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B2B cold callers are the worst of them all.
At least with domestic phones you can choose to ignore and assume any genuine caller will leave a message but with a business every call is a potential sale and so you end up putting real customers on hold to grab a **** idiot asking for the 'owner of the business' so he can sell you accountancy services and flower arrangements. We get them ALL the time dispite being registered with TPS etc.
TJ is spot on. Its not a valid business model, just go away. If I want to buy a product or a service then I'll search for it when its convienient for me, not you.
"Legitimate Interest" is what the callers are hiding behind. They have - or at least, claim to have - legitimate interest to call you as part of their business and this includes regular consumers as well as B2B.
I personally think it's... let's say woolly. I haven't looked at it for a while so may be off the mark, but it was my understanding that "we want to sell you things" isn't sufficient to constitute Legitimate Interest on its own, they also have to have reason to believe that they want you to call them. Eg, their calling list is from the local church and they're hawking bibles.
Where this gets confusing is they may well be acting in good faith. If they've bought a call list from somewhere else - as you exampled yourself, TJ - and they're going through a list of people who they believe have opted in to receive their marketing. A legit cold caller will have a code of practice which includes things like cross-referencing with the TPS and having the caller know the source of your number. But none of that is a legal requirement AFAIK.
In any case. The rest of GDPR trumps Legitimate Interest, so if you tell them they've made a mistake and to stop calling then they have to comply.
Has anyone here actually bought something after a cold-call?
Has anyone here actually bought something after a cold-call?
I was wondering that. It's probably worthwhile in the hopes of rinsing someone's pension or some such. I mean, it has to be worthwhile somehow, right, or they wouldn't do it? The ratio of sales to **** offs must be vanishingly low though.
B2B cold callers are the worst of them all.
Bastards, the lot of them
Has anyone here actually bought something after a cold-call?
elderly and vulnerable do. I have known of two folk get rinsed by scammers.both vulnerable and one lost thousands. Both total ripoffs
The ratio of sales to **** offs must be vanishingly low though.
The most successful campaigns we ever did were the flowers and the accountancy. I remember talking to a chippy who was literally just about to try to ring around to find one, and we saved him a job. The "flower arrangement for your lobby" was so successful the company that had signed us up told us to stop about 4-5 weeks into a 6 week campaign as they had too much work to cope with it all.
Has anyone here actually bought something after a cold-call?
They wouldn't keep paying people to do it if it wasn't making any money.
yes - every now and then they find a vulnerable person to bamboozle into buying something overpriced and unusable
Has anyone here actually bought something after a cold-call?
Given the number of IT professionals here, undoubtedly.
I work for an IT reseller. B2B mind.
I'm day4 of a manufacturing plant total breakdown with a major PLC failure on one plant and a 50kw DC motor and drive failure on another. I'm on a laptop one minute and the next on a chain and block getting a massive motor out. We are in automotive so costs are mounting.
In the middle of incoming calls from suppliers/support I have some **** from 'rochdale' ring about solar panels. They got it both barrels.
Quick STW brew to switch off then back to it.
My approach was to repeatedly ask them what company they were calling from and what their name is... let them start their their speal (speel?) then interrupt them and ask them both questions again and ask them to spell it and pretend you're writing it down but take ages repeating each letter after they've said it then immediately after they've finished ask them again like you've just totally forgotten what they took 5 minutes telling you.
every now and then they find a vulnerable person to bamboozle into buying something overpriced and unusable
For balance I've worked for a charity that (pre GDPR) did cold calling. Callers were trained to identify vulnerable people, they were flagged and either called back by someone else to confirm their donation or had their donation cancelled. The team operated against a strict set of guidelines, and call recordings were listened back to and scored for compliance. There was also an external body we reported stats to, who set the standards and could sanction us too. Some people who signed up from a cold call went on to volunteer or get more involved in our work and even left gifts in their will, so they certainty weren't the victims that you portray.
Post GDPR the world changed and while some orgs claim to have worked out how to do legal cold calling I remain sceptical and the DPO wouldn't sanction any such activity.
And I don't answer the phone unless I recognise the number and am happy to speak to the caller, if it's important they'll either leave a message or try again. If its not important then I didn't need to answer anyway.
