By Scott Dierdorf
October 2002



"Hello, my name is Scott. How may I help you?"

"Thank you for calling. Have a nice day!"

These are not sentences that I normally utter unless they are topped with a healthy serving of sarcasm and delivered with a vigorous rolling of eyes. Today, however, I was forced to stow my cynicism and put on a happy voice, because today was the day that I became a telesales agent.

Allow me to explain. The dot com I work for has begun using telesales as a way to provide better service to its customers. Our CEO decided that it was important for the product development teams to learn more about this operation, so he challenged us to go down to the telesales office and take a turn manning the phones. Whoever sold the most would get a trip to Hawaii.

I had no illusions about winning the trip. I signed up because telesales has a direct impact on my work, and because I wanted to get a glimpse of a job that I otherwise might never experience. Also, my boss made me.

"The goal for our team is 100% participation," she said. This is her incredibly nice way of saying, "Sign up or it will show up on your review.” I signed up.

Our nearest telesales office is in Tacoma, which is about 45 minutes away from my office. I left late, so I had no time to eat lunch. I was a little lightheaded as I weaved my way through traffic.

Miraculously, I arrived on time. The receptionist showed me and Glenn, my fellow telesales newbie, to The Floor, where the agents sit. It had wooden rafters, exposed brick, and nice, adjustable desks. I could see Tacoma shimmering through the wavy antique glass in the windows.

There were three unmanned desks in the front, each one with its own computer and telephone. I sat down at one and noticed something else: an ominous black headset. I was gripped with terror.

Maybe I had been too busy with other things, or maybe reality just hadn't sunk in, but up to that point I had not been nervous at all. This was surprising, because I hate selling. You have to be pushy to sell, and I’m not pushy. Whatever the cause of my coolness, it disappeared completely when I saw that headset. All of the butterflies in my stomach leapt into my throat. This was really going to happen. I sat down and failed to look calm.

After a few minutes of quietly sweating in my chair, I was introduced to Dana, who was to be our chaperone. She led us through a far-too-brief briefing about the procedures we were to follow, while Glenn and I flipped wildly through the information packet we'd been given.

Dana was wonderful, supportive and surprisingly un-pushy. She cheerfully described the procedures, telling us that it was no problem and generally being far more positive than the facts suggested was prudent. This caused me and Glenn to laugh nervously and make various grunting noises, which inspired her to say something even more supportive, which in turn caused us to grunt even more passionately. We chased each other in this manner until our shift started. At this point Dana was convinced that we would be the best telesales agents ever, and we were politely trying to find a hole into which we could crawl and expire in peace.

We put on our headsets and logged into the phone system. We were then supposed to press the "Auto In" button, which would put our phones in the routing pool for the calls that came in. I took a deep breath, screwed up my courage, and pressed the button. It lit up red and green, and I was instantly greeted with...silence. Glenn and I looked at each other. I looked at Dana. There were no callers. We waited. It was excruciating.

Then, suddenly, a computerized voice in my ear announced that a caller was on the line. I inhaled sharply. There was a pause, then a beep, and...I was on.

"Hello, thank you for calling. This is Scott; may I have your name please?" I said, as brightly as I could.

Actually, I don't know if this is what I said. I can't remember my exact words. We had been given a piece of paper containing the standard greeting that we were supposed to read, but I had forgotten to look at it. At this moment it hit me: I had no safety net. This whole operation was just me talking, and the customer would hear whatever I said. What if I screwed up? I fought off panic. I just wouldn’t let it get to me.

As the customer told me what they wanted, I accessed the computer system to find him some information. The computer system would not let me in. My login had expired. I tried logging in again, and it failed. I swallowed hard. Finally, I managed to wrestle the computer into submission. I was on the ropes, but I had vowed not to let it get to me, and I wasn't about to give up on that vow.

The customer asked me a question about a product. I clicked around in the computer and quickly realized that I had no idea what the answer was or where to find it. I was completely stuck. It was a disaster. I decided it was time to give up on my vow, and I let it get to me.

"Could you hold for a moment, please?"

I put him on hold and gesticulated wildly at Dana. I related the problem in short, panting breaths, and she coolly gave me the answer. I took the customer off hold and surprised myself as I automatically switched back to my Professional Phone Voice.

"Yes, sir, it's the same as the other one, but it's on sale. Would you like to go ahead and purchase it?"

He didn't want to go ahead and purchase it. He was still shopping around. So were the next four customers I spoke to. They were all "shoppers", and I was nice and friendly and Professional to them, but secretly I was seething. I had a job to do, and they were wasting my time! To make things worse, in less than an hour Glenn had already racked up three sales totaling over $2000. I had nothing. How did a nice person like Dana deal with this pressure every day?

After my fifth unproductive call, the computer voice piped up again. The caller was a man who had been shopping on the web site and wanted to buy, but he wasn't sure that he knew how to do it.

"I can help you with that," I said.

And I did. He bought something - three somethings, in fact. I had made a sale! It was easy, and I didn’t have to be pushy at all. It was only $300, but still! Dana high-fived me. Glenn high-fived me. I was in the club.

A few minutes later I got another call - this person bought something too! The next person was very confused, and I helped her sort out her problem and she bought something. Not only did she buy, but I talked her into getting an add-on. She spent $800, and she hadn’t been conned into it. She actually thanked me for my help! In the last hour I got five calls, and I converted every one of them. As I celebrated my fifth sale, this one to a very friendly woman in Virginia, Dana put her hand on my shoulder.

"Nice job! That's a great way to finish up!"

Finish up? I looked at my watch. It was 4:00, and my shift was over. I didn’t know how to feel. I was elated at my success, disappointed that I couldn't make any more sales, and relieved that it was over. I added up my totals. I had taken 10 calls and made 5 sales, for a total of $1606.

As we waited for Glenn to finish up his final call, I asked Dana if she had a sales quota.

"Yes," she said. She told me the number. I goggled. I was exhausted after a two hour period in which I pulled down a fraction of what she was responsible for. I told her that I had had fun, but I couldn’t imagine doing it for a living.

"It's nice to have a goal every day," she told me. "You meet your goal, then you go home. You come back the next day, and you have another goal."

That's the part that got me. I would be disheartened to know that I had to start from zero every single day - never getting anywhere, never making any progress.

Then again, I thought, maybe progress is illusory. My job is to help develop software. We work on it, we release it - on the surface, it looks like we're making progress, but we all know that software is never finished. There's always another version waiting to be developed. We’re just going around in a circle, but we only complete one lap per year. It might be nice to go home every day knowing that you accomplished what you set out to do. I was starting to see her point.

Just then, Glenn finished his last call - a $1200 sale - and added up his totals. 11 calls, 8 sales, $5000. Only one other person in the contest had sold more.

"It's the luck of the draw," Dana consoled. "He got a lot of buyers and very few shoppers."

It didn't matter. I had accomplished what I set out to do – I made some sales, I didn't do any irreparable harm to my company's reputation, and I didn't make a fool out of myself. I even made some customers happy, which was beyond my expectations. It was time to go home. I took off my headset and pressed the Logout button on my phone. When I pushed it, a couple of other buttons on the phone lit up green. I nudged Dana, and we watched the green lights blink out.

"What happened?" I asked.

"I think you hung up on someone."