Chris Saul's Blog

Tuesday October 27, 2009

Start your sales pitch with a lie, Dave Geezer and mates

I've been rung up by three separate cold callers this week, trying to sell me financial services.

The pattern and patter is the same each time -

"'Ello Chwis, this is Dave Geezer/Robbie Wide Boy/Haroon Halfwit speakin'. We spoke a month or so ago, but you was a bit busy wasntcha and asked me to call you back around now to discuss your finances/pension/investment portfolio."

My reaction to the last two calls was -

'You are either a liar or an idiot, as I have never spoken to you before in my life and if I had, I would have told you clearly and politely to leave me alone'.

The response to that was 'uh?'.

I asked the final caller where they get their sales patter from and whether it worked - as it was clearly a lie that we had spoken before. The last geezer insisted it wasn't a lie and was adamant that we'd had 'a conversation'. I asked him if he'd had an imaginary conversation with me and he suggested he may have called me but I'd been asleep and talked to him during my slumbers. I put the phone down.

Look, cold callers - I appreciate it's your job to cold call people and maybe get a client or two in return for your efforts. But! Do you really think starting your call off with an idiotic lie about having already spoken to the person you're calling is already going to work?

Let me know if I'm wrong, Dave Geezer and friends, but I suspect the answer is that most people think this approach is as stupid as I do.

ps Please stop calling me.

pps I've lost my notes, but I fink you wanted to transfer all your funds dahn my neck of the woods, innit? Lahvely.