How many times have you heard people complaining about the calls they get from various insurance, banking, and telecom companies? Forget about others, I am sure even you have been a victim of unsolicited calls. But what have you done about it? May be listed yourself in some so called ‘Do not call’ register. Despite that I have seen people get calls from those companies. If you have experienced something that is mentioned above then I have something to share with you all.
Please never get angry with them. Because it is their job to call up people, it is their way of doing business. Cold calling is one of the toughest and meanest jobs in the world. They are anyways under pressure from their respective bosses to get some customers. I am saying this from personal experience. I was never forced to do cold calling but my friend and I had tried it out just to have fun. We came across people who were polite but at the same time there were some who were very rude who would not think twice before insulting someone. At the end of the exercise we realized that the life of a person who does cold calling is very tough (this is I am saying after doing cold calling without being under any sort of pressure). This is not to say that you should buy all the products and services that are offered to you. But there are ways in which you can say ‘NO’ without being rude.
I have never registered myself with any ‘Do not call’ sort of a thing so I get calls and number of them!! Here are ways that I use to say ‘No’ without being rude.
1. Whenever you get a call from any bank that is dying to give you a loan, just tell them about you credit history i.e. that you defaulted miserably the last time you took a loan and spent two days in jail. And if even after all this, someone is still insisting on giving loan then just go ahead and take the loan and default also!
2. If you are bored giving the same reason mentioned above (I am sure you will get bored, but they won’t get bored calling you up!) then may be you can ask for a loan of around 2, 42,358 crores saying you need that money to start one vada pav stall outside Ghatkopar station, I am sure he will not call you for the next 2,346 years!
3. If someone calls you trying to sell insurance then just tell him that someone from his company just called 15 minutes ago for the same product and tell him that you should make sure that two different sales guys don’t call up the same person and that too within a time frame of 15 minutes! This generally embarrasses them so don’t use this often.
4. We also get calls from some companies asking us to invest money in some schemes guaranteeing return higher than Mount Everest! One answer that I always give and that has always worked is to tell them that your father is one of the best financial advisors in town. Once I told my friend about this, but when he got a call he went one step ahead and said “my father is the financial advisor to your boss!” Result: the caller hung up!!
5. But not everyone’s father is a Financial Advisor like my friend’s! So one answer that you can give is to tell them that you lost your job just yesterday. Forget about investments they would sympathize with you! But there are also some who after sympathizing ask “to ab aapko kab job milega..main next week call karu?!” (So when would you get another job…should I call you next week?!) It is after hearing this question that I got fed up and graduated to the answer number 4!!
6. Sometimes you also get calls asking you to change your telecom service provider and subscribe to their service and they go on to mention their various schemes. If you have some free time (like I have all the time for this kind of calls!) then just counter whatever schemes they mention with one scheme of yours, however fake it may be but just make sure that yours is better than what you are being offered. Considering the number of schemes that are coming up every day, chances are that he may not find out that you are lying and he would end the conversation saying “I’ll get back to you sir”
7. If you just want to have some fun then you can give your friend’s number saying that he is looking exactly for something like this. Or else you can always give your enemy’s number!
8. Finally whatever you do, just be nice to them. Because you may not need what they are offering, but if you are nice to them then they may call up in future to sell something which, who knows, you could be looking for at that point in time!
So never say ‘NO’ just say ‘Not now’!!
Please never get angry with them. Because it is their job to call up people, it is their way of doing business. Cold calling is one of the toughest and meanest jobs in the world. They are anyways under pressure from their respective bosses to get some customers. I am saying this from personal experience. I was never forced to do cold calling but my friend and I had tried it out just to have fun. We came across people who were polite but at the same time there were some who were very rude who would not think twice before insulting someone. At the end of the exercise we realized that the life of a person who does cold calling is very tough (this is I am saying after doing cold calling without being under any sort of pressure). This is not to say that you should buy all the products and services that are offered to you. But there are ways in which you can say ‘NO’ without being rude.
I have never registered myself with any ‘Do not call’ sort of a thing so I get calls and number of them!! Here are ways that I use to say ‘No’ without being rude.
1. Whenever you get a call from any bank that is dying to give you a loan, just tell them about you credit history i.e. that you defaulted miserably the last time you took a loan and spent two days in jail. And if even after all this, someone is still insisting on giving loan then just go ahead and take the loan and default also!
2. If you are bored giving the same reason mentioned above (I am sure you will get bored, but they won’t get bored calling you up!) then may be you can ask for a loan of around 2, 42,358 crores saying you need that money to start one vada pav stall outside Ghatkopar station, I am sure he will not call you for the next 2,346 years!
3. If someone calls you trying to sell insurance then just tell him that someone from his company just called 15 minutes ago for the same product and tell him that you should make sure that two different sales guys don’t call up the same person and that too within a time frame of 15 minutes! This generally embarrasses them so don’t use this often.
4. We also get calls from some companies asking us to invest money in some schemes guaranteeing return higher than Mount Everest! One answer that I always give and that has always worked is to tell them that your father is one of the best financial advisors in town. Once I told my friend about this, but when he got a call he went one step ahead and said “my father is the financial advisor to your boss!” Result: the caller hung up!!
5. But not everyone’s father is a Financial Advisor like my friend’s! So one answer that you can give is to tell them that you lost your job just yesterday. Forget about investments they would sympathize with you! But there are also some who after sympathizing ask “to ab aapko kab job milega..main next week call karu?!” (So when would you get another job…should I call you next week?!) It is after hearing this question that I got fed up and graduated to the answer number 4!!
6. Sometimes you also get calls asking you to change your telecom service provider and subscribe to their service and they go on to mention their various schemes. If you have some free time (like I have all the time for this kind of calls!) then just counter whatever schemes they mention with one scheme of yours, however fake it may be but just make sure that yours is better than what you are being offered. Considering the number of schemes that are coming up every day, chances are that he may not find out that you are lying and he would end the conversation saying “I’ll get back to you sir”
7. If you just want to have some fun then you can give your friend’s number saying that he is looking exactly for something like this. Or else you can always give your enemy’s number!
8. Finally whatever you do, just be nice to them. Because you may not need what they are offering, but if you are nice to them then they may call up in future to sell something which, who knows, you could be looking for at that point in time!
So never say ‘NO’ just say ‘Not now’!!
Innovative Ronak, totally innovative... I have seen you use almost all the steps... :) Trust me, its difficult to follow ur steps and not laugh abt it while still on the phone..
ReplyDeletePS: I would like to know, just for records, who was ur friend with whom u did some cold calling?? ;-)