Bad Sales Rep
Sep. 9th, 2010 07:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
perzephone
Some salesperson rang the doorbell earlier today, waking Rob up. Originally, Rob peeked out the window & was just going to go back to bed, but the guy laid on the doorbell. Rob would rather shoot himself in the groin than let some salesperson wake me up, so he answered the door.
Normally, we're civil to salespeople. We tell them, "Sorry, not interested" before shutting the door in their faces, but this guy got off on the wrong foot immediately.
He had a Blackberry or iPhone or some other PDA, & barely looking up from it, asks Rob, "You Anton?" Rob's like, "What?" The guy then asks, "You a 'insertlastnamehere'?" Rob's like, "Who the fuck's asking?" The guy doesn't even pay attention before asking, "You lived here x amount of years?" Chelsie is also adding to Rob's consternation by standing on her hind legs scrabbling at the security screen door, & the guy looks at her & says, "Aggressive". Rob's getting more & more pissed at this offhand interrogation, so he raises his voice to re-ask, "Who in the fuck wants to know?!" The guy finally looks up from his electronic penis & says, "We're A&E and we control this territory". Rob tells him to get the fuck off the lawn before he calls the cops & slams the door in the guy's face.
I wish I would have been the one to answer the door. I would have told the guy, bluntly, that his sales tactic sucked. You don't start off a sales call of any type that way. Within the first 10 seconds, he would have pissed me off instead of piqued my interest in his product or service. You say something along the lines of, "Hi, I'm Bob, and I'm with A&E whatever. We'd like to interest you in our blahblahblah". I would have then gotten his business card & called his home office to complain about what a piss-poor salesman he was. Rob was just pissed off & didn't have the foresight to get any contact info from the guy. He doesn't even know if it's A&E Security, A&E Exterminators, A&E Widgets, etc.
I understand that door-to-door sales & telemarketing are jobs that for some reason attract various people because they do need jobs, and they are just doing their jobs. But it's people like this guy who give door-to-door sales such a bad rep. I mean, c'mon, dude. Say who you are & who you work for & what you're selling before launching into marketing info gathering. Doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure that one out. Even at work, I'm expected to say, "Hi, I'm Janelle, welcome to the Excalibur!" (yes, due to the peculiar location of a bridge connecting the two properties, confused & disoriented guests of the Luxor do occasionally wander over to us - including a guy rousted by a fire alarm one night).
Normally, we're civil to salespeople. We tell them, "Sorry, not interested" before shutting the door in their faces, but this guy got off on the wrong foot immediately.
He had a Blackberry or iPhone or some other PDA, & barely looking up from it, asks Rob, "You Anton?" Rob's like, "What?" The guy then asks, "You a 'insertlastnamehere'?" Rob's like, "Who the fuck's asking?" The guy doesn't even pay attention before asking, "You lived here x amount of years?" Chelsie is also adding to Rob's consternation by standing on her hind legs scrabbling at the security screen door, & the guy looks at her & says, "Aggressive". Rob's getting more & more pissed at this offhand interrogation, so he raises his voice to re-ask, "Who in the fuck wants to know?!" The guy finally looks up from his electronic penis & says, "We're A&E and we control this territory". Rob tells him to get the fuck off the lawn before he calls the cops & slams the door in the guy's face.
I wish I would have been the one to answer the door. I would have told the guy, bluntly, that his sales tactic sucked. You don't start off a sales call of any type that way. Within the first 10 seconds, he would have pissed me off instead of piqued my interest in his product or service. You say something along the lines of, "Hi, I'm Bob, and I'm with A&E whatever. We'd like to interest you in our blahblahblah". I would have then gotten his business card & called his home office to complain about what a piss-poor salesman he was. Rob was just pissed off & didn't have the foresight to get any contact info from the guy. He doesn't even know if it's A&E Security, A&E Exterminators, A&E Widgets, etc.
I understand that door-to-door sales & telemarketing are jobs that for some reason attract various people because they do need jobs, and they are just doing their jobs. But it's people like this guy who give door-to-door sales such a bad rep. I mean, c'mon, dude. Say who you are & who you work for & what you're selling before launching into marketing info gathering. Doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure that one out. Even at work, I'm expected to say, "Hi, I'm Janelle, welcome to the Excalibur!" (yes, due to the peculiar location of a bridge connecting the two properties, confused & disoriented guests of the Luxor do occasionally wander over to us - including a guy rousted by a fire alarm one night).
