For this piece, I started out wanting to explore the continued telemarketing pestilence in our lives.
My taking-off point was a feeling that somehow, with our world’s incredible smartphone craze and the age-old disdain for these unwanted solicitation calls, you would think something could be done to stop them.
I figured if the smartphone people at Apple or Google or wherever want to upgrade their products — to make them “brilliantphones” — they should figure out how to permanently block telemarketers.
Same goes for our prehistoric phone systems, aka land lines. If the various telecommunications companies want to gain an edge on their competitors, they should look at ways — outside of the porous “Do Not Call” government registry effort and the limited call blocking allowance — to keep out telemarketing calls.
But as I researched these topics on the internet, I found, to my surprise, efforts are indeed underway to at least address the mobile phone intrusions. Okay, good to know.
So, that turned my focus to two areas: whether we would need to surrender too much personal information (caller preferences) to make these succeed; and just what makes these sales efforts stand the test of time.
For the latter, the logical conclusion is that telemarketing, bottom line, is successful. And that means there are many thousands of people who answer them and buy stuff. And, further, that means they are the ones we should be blaming, then, for the persistence of these annoyances.
A quick internet search of “telemarketing works” finds several sites with success stories.
A blogger named Sylvan Courcous, billing himself as an “internet entrepreneur,” writes that he was one of those nefarious callers and “in reality: “telemarketing does work. Usually, the generally-accepeted conversion ratio is 1%, which means that it takes about 1,000 calls to acquire 10 solid prospects, or that 99% of all people will say no. Note that I'm not using the word customer because once you have a prospect; you then need to convert that prospect into a customer: prospecting is not about necessarily selling over the phone, sometimes it's just about getting an appointment. For instance, if you're selling a product or a service that requires one or more face-to-face appointment then 1,000 calls will yield 10 appointments which may in turn convert to 0 or 10 customers. Of course, the number varies a lot from salesperson to salesperson and from industry to industry. Overall, telemarketing is a numbers game that relies on the law of large numbers, meaning lots and lots of phone calls."
On another site, Geoff Thomas, managing director of something called “Integrity Business Connections” at UTalkMarketing.com, writes:
“Telemarketing, especially when run in association with supporting PR, can be a highly cost effective method of kick starting new business development in a recession because securing every new customer starts with one important factor — a face-to-face appointment.
“Intellectually correct. But what’s the real reason? A lot of people don’t like using the phone to make that ‘cold-call’. Emotionally that’s even more right isn’t it? I bet there are quite a few of you out there who just hate the idea of making that cold call to a new contact. Terrifying.
“Men don’t seem to like using the phone as much because our brains are hardwired to respond more to visual clues. Studies show the emotion control center of the brain, the amygdala, shows significantly higher levels of activation in males from visual stimuli than females viewing the same images.
“It seems that men need all the clues from people’s faces and body language. Is it also a fear of failure in men compounded by the lack of visual clues that turn us away from the phone?
“So, don’t think of it as telemarketing, think of it as appointment arranging without having to pick up the phone.”
The point, for my purposes, is that a lot of people apparently are out there justifying the sales method that involves cold-calling strangers en masse . And they don’t like making the calls any more than we like receiving them.
But once they’ve swallowed hard and gone forward with the calls, they take their lumps, accept failure, keep going and, finally, make some money when even a few victims accede to their pitches.
Not good news for the rest of us.
But, going back to the “brilliantphone” that could eliminate telemarketing, my quick internet search showed there are now apps that attempt that.
“There are dozens of free apps available in the Google Play store that let you screen your calls, alert you to potential fraud and even block suspected voice and text message spam,” said a June 2014 report by Herb Weisbaum on CNBC. “These services, such as Truecaller, PrivacyStar and WhitePages Current, use crowd-sourcing—reports from their users—along with information from public databases and their own algorithms to detect unwanted calls.
" ‘When your phone rings and you have to decide whether to answer or not, we try to help you figure out who's calling and why,’ said Jonathan Sasse, CMO of PrivacyStar.”
(Details: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101758815)
Sounds a bit sketchy at this point — “crowd sourcing” can be corrupted, and the apps present the prospect of information sharing (desired phone numbers, undesired phone numbers) that could be worse than the telemarking problem itself — but they are on the right track.
It’s comforting to know attempts are being made to address this widely shared concern. Personally, I’ll let others use and rate the different apps for a year or two before trying them.
But that still leaves our “land lines,” whether hard-wired or wireless. What can be done to block unwanted calls to our homes?
Eventually, I guess, the goal would be to transfer just about all domestic calls to mobile phones. That way, those protective screening apps can be installed.