Has anyone here actually bought something after a cold-call?
Personally, once, ever. About twenty years back I was quite literally about to get in the car and drive to carphone warehouse (?) when I got called by a rival mobile sales joint, who matched the contract I was about to buy on a phone that I had already earmarked on the network I wanted. Saved me a trip.
Note volume of coincidence involved - it was almost like the cold callers had access to the phone company data about who was on what contract and when they expired (etc). GDPR, schmee DPR.
Note also for those who are repeatedly quoting GDPR: It only applies in Europe. A little dude sitting in an office in Delhi where a large number of cold calls, and particularly scam calls, originate from couldn't give two hoots about you trumpeting 'GDPR', because it's largely irrelevant to them. The Indian equivalent is the "Information Technology Act, 2000" and it doesn't include any specific reference to lawfulness of processing of personal data - see https://cis-india.org/internet-governance/files/gdpr-and-india. So, TJ shouting that people "can't legally access his data" is only half right - whether they've got info through a web scrape or a lapse of concentration related to a consent button, they might not actually be doing anything illegal under the law in their country.
(Source: Had to go through a lot of this recently due to a potential outsourcing situation and it came up as an IG concern, unsurprisingly)
The other thing is of course "cold call" might actually be "warm list of relevant leads", like "mobile contracts approaching renewal date", "homes of a certain age in an area where a certain construction method was used", "SMEs in X business sector in City Y with turnover up to Z". Just because you're not expecting the call, doesn't mean it's "cold" per se.
And yes, I've sold a lot from warm, relevant B2B leads (self gen) but calling outbound first point of contact.
Note also for those who are repeatedly quoting GDPR: It only applies in Europe
No it applies to anyone processing the data of eu citizens regardless of where that processing takes place. Of course we ain't eu citizens any more, but gdpr was integrated as part of the uk's data protection act so if you are offering goods or services to customers within the UK you should still comply.
Yes, i have bought several times from a cold call (maybe warm, who knows how good their lists are)
there is no recourse tho to the out of EU call centres. I do know this. Pointless trying to do anything with them bar waste their time.
No it applies to anyone processing the data of eu citizens regardless of where that processing takes place. Of course we ain’t eu citizens any more, but gdpr was integrated as part of the uk’s data protection act so if you are offering goods or services to customers within the UK you should still comply.
... And if you're not supplying a good or service, but simply there to scam, do you think they give a flying <expletive deleted>?
And if you’re not supplying a good or service, but simply there to scam, do you think they give a flying <expletive deleted>?
Hell no. The ICO might go after a serious organised crime level of scemmer, but a handful of people working out of a shack aren't their primary target. And they've got much bigger issues to deal with at home, based on recent news.
So to say "gdpr only applies if you're in Europe" is factually incorrect, yet unenforceable in practice.
My new Pixel phone has a call screening feature. When the phone rings, if it's not a number I recognise, I can choose a Google Voice message which tells the caller they are being screened and asks them who they are and what they want. Depending on what they say, you can choose to send them further automated messages, opt to speak to them or **** them off! It works really well, most unknown numbers hang up after the initial screening message 🙂
I have never bought anything from a cold caller. I work on the principle that any business that needs to resort to such an intrusive and annoying method of selling is at best hawking a shit product that won't sell otherwise, or at worst are scammers.
I have also remembered - having now been made COO, someone / somehow my email has got out there. I am now getting at least 10 emails a day from random B2B sellers pestering me. Why? I won't buy that way and most of it is irrelevant.
Blocked and report as spam....
Matt OAA - that'll be from LinkedIn Sales Nav plugins, Zoominfo, Apollo, or any number of sales contact capture tools. And as COO, you'll be higher rated as a decision maker on all these tools, so more visible to potential suppliers.
Call me whatever you like
Just don’t call me late for lunch.
What is wrong with people – what does being nice cost? In fact scrap being nice, it’s clearly too hard. Let’s focus on not being a ****. A basic premise for life that too many seem to be failing abjectly at right now.
