Slushies

Nope, not the sugar-filled icy beverage. It's a description of my shoes after today.

We were very motivated today. Got to work early, and ready to go. Well prepared, we were expecting great success.

There are many things in this job that I cannot control. Today I will touch on two such things.

1) The Whether; This morning we woke up with attitudes set for success, and a plan. However, we also woke up with a billion little snowflakes making the roads a mess. We couldn't drive nearly as far as we had planned and had to choose an inferior area to work. We were ahead of schedule, though, so we thought we'd be fine, and have just as good of a day.

2) The Past; A customer will often make his or her decision based on a past experience. For instance, today I encountered a block of houses that had also been spoken to before by a young man. He went to each door, describing the tragedies he had seen as a firefighter, and how sick his poor son was. "Please support this charity, for families like mine," he would say. A couple of weeks later, each generous supporter would be visited again; this time by a kind police officer, returning each penny they had donated, and explaining that the 'firefighter' had in fact been arrested on drug charges. Oops.

And so, each one of these donaters swore it would never happen again, and told all their friends this story to be learned from.

I may not be creative enough to think of such an elaborate scheme, but I paid for this man's mistake all day long. No one wanted to talk to me, and it really is unfortunate for them. All well.

So in the end, I worked for almost 8 hours today and accomplished what would usually take me 2. And my shoes have icky slushies in them.

On The Road Again

On Tuesday we decided to go on a raod trip.
A road trip is an opportunity to just work work work. We're not around people we know outside of work, we have nothing to do in a foreign, likely small, town. So we just work.
It really is a great concept, especially since we haven't been putting in enough hours lately.
We drove for about two hours, to our destination. Set up the hotel arrangements, and off to work. It took us an hour to do what usually takes us three or four, and we knew we were in the right place. You see, when you on a roadtrip, you have some kind of reassurance that you won't have competition in the area, that people won't have heard of what you're saying. Because you're further away from the center of the business, there won't be all those rumours about what you are or aren't doing. Whether or not you're scamming your customer never comes up. They trust and listen earnestly, with intelligence, not assumption.
On Friday, I went to a local DriveTest center and acquired my G2 class licence. Yay! Independance! Let's all dance a little, because I now no longer depend wholly on a coworker with a car. Now I can get a car!

A Dream?

Today is Monday, and I should be working. My coworker/transportation should be ready to go, his suspention is over and done with. But, this job tends to employ a certain unreliability. Not from me, or my boss, we both find it rediculously irritating. But when a person knows that it's incredibly unlikely that he or she would be fired for being late or not showing up at all, it is human nature to take advantage. Given an inch, we are all tempted to take a mile.
So here I am, sitting in my bed, typing to the many people who will probably not read this.
Let's touch on the "Door-To-Door Dream." When hired to their first position as a door to door agent, every person is told of the possibilities; the grandure at the tip of their fingertips. The riches and glory achievable with just a little determination. This is the foundation of Direct Marketing. This is why so many agents are tempted and drawn into a world of deception and manipulation. Many of us are stretching out our arms, reaching out for that plato at the top of the ladder.
You hear buzz names in the business. People who started out just like me! I could be that person?! Someone who now sits in an office counting sales, motivating managers, hiring agents, and collecting checks.
We ask our managers, "How do I get there?" And he or she replies, "write lots of business, and hire more agents."
From here, some of us decide to get where we're going. We save for school, finish school, find that dream job that this was holding us over until.
Or, some of us get obsorbed. Consumed, even. This usually occurs with a more rash personality type. This person will work hard for that giant check. After recieving that check, they will spend it the way that Buzz Name would have. He or she will be back a week later, more broke than before, and ready to work.
I guess when someone visits your door, or when you say, "I hate those door to door guys," I wish you would think of them more as people. People with jobs providing what is likely to be a legitimate product. And then I want you to focus on the product. Not how they're selling it, whether or not they're a good person, or if your supporting their bad habbits or not. Focus on what you can acomplish for you and your home, because that's what's important for you.