Otherwise, it’s just a matter of dealing with the non-profits or other solicitors who can legitimately stay off the “Do Not Call” registry.
And that leaves up to each individual to just say “no” when the calls come in.
Sounds easy enough. But our recent experience with the Democratic Party was anything but.
I gave a token amount to an online fundraiser for Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. My wife gave a little more.
From that, my email address was handed out to at seven or eight related entities, including the fundraising arm of a Syracuse congressional race and the Democratic National Committee.
They sent out a daily barrage of pleading, sky-is-falling emails, all of which ended with a solicitation for money. They were comical in their alarmist tone and extremist cries. They made the Democrats look remarkably like their hated Republican extremists opponents.
When the election was over, I opted out of all of them. My wife had done the same.
Meanwhile, though, several of them got our phone number, evidently because my wife had given a pretty good sum (by our standards) at one point.
That began an onslaught of fundraising calls to her from different Democratic organizations, both immediately after the election and for months afterward. When my wife tried to demur, under our blanket policy of not making any donations (or doing any other business with strangers) over the telephone, some of the callers got argumentative.
Finally, in recent weeks, after repeated requests to put us on their “do not call” lists, the calls appear to have stopped.
The lesson here is that even the entities allowed to stay off the “do not call” registry can be a nuisance. A second tier of banned callers needs to be established, a registry of non-profits, political parties and others that we have had past relations but wish to not hear from any more.
We should be able to even put on that list those awful guilt-trip solicitations from organizations stating they represent law enforcement agencies, such as the New York State Association of Sheriffs or New York State Police or Police Benevolent Association.
These may or may not be highly laudable not-profit groups seeking to do wonderful things but they also could be fronts for scams. We have no way to tell, really, without taking the time to investigate.
And there’s always that unspoken hint that giving to law enforcement causes — I believe at least one fundraiser promises bumper or window stickers to show your support — can somehow help you in any future dealings with officers of the law and, conversely, failure to give could harm your standing should you someday be involved in anything requiring said personnel.
That’s offensive.
All such groups should be limited to anonymous group fundraisers (like selling calendars or raffle tickets or bike safety courses).
But, or course, we’re back to point no. 1: Telemarketing works.
And this must be especially true if the hint/threat of law enforcement connections hangs over the call.
Just be glad the CIA doesn’t need fundraisers.
My taking-off point was a feeling that somehow, with our world’s incredible smartphone craze and the age-old disdain for these unwanted solicitation calls, you would think something could be done to stop them.
I figured if the smartphone people at Apple or Google or wherever want to upgrade their products — to make them “brilliantphones” — they should figure out how to permanently block telemarketers.
Same goes for our prehistoric phone systems, aka land lines. If the various telecommunications companies want to gain an edge on their competitors, they should look at ways — outside of the porous “Do Not Call” government registry effort and the limited call blocking allowance — to keep out telemarketing calls.
But as I researched these topics on the internet, I found, to my surprise, efforts are indeed underway to at least address the mobile phone intrusions. Okay, good to know.
So, that turned my focus to two areas: whether we would need to surrender too much personal information (caller preferences) to make these succeed; and just what makes these sales efforts stand the test of time.
For the latter, the logical conclusion is that telemarketing, bottom line, is successful. And that means there are many thousands of people who answer them and buy stuff. And, further, that means they are the ones we should be blaming, then, for the persistence of these annoyances.
A quick internet search of “telemarketing works” finds several sites with success stories.
A blogger named Sylvan Courcous, billing himself as an “internet entrepreneur,” writes that he was one of those nefarious callers and “in reality: “telemarketing does work. Usually, the generally-accepeted conversion ratio is 1%, which means that it takes about 1,000 calls to acquire 10 solid prospects, or that 99% of all people will say no. Note that I'm not using the word customer because once you have a prospect; you then need to convert that prospect into a customer: prospecting is not about necessarily selling over the phone, sometimes it's just about getting an appointment. For instance, if you're selling a product or a service that requires one or more face-to-face appointment then 1,000 calls will yield 10 appointments which may in turn convert to 0 or 10 customers. Of course, the number varies a lot from salesperson to salesperson and from industry to industry. Overall, telemarketing is a numbers game that relies on the law of large numbers, meaning lots and lots of phone calls."
On another site, Geoff Thomas, managing director of something called “Integrity Business Connections” at UTalkMarketing.com, writes:
“Telemarketing, especially when run in association with supporting PR, can be a highly cost effective method of kick starting new business development in a recession because securing every new customer starts with one important factor — a face-to-face appointment.
