Readers and writers blog

There are other worlds out there, friends, and sometimes they come visiting us, even though we’re often not very hospitable. So let’s be more neighborly and repay a visit to those folks who call with gifts, prizes, products, services or appeals to our political or charitable instincts.

The telemarketers.

You know, we at Readersandwritersblog.com really would like to visit the world of the telemarketers, but we can’t find a weblog written by a telemarketer who reveals his or her personal experiences — the triumphs, defeats, hopes, fears and general motivations for being in a field only slightly less popular than, and perhaps a latter-day incarnation of, door-to-door missionaries.

The best blog we could find about telemarketing is Phone for Profits, and we’ve put it up on our blogroll as a temporary measure, hoping someone out there can suggest a better one.

Please, please do.

We think telemarketing would be a great subject for a personal blog, judging from the few snippets we’ve gathered from the Internet about telemarketers and their personal thoughts. For example, a blogger identified only as Giggley 15 joined a discussion on the website Pioneer Thinking last summer with her thoughts about the ways people try to trick telemarketers, including a popular routine from the Seinfeld TV show (see below):

I was a telemarketer for a few years. People (tried to fool us) all the time. The telemarketers find it just as entertaining as you do. Except the ones that are overused. The one from Seinfeld is so unoriginal. You hear it at least 10 times a day. Do you seriously think that these people are stupid enough not to realize that you’re playing with them? If you come up with something original, it will simply give them something to talk about on their break. If you say the same thing they’ve heard 10 times or pretend to be the babysitter . . . it just makes the person doing it sound foolish and immature.

And Brian Miller, a real estate broker in Charlotte, N.C., who runs the website Real Estate Entropy, describes a touching exchange he had in July with a telemarketer trying to raise money for the Multiple Sclerosis Society: His patience and willingness to make a small donation prompted her to thank him profusely for “pulling her back up.”

She said on the call before me when she had stated her name, the guy on the line said, ‘Well, Ms. ___ ___, you can just kiss my ***,’ and then slammed down the phone. She asked me why did he have to say that . . .. Why couldn’t he just say he is not interested and hang up. She told me she ran to the restroom to pray for this person.

Getting back to Phone for Profits, the writing is fairly good, but the telemarketing content is about how to do it rather than what it is like, not to mention that the archive links are dead. What appeals to us about the site is the man who writes it — Kamau Austin, a prosperous- and optimistic-looking gentleman in an expensive-looking suit, a trimmed beard and dreadlocks gathered in a ponytail. His blog is a spinoff from Telemarketing Call Center Info, an ultra-busy site offering everything from telemarketing advice and sales services to automobile ads in Atlanta and a blog for disc jockey services for parties.

Oh yes, the Seinfeld routine. Check out the video here. We think it’s pretty funny, even the 10th time through.

And there’s one more telemarketing foil — really, a telemarketer’s nightmare — that we should include here. It’s an audio cut of 3 minutes, 25 seconds, from the Indianapolis-based Bob and Tom radio show that was posted on the Internet by blogger Joshua Lowry. A couple of caveats: The volume is loud, so you may have to tone it down quickly. Also, some of the dialogue near the end is crude. If you wish to listen, it’s here.

Frankly, it made us feel a little sorry for the telemarketer. Which is why we’re looking — seriously — for a good telemarketer blog.

– Sid Leavitt