The Art of Telesales: Introduction

This is the first part of a series of posts from my forthcoming book "The Art of Telesales". All material is copyrighted and all rights reserved. Please see "Telesales" under "Post Categories" for more in the series.


In the United States, or so I have been lead to believe, as a profession, sales is held in the same high regard as other professional vocations. In the UK this is not so. Sales people are seen as only slightly more respectable than criminals, though the vast majority earn a lot less. The image is of the unscrupulous con-artist that would gladly rob their own granny of her life savings if there was a profit to be made from it.



We have the media in particular to thank for this view. Think back if you are old enough to remember the “That’s Life” program on Sunday nights on BBC1 where Esther Ranson and her team of intrepid reporters would fearlessly expose companies that were out to con people. These companies are out there and people do need protection, it is true, but the sales profession as a whole took a real beating. Add to that the images of George Cole as used car merchant ‘Arthur Daily’ in ‘Minder’ and David Jason as ‘Del Boy’ in ‘Only Fools and Horses’ and we begin to see a pattern emerging. The trend continues even today as the larger manufacturers of various goods try to convince you to buy from them instead of the local supposedly ‘less trustworthy’ operators.

So it is that we have a picture in our minds. Well, and do not underestimate the severity of this, if you think the image of the sales person is bad, think for a brief second about the poor telesales person. Not content with merely creating humorous shady but never the less lovable characters for the telesales person, the media feel the need to revile telesales in our society. We see this in almost every program where someone takes a cold call and then proceeds to rant at the nerve of the caller who was, after all only doing their job. Twenty years ago it seems that estate agents were the biggest villains around. Now it is the lowly telesales person. Indeed, if it was not for the genuine lack of anything like a half respectable job that would earn a reasonable wage in this country, I wonder that anyone would ever stoop so low as to think to become a telesales rep.

So we see a situation where people go into telesales because there are loads of jobs doing it and loads of people looking for work. They arrive in these jobs and get nothing in the way of training. This was exactly the case when I left university at a tender age, having a respectable history degree under my belt. Little did I know when I enrolled at university that my deep knowledge of historical events would prove about as attractive to employers as an understanding in trade unions strategy and labor negotiations!

Despite all this, I prospered as a sales and telesales person. I drove myself hard in the early years and underwent the trial by fire to emerge as a fully competent sales professional. It was not easy, to say the least. The purpose of this book is to enable others to experience the transition from newbie to fully fledged sales pro in as little time as possible and with minimum stress and maximum results.

I will post further chapters as and when I get the opportunity.

Please enjoy.