The Pursuit of Luxury
“TELEMARKETING—$200 Commission per sale”
Click. “DP Exclusive design” said a screenshot at the bottom: “The pursuit of luxury.”
“Requirements: Must be a hard-working and serious individual. Must be pleasant on the phone. Preferred experience in home improvement telemarketing.”
I had to fight my way into an interview on the phone, playing down my inexperience in home improvement telemarketing in favor of my fictional experience doing political fundraising over the phone and my actual experience hosting a call-in talk radio show about anything and everything.
I called the number provided and went in that afternoon, to a bland building along a stretch of Melrose populated by ritzy home furnishing and design firms. There were gallons of paint stored along one wall and a number of space-age home office appliances throughout—ergonomic staplers, a heavy duty shredder, a combination printer and fax machine that looked as though it might produce chocolates. The phone rang repeatedly while I waited: “Good afternoon and thank you for calling DP Exclusive Design my name is Claudia how may I help you?”
After a few minutes, Claudia beckoned Temeka, who’d been waiting next to me, into the back room for her interview. Now and then I heard a man’s voice with a soft Latin accent step in with a question: “If you’re serious, you can make a lot of money. Are you serious about making money?”
“I’m very serious,” Temeka said. “I’m looking forward to purchasing a home soon.”
Temeka wished me luck on her way out, followed by a man in a half-buttoned shirt that revealed a thick silver chain. He looked around and poked Claudia about a cup of candy corn sitting on the desk. “I see that for almost two weeks.” She giggled and he stepped into the hallway. Two veteran telemarketers came back from lunch now and went to stamp their punch cards. I wore a blue button-down, dark slacks, and dress shoes, but there didn’t appear to be a dress code—one of them was dressed for girls night out in a denim mini-skirt and braided gold stiletto sandals, and the other, 6’6” at least, wore a black velour sweat suit.
Soon after, the man came back and introduced himself. David, the owner. “Are you a fast learner?” he asked me in his office, leaning back in executive position.
“Very,” I said, and sat down across from him.
“Tell me about yourself.”
I told David about working for a radio station on Reunion Island, where I spent last year, taking calls from people on subjects ranging from bomb threats to misplaced wives to creole identity to the price of rice. What I loved about it, I said, attempting to draw a parallel to telemarketing,”is that you never know where you are going to find people. You talk with all sorts of people and you don’t know what they’re doing or what they’re going through, so you have to be sensitive and use the hints they give you.”
“That sounds great,” David said at the end of my monologue. “Why didn’t you keep doing that?”
“It’s far away!” I said. “It was great, but I had to come home for a bit.”
He seemed satisfied. “Anything else you want to tell me about yourself?”
“No.”
“Your job is to setup appointments for us to sell home improvement packages. If you set up an appointment, someone will go there and present our products. If we make a sale, you get $200. If not, nobody makes any money.
I nodded vigorously while David spoke.
“So you are right that this job is about building a rapport with the customer. You call them and your job is to keep them on the phone, and you do that by building a rapport. I don’t give you any script or anything, because I don’t want to have a robot selling this, like always reading from the paper and stuff. It’s like I want to give every customer, how would you say, personal customer service?” He continued: “That’s what sells you on them and gets them sold on you. So what you need to do is convince them that they need to buy this with you today, and not with someone else tomorrow. You have to make it clear that you are doing them a favor by having a conversation with them now and not them doing a favor by having a conversation with you. You think you can do that?”
“Yeah,” I said, and nodded once more.