Well, my own experience of cold calls is that by far and away the great majority are trying to pull a fast one. They’re trying to sell roofing insulation which has been shown to be problematic, and others are obviously foreign-based, mostly trying to gain access to my computer. Those that are selling double glazing I’m polite to, because mine needs doing, but I’ll be using a local firm, and one of their staff has bought a house down the road from me, and put in new windows, so I’ll just have a word with them.
I was getting calls two, three times a day, always in the morning and afternoon, which I’ve become aware of since I’ve stopped working, and always a foreign accent following a long pause, then claims that my computer is sending viruses, or some other issue, supposedly from Microsoft or BT. I know the virus ones and Microsoft ones are provably false, because I don’t use any Microsoft products on principle!
Those people I tell to phük off!
Actually, the phone is disconnected, the landline is just for broadband now.
Matt OAA – that’ll be from LinkedIn Sales Nav plugins, Zoominfo, Apollo, or any number of sales contact capture tools.
surely all breaching GDPR?
TJ I'm pretty certain GDPR isn't there to preclude businesses from trying to contact potential clients and drum up business. You can't ban outbound sales because you have a visceral dislike for cold calls (of course not all cold calls and cold callers are equal).
And just to add, not once in 15+ years of business development have I ever been asked "where did you get my number" "take me off your list" etc etc. 99% of the time, they've been perfectly OK with receiving a sales call.
surely all breaching GDPR?
Not if they contact him under his role of COO - that processing doesn't fall under gdpr, but if they use data that can identify him as an individual "Mr M Outandabout" then you're into a grey area. Similarly if you are a sole trader and trade under your own name from your home address then it all gets a bit sketchy to contact you as a business.
that’ll be from LinkedIn
Aye. My inbox exploded the day I changed my job title to have the word "manager" in it. Not a sniff when I was an engineer.
not once in 15+ years of business development have I ever been asked “where did you get my number” “take me off your list” etc etc.
Ring me, I'll tell you.
These days it's mostly automated wardiallers anyway. I had one today pertaining to be from Ballymoney. They don't connect you to an actual person until you've answered.
@Cougar all depends if a run on Sales Nav and Apollo suggests you're the right person to contact..... 😉
enjoy the “have you been in an accident” or “We are calling about the accident you had” ones, I like to start off simple in my explanation of the accident and slow get more outlandish.
I’ve done this and it’s great fun. Injured in a car accident. I could virtually hear their eyes lighting up. Then I could sense bewilderment ten minutes later when it transpired that I’d been injured by a deception that had disguised itself as my Vauxhall Zafira.
Ta the purist - I did wonder if it was different for work emails from personal. Makes sense as GDPR is all about personal info - thanks for the clarity
Andy - Under GDPR yo can only use personal information ie personal emails for the purpose you were given them. Its illegal to take a personal email in your possesion for one reason - say membership and use it for another purpose - say marketing. any change must be opt in not opt out
Most folk can't be arsed exercising their rights. Remember I had the nurse regulatory body censured for doing exactly that.
which requires most energy suppliers to offer measures
Is it energy suppliers cold calling their customers to let them know about subsidised schemes?
Don't worry TJ, I'm fully ahead of GDPR from both an EU and post-Brexit standpoint, having delivered training on it to sales teams straddling B2B and B2C. Getting the opt in on consumer side isn't hard if the right nudge processes (usually incentivisation or gamification) are applied and the consumer feels a value. At which point, drop off rates are way below benchmark.
For B2B direct marketing it's a case of building solid target groups, robust methods and being absolutely shit hot with prequalification so as not to waste anyone's time, along with an awful lot of practice.
Sadly there's a dearth of training in a lot of the 'first contact' space, hence the perceptions like yours based on poor experience.
In English please Andy 🙂
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just extracting the urine
Its not poor experience of how its done - its the whole cold calling industry. But as I said I get almost none and have done for years. I suspect my equifax and experion files have large red letters on them. If more folk knew and exercised their rights there would be much less of it in total
As luck would have it, guess who just got 'cold called'
Not exactly - I stopped doing justgiving and the like, putting money into charity pots, and instead now have three larger DD's that go out every month. As my mate that works for a charity said, that sort of regular giving not only means you can gift aid and claim tax back more easily, it also enables the charity to plan.
