Telemarketing Vignettes.

I have been doing telemarketing for my company for exactly a week now. And it has been a fun experience so far. My previous post gave an idea of what I am supposed to do. Getting down to how I am actually doing it…
So I call up the companies, get to an operator or receptionist usually, and say my name and company name as sweetly as possible trying to get to the contact person mentioned in the database. I have been quite lucky till now (except for the first day…) and have mostly managed to get to the bosses.
But leads… hmmm… not really got many. I have called over 100 companies and managed, say, around 15-20 solid leads. That is almost 11-12%. Strictly OK for a beginner.
But there have been INCIDENTS. Some of them really left me laughing. Let me share some here.
The funniest to me was my call to ‘Steel Works Metal Works’ as was given in the database. I called and got through to the Director, only to find that it was not a manufacturing company, but a MAGAZINE. And know the funny part? The director started pestering me to put an advertisement for our company in the mag, saying that it has good circulation. He took down my number, name and company details and told to request my manager to consider putting an ad. A classic case of how the hunter became the hunted. The very thing I was doing since last Monday got applied to me…
I was mainly calling in the Pune territory, Mumbai, Aurangabad, Kolhapur, Nasik and Sholapur. This is Marathi heartland. I understand Marathi (I was born in Mumbai… :)) but definitely cant converse in it. It was quite an experience to hear these people replying to me as ‘ho’ (instead of haan) and reciting contact phone numbers in Hindi.
Consider this call. The person at the other end was giving me a mob number to contact the boss. The number –30508500. the way he told me: -- ‘tees pachaas aath PANDAV(!!) jeero jeero’. Got it?!! Well… so Pandav is 5 and Ravan is 10 and Kaurav is 100… good use of mythology!
Then there were the taxing ones. I am not given any deep details of the product of my company. So when this person asked me the pricing, I was quite clueless. I told him that I will ask my marketing manager to get back to him. His response? ‘Why? Are YOU not in the marketing department?’ ha!! I told him that yes I am, but my ‘area of work ;-)’ is only leads generation. His next few questions were purely technical about softwares and customization. Whew!! Felt like engineering final viva that one!!
But then again, there were the others who were extremely polite and gave all the required details without many questions. It is very refreshing to see people in high posts so considerate.
I will be leaving Bangalore for Ernakulam on 3rd June. Till 2nd, this telemarketing will continue. I hope the next 4 days are as fun and satisfying like the last week…