The memorabilia fella
I once had the misfortune of working in telemarketing; ‘being paid to piss people off’ was how I thought of it. But I did learn one or two lessons from my months in the wilderness of Madonna-style headsets and levels of tedium that could kill lab mice: be nice to other telly marketers.
Most people on the end of the phone would rather be anywhere else but there, so even if you don’t want what they have to sell, they still deserve a break. An eager desire to be unexpectedly pleasant to workers in this most reviled profession can, however, lead one into dangerous territory. A week or so ago I rather spinelessly agreed to have a window salesman give me a quote on my drafty sash windows. I had no intention of buying anything.
The slightly spotty young salesman was late as he’d been stopped by the police just down the road who’d thought he was under the minimum driving age. “They thought I was 14” he smirked, when he was actually 19.
While spreading out the literature on the kitchen table, he said he’d only been doing job for a week, so was just getting to grips with it. They’d taken him up to the factory out of London, so he knew that “the windows are the best quality”. I asked about the trip to headquarters and soon we were chatting. It turned out his main job was ‘sports memorabilia’.
The other job involved getting top quality footballers to sign photographs, shirts and footballs which he then sold for a profit. He already had two people who worked for him in London, and another in Liverpool. We talked about some of the famous personalities he’d met. Rooney was “not all there”, while Ronaldo was a good guy and the eloquent Kaka spoke six languages including Japanese and would sign photographs ‘God is faithful’ if he got the time.
Not all players liked being bothered by the youngster. John Terry said “I’m not going to sign anything if it’s going to be sold”, which was a bit rich for a man earning roughly £90,000 a week we agreed. Others didn’t mind and would sit in their cars signing 15 odd photographs in one go. Last summer he’d even got a photograph that he’d taken of Florent Malouda in the Sun, Mirror and Star.
It didn’t seem like he was trying to sell the windows very hard, but he explained that most people either want the windows or not so there’s not much you can do to sell them. In my case this was certainly correct and when he left I suggested that he stick to memorabilia rather than trying to get into windows. Breaking into a run towards his car he shouted “to be honest, it’s better than hanging around all day, the football stuff doesn’t take up enough of my time.”
I’m sure I should be a bit firmer when the next pushy salesman phones up, but possibly not. This reminded me of the high points of my time as a telly marketer - the stories and personalities of customers when we left the script.
Tags: , football memorabilia, sports memorabilia, Windows