Anyway....digression. Young lad at the other end was calling on behalf of one of the charities to thank me for my DD's, ask me if I wanted them to send me any info on the work they've been doing, and (of course) to ask as the DD has been at this level for the last couple of years is there any chance I might be able to put it up.
Is that cold calling? Should I have sworn at him or wasted his time? In fact I'm going to squeeze a couple of quid extra in to compensate for all the miserable buggers he's probably had to talk to so far today......
I also found out a bit more from DD about b/f's job. Of course, you don't ask her 'How's Max? Next time you talk to him can you get a full rundown of his employment T&C's because some nosey ****ers on STW want to know what it is' - but managed to glean that he's via an agency but is 'self employed' - which I guess gets round minimum wage. Now that sounds more dodgy than the lead generation for a new SaaS that he's been doing this week (apparently)!!
I also found out a bit more from DD about b/f’s job.
Hang on, when did Deadlydarcy get involved?
@theotherjonv fair play to both those young lads. First one has clearly done his job brilliantly, daughter's bf learning at the coal face and whatever he goes into long term after uni, I guarantee he'll look back at his time cold calling with fondness when he realises what he's learned on the job about work ethic, self reliance and just cracking on, even when it's tough. I know I do.
What? I’ve had a lot of horrible, soul destroying tedious jobs in my time. I don’t look back on any of them with fondness and I learned the grand sum of nothing from them. Actually, I learned that back breaking hard work is never appreciated and always under paid.
Your previous post scores 15/10 in buzzword bingo too 😉
I'd much rather go back to delivering pizzas or working in a bar for minimum wage than cold calling. At least with those jobs you're moving and there's the chance of #bantz with your coworkers. Still, that's just personal preference I suppose.
Me too. I don't have a health condition or disability that makes an office job necessary though, or childcare that means that working evenings is necessary or impossible..... etc. Not everyone has every choice available to them.
I have a friend whose brother is a cold caller. He is based in Barcelona but spends his days calling elderly British gents (they target men with this scam) to sell them investments in Whiskey casks. It is quite sophisticated, buttering them up telling them how knowledgeable and discerning they are when they show any interest at all in Whiskey. They promise returns of up to 30% a year and always give examples of McAllan to justify their claims. Then they drop the hammer and suggest that the average investment is in five casks and ask you to part with £30k.
Loads of people fall for it, and to be fair when he pitched it to me I nearly did to (He had misjudged me though as I didn't have £30k to invest).
He recently inherited £30k himself after his mum died, and invested it straight into his own Whiskey scam - you just can't help some people.
So if he calls me he or someone up the chain has breached data protection, has breached TPS etc etc
sometimes I have even hunted down the company or organisation that has done the breach of date protection. I even had the NMC – the professional body for nurses censured for giving out my details to cold callers
Dude, you have issues... like really really have issues.
Or standards and morals? 😉
do you not report crimes you see? the NMC one was particularly irritating as I had to give them my details to remain registered and then they sold them to an insurance company in a clearly illegal action?
Not everyone has every choice available to them
Yes, I know. Hence, "personal preference". 🙂
calling elderly British gents (they target men with this scam) to sell them investments in Whiskey casks.
There are a lot of ads on Instragram for the same rubbish at the moment.
You fools..... Don't you know you could all be missing out on a FREE Massive Yacht!
My wife has some fun with the accident type cold call, it goes somthing like:
We're calling about your recent accident....
OH MY GOD!
IT'S THE KIDS ISN'T IT!
WHAT'S HAPPENED?
ARE THEY DEAD?
ARE THEY HURT?
WHERE ARE THEY?
etc....
It was a bit of a surprise when I first heard her get a call like this as the kids were upstairs and just fine.
I recently fell for an O2 scam. All was rectified and no material damage happened. Reported to O2 and to the police.
Shortly after, I get another scam call from "O2". I say "oh let me guess, you're going to send a text and you want me to read out the code, right?"
In comes the text. I then say "why does the text have a 'do not share this code with anyone?"
"oh don't you want a discount?"
"Not from you I don't" and hang up.
