Five Points to Consider When Working for Telemarketing Firms

Many of these companies are good training grounds for products that lie out there on the market, anything from headsets to health plans, from public television drives to website hosting. The idea is to fill a niche and have people to promote that for you but I would not compromise myself unless I had to. There are healthier jobs out there where the employee is respected for his contributed and not harassed. If you are starting up, I will mention a few delicate points

1. Some telemarketing companies put you through extensive testing procedures to see if you could pass their grades before they put you out on the floor. I liken this to academic studies. They may get a very good indication of a person's ability to perform but if the level of passing is a ninety and you pull an 88 average, does that mean the employer should wipe you off their employment list?
   This is a form of harassment that causes unnecessary stress when the employee has not even set foot on the sales floor. He may have had difficulty surfing for customer information and had a slow start but why should that be a barometer to how he will perform on the floor when he will become more familiar with surfing the sponsored sites and get information out to the client. Potential employees should explain their objection to being tested and then possibly rejected before the training occurs to avoid the stress.
2. Another telemarketing company would advertise training for two weeks when actually training was not more than an hour and the agent was left to his own devices before having a chance to listen into calls three days later. Once the agent was hired, by the way, what appeared to be fourteen dollars an hour during the training period would go down to ten if the person had to be absent
   Here potential employees should check out the pay parameters before employment to see if the offer in the ad matches the reality of the job place. He may use this to bargain over the pay especially if there is a yearly salary involved.
3. The trainer may have a haphazard way of training, accusing the agent of being argumentative and discrediting the owner. If the trainer is looking for excuses to throw the agent out, like accusing him of arguing with the potential client when there was only a singular rebuttal then he is doing very well. Of course the agent should listen politely to his superior to avoid any friction. The agent listened to the manager himself, who used rebuttals, himself in reference to promoting web hosting by saying that hard copy phone books were becoming less popular than on-line web assistance. Evidently the manager's rebuttal was not argumentative but the agent's was.
   This situation is a bit tricky. If the potential agent sees that the trainer is looking for bogus accusations or talks a mile a minute to explain web hosting and then accuses the agent of creating discord when he has not even completed his training to test different rebuttal techniques, then the agent should not start altogether. The manager's extra quick pace is a clear indication of his dislike to be fair to newcomers who are unfamiliar with his program. Training has to require listening in and fair monitoring not exaggerated comments that are totally untrue such as accusations of leaving too much dead space between spoken lines on the part of the agent. The telemarketer that is going to succeed has to talk incisively without creating doubt in the potential buyer. Some people are born with the ability to talk smoothly while others need to acquire this.
4. Agents should also look at the work conditions before even coming on board. If the manager smokes in his office, open to the telemarketers, that is against the law and should be reported to the local labor commission. Other conditions would have to be continually exposed to stereo music that interferes with your ability to hear the customer.
   
   Here the agent should have understood that if he minds breathing in secondary smoke in the managers office, he is going to breathe in a lot more once he starts working. He is going to have to concentrate on the potential sale and not on the surrounding noise or smoke if he will make any headway.
5. Years ago I had the disadvantage of not knowing how to prospect the internet for potential clients. This problem can still exist for new employees especially when being hired by companies that pressure you into hitting top paying accounts. Other agents coming from marketing backgrounds had had some experience and were able to get good accounts to begin with but if you were not wise, you could spend vital time with small accounts that would not purchase regularly because of their lower turnover.
   Here the prospective agent should gain as much experience surfing the internet for business accounts especially if the potential employer expects you to deepen accounts early.