“Intellectually correct. But what’s the real reason? A lot of people don’t like using the phone to make that ‘cold-call’. Emotionally that’s even more right isn’t it? I bet there are quite a few of you out there who just hate the idea of making that cold call to a new contact. Terrifying.
“Men don’t seem to like using the phone as much because our brains are hardwired to respond more to visual clues. Studies show the emotion control center of the brain, the amygdala, shows significantly higher levels of activation in males from visual stimuli than females viewing the same images.
“It seems that men need all the clues from people’s faces and body language. Is it also a fear of failure in men compounded by the lack of visual clues that turn us away from the phone?
“So, don’t think of it as telemarketing, think of it as appointment arranging without having to pick up the phone.”
The point, for my purposes, is that a lot of people apparently are out there justifying the sales method that involves cold-calling strangers en masse . And they don’t like making the calls any more than we like receiving them.
But once they’ve swallowed hard and gone forward with the calls, they take their lumps, accept failure, keep going and, finally, make some money when even a few victims accede to their pitches.
Not good news for the rest of us.
But, going back to the “brilliantphone” that could eliminate telemarketing, my quick internet search showed there are now apps that attempt that.
“There are dozens of free apps available in the Google Play store that let you screen your calls, alert you to potential fraud and even block suspected voice and text message spam,” said a June 2014 report by Herb Weisbaum on CNBC. “These services, such as Truecaller, PrivacyStar and WhitePages Current, use crowd-sourcing—reports from their users—along with information from public databases and their own algorithms to detect unwanted calls.
" ‘When your phone rings and you have to decide whether to answer or not, we try to help you figure out who's calling and why,’ said Jonathan Sasse, CMO of PrivacyStar.”
(Details: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101758815)
Sounds a bit sketchy at this point — “crowd sourcing” can be corrupted, and the apps present the prospect of information sharing (desired phone numbers, undesired phone numbers) that could be worse than the telemarking problem itself — but they are on the right track.
It’s comforting to know attempts are being made to address this widely shared concern. Personally, I’ll let others use and rate the different apps for a year or two before trying them.
But that still leaves our “land lines,” whether hard-wired or wireless. What can be done to block unwanted calls to our homes?
Eventually, I guess, the goal would be to transfer just about all domestic calls to mobile phones. That way, those protective screening apps can be installed.
Otherwise, it’s just a matter of dealing with the non-profits or other solicitors who can legitimately stay off the “Do Not Call” registry.
And that leaves up to each individual to just say “no” when the calls come in.
Sounds easy enough. But our recent experience with the Democratic Party was anything but.
I gave a token amount to an online fundraiser for Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. My wife gave a little more.
From that, my email address was handed out to at seven or eight related entities, including the fundraising arm of a Syracuse congressional race and the Democratic National Committee.
They sent out a daily barrage of pleading, sky-is-falling emails, all of which ended with a solicitation for money. They were comical in their alarmist tone and extremist cries. They made the Democrats look remarkably like their hated Republican extremists opponents.
When the election was over, I opted out of all of them. My wife had done the same.
Meanwhile, though, several of them got our phone number, evidently because my wife had given a pretty good sum (by our standards) at one point.
That began an onslaught of fundraising calls to her from different Democratic organizations, both immediately after the election and for months afterward. When my wife tried to demur, under our blanket policy of not making any donations (or doing any other business with strangers) over the telephone, some of the callers got argumentative.
Finally, in recent weeks, after repeated requests to put us on their “do not call” lists, the calls appear to have stopped.
The lesson here is that even the entities allowed to stay off the “do not call” registry can be a nuisance. A second tier of banned callers needs to be established, a registry of non-profits, political parties and others that we have had past relations but wish to not hear from any more.
We should be able to even put on that list those awful guilt-trip solicitations from organizations stating they represent law enforcement agencies, such as the New York State Association of Sheriffs or New York State Police or Police Benevolent Association.
These may or may not be highly laudable not-profit groups seeking to do wonderful things but they also could be fronts for scams. We have no way to tell, really, without taking the time to investigate.
And there’s always that unspoken hint that giving to law enforcement causes — I believe at least one fundraiser promises bumper or window stickers to show your support — can somehow help you in any future dealings with officers of the law and, conversely, failure to give could harm your standing should you someday be involved in anything requiring said personnel.
That’s offensive.
All such groups should be limited to anonymous group fundraisers (like selling calendars or raffle tickets or bike safety courses).
But, or course, we’re back to point no. 1: Telemarketing works.
And this must be especially true if the hint/threat of law enforcement connections hangs over the call.
Just be glad the CIA doesn’t need fundraisers.