Also - with the computer virus scan. Let them go for a while and finally say, "this is a mac".
Accident ones. "Which accident? I've had a few" That confuses them enough to hang up.
Folks trying to sell me stuff, "No thanks, not interested" and hang up.
They promise returns of up to 30% a year
Well, that's easy enough. Zero is "up to" 30.
One of my stock responses:
'we here you've been involved in an accident'
'Well kind of... I did actually mean to hit the guy but didn't mean to kill him'
'only got out the other day but if you're telling me I can claim compensation that's great as it'll help me get back on my feet'
Not as annoying as my actual car insurer phoning me after an accident and really pushing me hard to make a personal injury claim again the other driver.
I told them I want hurt and they kept asking 'are you sure, your neck didn't twinge?' etc.
Ended up pointing out I was an underwriter and member of the CII and were they suggesting I commit insurance fraud. Really annoyed me!
As for claiming cold callers are sometimes doing some kind of social good by letting people know about various subsidies and grants. Bollocks.
They're in it for themselves and no one else.
Often get calls from old people trying to renew their AA insurance as my local landline number is the same as some bit of the AA membership number. The joy of arguing with people that you're not the AA and can't Renee their insurance.....phone no longer plugged in
A few years back I got sufficiently pi$$ed off with cold callers repeatedly phoning me and asking me about my "accident" that I ended up explaining that no, I had not been in an accident but, according to my parents, I was caused by one.
Apparently you can't claim on insurance for that.
I did cold calling selling kitchens back in the day (1992, very much pre-GDPR etc) and it was shit. Soul destroying, grinding hard work with only the pay as motivation. But there wasn't much else available, so it was better than nothing. Since then I've always been polite to cold callers, as I'm not a complete * and I realise they're only doing it as nothing better is available.
Anyone who's proud of "giving them two barrels" or "telling them to * off" should try walking in their shoes, sometime. And @tjagain, you make so much of your leftwing / workers' hero position you should be ashamed, frankly. It costs you nothing to say "Thanks, I'm not interested" and hang up.
"You're a cold caller, me too, what should we talk about? Where you are? What's the weather like?" etc. We used to cold call B2B for our own business, a miserable task but it worked.
No landline now and on the mobile I just block a number not in my repetoire without answering then find out whose number it is.
It's a job that has no place in society. Not just the person aking the call but the whole principle. Just a verbal version any mail you are not wanting. Ban it.
Then there are the Mc Donalds blot on the landscape towers around Europe, the motorcylists killed by a billboard, those adverts on TV that people hate (but still buy the product rather than boycott it), the brightly illuminated shop fronts at 03:00 (and flashing X that stops people sleeping). The invasive advertising on social media (that some people are prepared to pay not to see). Flyers in your letter box if they are still legal where you live (I read them, they're local and useful), the press-release "content" in newspapeers and magazines, product placement, F1 cars of a certain colour, people smoking in films so smoking is still cool (and deadly)... .
Advertising makes the world go round, without it I'd be living in poverty, Steve Jobs might never have made it and sccm might not mean anything to anybody.
Ultimately all cold callers are trying to rip off the victim. Whether it is an outright scam or selling something that is overpriced or not needed. Normal people don’t fall for it, so they are looking for the vulnerable who are gullible enough to exploit. That’s why I have no sympathy whatsoever for those who do it.
Ultimately all cold callers are trying to rip off the victim. Whether it is an outright scam or selling something that is overpriced or not needed. Normal people don’t fall for it, so they are looking for the vulnerable who are gullible enough to exploit.
Bollocks.
My company has saved businesses hundreds of thousands of pounds off the back of cold calls.
I’m talking about those who target domestic consumers, not businesses
Nope, cold anything in a private place should be banned.
Many of the business contracts we got were from flyers in private letter boxes; employees found the flyer in their letter box, showed it to the hierachy and the company contacted us. Everyone lives somewhere, including the CEO. My first target areas were the parts of town I reckoned business owners and middle managers would live.
On the industrial zones I used to go in and hand the flyer to whoever I found in the office and ask them to pass it to the relevant person. Most people being friendly and helpful they often did, another contract. 🙂