OK, I've thought about it. At first, it stumped me a little. I've had a vast array of jobs, but really, they all kinda ... well, I'm a tad eclectic, I guess. I was equally at home with planting trees on the north rim of the Grand Canyon, hawking Icees and submarine sandwiches at the K-Mart (athough few around me truly appreciated my pronouncement, when the repair guy showed up to fix the frozen drink machine: "The Icee Man Commeth! The Icee Man Commeth!")
ROFL!
teaching, politics, cleaning business'... I've had a lot of different jobs, and really, I "liked" all of them, and was pretty decent at them.
And then I remembered ....
The three hours I spent as a telephone solictor in 1970. omg.
That's all I lasted. Three hours.
And I can still remember the script:
"Hello, Mrs. ___? This is Mrs. Smith from Wholesale Disbributors, and we were wondering if you would be kind enough to answer a few household questions such as do you cook with gas or electricity?" And it went on from there.
I wasn't good at the "pushy" part.
I heard that!
lol. my entire adult life ive always had more than one job. ive had the main job which pays the bills and ive always had part time and seasonal jobs for the extras. in years past i tried to find part time jobs that were very different than the full time gig so it felt like there was some sort of break in the work day. in addition to the main jobs ive worked as a mortgage loan originator, done pre sentence investigations for the dept of adult probation, clerked in superior court, waitressed, bartended, babysat, private security, done adjunct teaching in english psych, womens studies and travel of all things, subbed in public schools, tutored, sales, corporate training, temped, retail. you name it ive prolly done it at one point or another to make ends meet. ive done phone stuff too in earlier years. especially around christmas when i needed extra money those places would always hire seasonal workers. my least fav of these that ive done was bl**mies. they set up a rack of the imo, ugliest not so well made things and people would call wanting to know what the $5,000 silver dress on page 8 of the catalogue was made of and wed go over and look at the stuff on the rack and answer their questions and then theyd order the thing and pay outrageous amounts of money for it and if they didnt like them once they got them, bl**mies would send the truck out to pick them back up. at those prices i suspected that they ordered them, wore them once to some event and had them picked up the next day. it put me up close and personal with the entitled of the world and thats never a pretty picture! the worst call center job i had was also a seasonal one and it was like 10p-2am or some god awful hours and it was a subcontract to some cable firm and the ads were all cable ads and yeah the ginzu knife was one of them not the flowbee tho! but one night at that gig they did some religious program and people could call and donate money and get a free bible. the callers were off the freakin wall. i was prolly blessed more that week than any other single week of my life but the freaky part was the devil guy who called every night and said he knew where we were located and hed be waiting for us when we got out. this of course was different from the tweebs who called and asked what color underwear you were wearing or if you liked to be spanked. one could have fun with those whackos but the devil worshipper dude scared the crap out of me. what i did like about that gig was that they gave us all free cable tv and a free one of any product they were selling. that alone was worth it. i still have the knives and the bible:) still those part time gigs paid well for what they were and were of limited duration and served a purpose which was usually scoring xmas presents for the kiddos or a vacation i wouldnt otherwise take or replacing a car or paying fees or music and dance lessons when my kids were young.
as for you and sales i think youd be good in sales. youre imaginative and very quick. in one of those pt gigs i actually trained sales people and if memory serves the key to selling is to use the right "close." there is a psych term, demand characteristic, that applies here. people expect you to sell to them so they have already formed their objections ahead of time and they have already determined what kind of customer they will be, an easy sell or a hard sell. but people are also socialized to answer direct questions. so if you are selling you listen for the objection and counter it and "close." The most effective "closes" are choice closes. do you want one or two of those ginzo knives mrs jones? would you prefer to pay for them now or do you want to take advantage of our pay later program? the most effective sales people keep the flow going so if mrs jones calls after seeing the ad for the flowbee on tv and she is calling for info youd keep giving her choices. what color is your bathroom? we have two that would look really spiffy with your gold bath. do you want the green flowbee or the black one? mrs jones had already decided when calling that she was going to be a hard sell. youd know this because she calls and says she just has some questions. but shes also human so when you ask her what color her bath is, shes going to answer you and very likely to say uh..gold. timing is everything in sales so the good sales person jumps right in and tells her about the flowbee bath color scheme and immediately closes! lol. do you want the green or black. 99% chance shed answer that. the one percent that wont will say im not buying yet im just asking questions which gets them an oh yes i understand, quanties are limited tho and id hate to see you end up with a red one that wont match the bath at all. those green and black ones go fast. now shes thinking about this because youve made the color scheme important and shes hesitating so the good salesperson says ill tell ya what, let me get that green (or black, which ever she indicated was her favorite) one for you now and if you dont like it you can always return it no questions asked. and then the final close. whats your last name? followed by which credit card are you going to use? and most of the time people will answer those questions because they are socialized to be polite and answer questions. thats everything anyone needs to know about how to get rid of the sales person on the phone. dont answer their questions or hang up!
I hated knowing I was lying to people, basically. We didn't REALLY want to know if they cooked with gas, or electricity ... there were only two questions out of the twenty that mattered -- one was if they owned or were renting, and I forgot the other. If they answered both of these questions "right" we were to then say: "Thank you so much for being such help to us. As a token of our appreciation, we'd like to bring you a little gift. Our representative will be in your neighborhood on such and such a date ...."
that sounds like one of those cold calling deals and a misrepresentation of the reason you were calling. i wouldnt be able to do that either. id be worried that id be getting mixed up in some scam and would end up in sing sing or fleecing lil old ladies out of their life savings. i could sell the flowbees tho because they called in and were already interested but the calling people out of the blue thing..eww.
OK, I've thought about it. At first, it stumped me a little. I've had a vast array of jobs, but really, they all kinda ... well, I'm a tad eclectic, I guess. I was equally at home with planting trees on the north rim of the Grand Canyon, hawking Icees and submarine sandwiches at the K-Mart (athough few around me truly appreciated my pronouncement, when the repair guy showed up to fix the frozen drink machine: "The Icee Man Commeth! The Icee Man Commeth!") teaching, politics, cleaning business'... I've had a lot of different jobs, and really, I "liked" all of them, and was pretty decent at them.
And then I remembered ....
The three hours I spent as a telephone solictor in 1970. omg.
That's all I lasted. Three hours.
And I can still remember the script:
"Hello, Mrs. ___? This is Mrs. Smith from Wholesale Disbributors, and we were wondering if you would be kind enough to answer a few household questions such as do you cook with gas or electricity?" And it went on from there.
I wasn't good at the "pushy" part.
I heard that!
I hated knowing I was lying to people, basically. We didn't REALLY want to know if they cooked with gas, or electricity ... there were only two questions out of the twenty that mattered -- one was if they owned or were renting, and I forgot the other. If they answered both of these questions "right" we were to then say: "Thank you so much for being such help to us. As a token of our appreciation, we'd like to bring you a little gift. Our representative will be in your neighborhood on such and such a date ...."
