Telesales for many people, is associated with receiving an unwelcome phone call at home, usually in the middle of a favourite TV programme. The stereotype is that telesales operators persist in their aggressive sales pitch and are impervious to reasons why someone should not buy their product. But the stereotype is inaccurate and unfair say those who work in the sector. Here are just a few of the myths that real-life telesales professionals would like to dispel:

It’s a deadend career. Not true. Some people stay in sales and marketing, although not always in telesales. Others use it as a stepping stone to a different career in the company they work for. Peter Jones, the contact centre manager at CPM, a customer services and outsourcing specialist, says: “More than 50 per cent of our management team has worked its way through the ranks. We invest in identifying talent for future roles so the promotion opportunities are there in abundance.”

It's a sector filled with school leavers. While the workforce tends to be young, it is not exclusively so. Ross Telfer, the head of telesales and retention at Vodafone, says first-jobbers work alongside those who are on second careers. “We have people ranging between 18 and 60 and they are from all sorts of backgrounds. There are quite a few people who were in mining for 20 years and now they’ve retrained to be a call-centre operator,” he says.

Telesales is all about cold calling. No, says Carole Mott, telemarketing manager at M&G Investment. At M&G, operators make calls only to existing customers to discuss their investments. “It is all about creating a long-term relationship with our clients. This is important because the average length of time clients are with us is ten years. And they usually invest in more than one fund, which helps when we make our calls,” Mott says. “We make no cold calls to people who are not investing with us.”

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BACKGROUND

• Sold on getting results

• Tall tales about telesales

• The key to selling

• How to motivate salespeople

The focus is on making a high number of calls and sales in a short period of time. “There is a misconception that operators have three minutes per call and they need to have achieved a sale at the end,” says Richard Roberts, sales operations manager at Ventura, a customer management outsourcer. But there would be nothing to gain from this approach. Unachievable targets result in aggressive sales techniques and angry customers. “It takes however long it takes to make a sale,” he says. At a time when the telesales market is shrinking because of the telephone preference service - a register that lets people opt out of receiving unsolicited marketing calls - companies need to retain customers.

It's badly paid. Not necessarily. Linda Short, business unit manager at CPM, says that a highly skilled telesales operator is of great value to a firm. CPM operators are categorised according to the level of their ability and paid accordingly. A highly skilled telesales operator can glean information that influences sales, such as details on a competitor. “We can have a disparate range of salaries in one contact centre,” she says.

You must be unskilled and unqualified if you work in telesales. “It’s a misconception that people in telesales don’t know much about anything else,” Mott says. As well as possessing excellent communication skills, staff often have a specialist knowledge specific to their sector. “Our people are accredited to a skill level via an internal scheme that enables them to talk confidently and competently to customers about the financial products we have. It’s important if they are to help them to make an informed decision regarding their investment choices,” she says.

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