How to Survive Telemarketing (You Poor Sad Bastard)

Telemarketing has fallen out of vogue in recent years what with the national Do Not Call list. But even then, there is no failsafe defense against telemarketers. Many people do not know that if you do business, with someone, anyone, they have the right to call you afterward, despite whatever consumer safeguards, you the government (and even your mommy) have put in place to protect you. It is all but certain that every time you buy something using your credit card, the calls from smooth sounding scumbags, will come again, as predictably, surely as a bloated carcass in July’s heat will draw flies.

The reason I am making this distinction is that I want you to know that there will always be a demand for a steady stream of telemarketers, but the industry prefers to hire new faces; freshly dropped out of high school. Any telemarketing manager will tell you privately that the people under his oversee are not loyal sled dogs to be fed, they are tires to be changed and the advancement structure is full of all sorts of checks and balances to make sure that the floor is always filled with the most skilled but underpaid voices at all times (more on this later).

Your First Day

The dress code for telemarketers is as varied as the crappy goods and services they push, but this is one case where you should always dress one level better than what is expected. If you are selling car parts out of a barn in Forest Lake MN (As I have done) you should wear a polo to best your co-workers jeans and shirt ensemble and if there is actually a dress shirt policy at your job, then you should always wear a tie as well. This might seem strange because your customer, can’t actually see you, but there is no future on the calling floor, and a bad month is always fatal.

Think you can’t have a bad couple of weeks? Well you will, and you will be fired or (more likely) driven to quit, every time. Moreover, because only two jobs exist on a calling floor (Phone rep and manager) there is little room to grow professionally. This is why you should dress nice and hope to be considered for management as soon as possible. While big centers fire scores of people every day (Think about it, won’t you) the manager positions are seldom vacant, and it is a great job. You do nothing all day but listen to calls, run reports and check productivity, all of which can be done with a single press of the buttons from your desk. Granted, you still have to hire and maintain a crew, but this is done for you.