not for the telemarketer. It is the soft underbelly of the economy which results in significant contributions to the overall economy in a similar fashion to mass retailers such as Wal-Mart. Telemarketers usually don't have the luxury of having a guaranteed pay-check, they usually push the product on a commission basis, whereas the Wal-Mart clerk you know is going to receive their check if the item sells or not.

The dark side of the truth of our lives is that we don't like talking to telemarketers, because they break into our lives when we haven't planned for that interference. Often we aren't willing to listen to their "pitch," or, we don't want to consider what they are saying to us about bills which are due. Telemarketing in its many various forms is not a limelight career, a limelight consideration, or an experience talking on the phone which we like.

Instead because of the intensity of the situation, a person asking us questions, making us think, breaking into our otherwise arranged circumstance, our choice is to react to the discomfort. It is that reaction which causes the difficulty for us, it is that feeling that we don't like. Yet the service performed by telemarketers is essential to the movement of advertising in America.

Now for the boomer - because of the unpopular nature of telemarketing, there is a lot of law made to regulate the events. There are commissions charged with oversight, there are government branches dedicated to ensuring that you, the consumer, aren't abused by the telemarketing event. On the side of the often under-educated, often socially disenfranchised, often elderly telemarketing person is - practically no support. They are doing what they are doing with nearly no public support, political support or legal support.

Why are they some of my favorite people, because they have guts, they do a job that nobody else wants to do, and they have to slug it out to make a dime, day in and day out, against nearly impossible odds, and in the end, what they accomplish is to deliver to you, the American and international consumer some of the finest products on the face of the planet, ever available in history. The lonely cubicle telemarketer, is exactly that, now, let's stop for just a moment and wonder about whether or not we want that vacation package? Here is an odd truth, we do.