Real Life Stories Of Telemarketers: Insurance Sales In 3 Minutes

Telemarketing Victims Talk! By Arielle Gabriel

Real Life Stories Of Telemarketers: Insurance Sales In 3 Minutes

Breaking Script...

Hours: day calling, evening calling, weekend calling

Places: USA, Canada

Training: good period of several days

Type of phone: auto-dialler

Type of pay: base rate by the hour as low as $7.00

Bonuses or commission: yes

Likelihood of incentive: penalties if insurance closer does not pick up phone before the sales target hangs up

Time period between sale and closer verification: up to 10 - 15 minutes

Considered legit or illegit: considered legit

Mode of payment: they have your credit card already from a legitimate business that you patronize, though you may not know that, and the insurance venture is a joint one

Security: staff are watched like hawks

Pressure: over the top, enough to drive the demi-honest to a more corrupted workplace

Carl, 38, graduate student

Let me tell you about auto-diallers.

These are such a pain that I know guys who prefer scam offices because they have their own manual telephones.

The first night I worked at a well-known company. It was a shock to see how just computerized the work place was becoming in a

way that did not seem too helpful. For example, your sales register on your computerized screen in a way that is connected with everyone else in your office.

As soon as the guy besides you gets a sale, all the lines on your screen start changing. Every time someone else does well, your rates go down, and there is this jerk running around behind you screaming Team Spirit, Team Spirit. How ironic, really.

Your talk time is related to your sales time. Everything is like a factory, the factory of the human mind.

You have to see a lot of results for the talk time you are using. If you are dealing with old people who need insurance sales, and they are a repeat customer, they get no extra time, no special consideration - though you feel they may be buying because they are so lonely and old and alone, and just need someone to talk to.

The computerized script and the times on the computer screen do not allow for anything extra.

The diallers can run fast or slow - well, they never run slow. You have to repeat the courtesy opener and the courtesy closing, even if the guys are screaming in your ear. They can say anything to you.

At the more honest companies you have to put up with this type of abuse. A friend of mind, a girl, was selling accidental death insurance - not at my company, at another similar place.

You can guess what they said to her - I hope you die an accidental death. She had to get right back on the phones, with the phony cheeriness, after wishing them a pleasant good evening.

The sales person is the buffer zone. It's a war going on, the war of the telemarketer and the person who picks up the phone. Someone else collects the money and you can be sure you complaints will never reach him.

High heel shoe telephone

Andrew, 38, ex-insurance executive

I worked at one of those auto-dialler places that do insurance and telephone companies mostly.

I have gone back to university and do not know how I will pay all my bills, except that I am lucky to have a good wife who has a stable job with Bell.

This place paid rock-bottom, about $7 an hour.

They did a lot of commission altering. for example, most places like this have a weekly rate for the commission based on how well the sales are going on that campaign.

If the sales were going well, the bosses changed the rate in the middle of the shift! Sometimes in the middle of the hour! This made it hard to keep track of your rates.

I would never have bought insurance like this, in a two minute sale, you don't know where the call is coming from and you can never speak with the person who sold you the policy.

When I was a boy on the Lakeshore, our insurance man came right to our house, and sat down in the kitchen and talked to my mom and dad. He came from a famous name company that had a big building in downtown Montreal and my parents knew him for years. The way things used to be done can be the best way, sometimes.

Back to the high-pressure place. It was a lot of pressure for not much money. You could be washing dishes at a submarine sandwich joint for less stress on the head. One night two of the top salespeople broke out into a bad argument, they got up to their feet and almost were punching one another out.

The managers whisper in their ears to compete with one another, to get those sales up. The managers too have to compete with one another. There was listening in on all the calls from several areas. I thought that was against the law, we are only told when the clients who are using our company are tapping in. Not when our own managers and bosses are cutting in.

The competition is so fierce that even the day and night shifts are turned against one another. One night, a young girl who was always better than the day shift employees was lectured for being the slowest on her team of four that night. She was working with two of the best on the floor, and her sales were still higher than day shift.

You pick on the weakest to increase the fear of being fired, so the fear will get the sales up. The girl started to cry. Instead of backing off, the tears seem to make the boss want to dominate and control the situation. Any jerk who sells a lot thinks he has great people skills, whether or not he does or not.

Since almost offices in the city paid the same or more, she had nothing to lose by flipping out, which she did. Over a hundred people in the room, including the entire French end of the office, stopped to listen to the argument.

I'll never forget what she said, when she left the room that night. She spoke for a lot of us myself included.

I am not telling you. Sometimes pain requires privacy. Not listening in on others' conversation. And everyone would know where this happened, too.