I Lied, But It Was An Accident

Yesterday it was 17c below outside, and I was going to work anyway. Unfortunately, my schedule depends on a coworker of mine who drives us out to where ever we decide to work that day (territory.) Wednesday night he went out late, so he came to pick me up at four in the afternoon. The weather was worse, 19c below with large blowing snowflakes. It didn't make sense to work by this time anyway. So instead of going to work and making money, we go play pool and spend money. Good thing it was pay day.
Today we can't work again. See, these complaints that you make to the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) actually have an effect. Believe it or not, the companies actually care about their image and that their customers aren't lied to.
Communication is my job. It's all I do. I learn how to communicate in a way that every customer will easily understand and mostly agree. But it's probably not your job.
So when I come to your house, and you tell me to talk to your wife because she takes care of it, that's what I'll do. I'll also possibly assume that she can either fill you in after I leave, or that you don't care. So I might not give you every detail.

Not all couples work that way, though. After I leave your house, it's likely that your wife with be happy with maybe a little proud of her decisions. She'll begin to explain and you will begin to fill gaps and you're not happy. Then you go on to drill her, asking exactly what went on and what I said to her. She'll be embarrassed and feel swindled, becuase she thought you'd be happy. As a result, she'll obviously blame the one person in the situation that she won't have to face; me. So she tells you I said I was from somewhere else like the government or something, and she didn't know. I must have lied. Now you find out that I was lying and must be scamming people out of money all over the place! What an injustice! Something should be done aobut this.
Next, you call the company that I was really from and cancel everything. You're short with the girl on the other side of the phone. "What can I do to make sure other homeowners will be safe from this a**hole?" you ask yourself. "The OEB! Of course!" You dial quickly once you've found the number online. You tell them all the details of the lies that I told you.
Have you ever wondered what happens next???
Now the OEB contacts this company you've complained about. The remind them that not following all of the regulations could cost them their licence, and practically close the entire functionality of the business. They speak directly to the CEO of the company with the exact details you gave them.
Now the CEO will contact a sales director, who will contact a distributor, who will contact a manager, who will contact the agent. And down the pecking order it goes, the blame, the stress and the frustration. In the end, I did my job the exact same way as in every other house, and will loose 4 days of work and pay because of a misunderstanding.
Hopefully a good agent will learn from this. We learn never to take the customer's word for it, and to repeat repeat repeat. There's nothing worse than losing money because the customer misunderstood, or misrepresented to another person in the household.
Hopefully a good customer will learn too. Listen, ask questions, and get all the information that you AND your co-homeowner. If you're ever worried that you've been lied to, you should ask a customer service representative employed the company that the agent represented. The calls are recorded, so you know you'll get the whole truth and nothing but.
I really hope that at least one person reads this and finds it useful. It is so frustrating for an agent to know that he or she was fully honest with a customer, and leave the house feeling good, only to find that the customer cancels, or even worse, complains. I know for a fact that the products and services provided to this customer by my coworker were such that hundreds of dollars would have been saved yearly.

Inspired

I am living the door-to-door dream. I have the answer to all the questions that every homeowner asks after I've left their house and the door has closed.

I was inspired to write this blog by a series of frustrating events. It began at a door, as it seems all things do in my life now. I walked up the snowy steps, binder in hand, and pushed the doorbell. A shiver ran down my spine as I wondered if this was a working doorbell house or a non-working doorbell house. I observed all the junk in the front yard. Trinkets that someone behind the door had convinced his or her self were important. I sighed, realizing that this was a non-working doorbell house, and knocked on the door through my fuzzy mittens. Hearing footsteps, I readied myself for whatever was behind this door. The door opened, and in an instance I had the woman sized up. She was thin, mid forties, and business-like. She huffed like a bull in an arena, and I was wearing red today. A race had begun. I had to reach "my happy place" before she could decide what to say, or her angry words meant for whatever she hated about her life would be absorbed by me, an Innocent by-stander. "Get to the beach!" I told myself. Not fast enough, her mouth was open and her voice box blaring at me. Something about having no right to be on her property, single mother, too busy... any of the many excuses that are supposed to justify her making me the scape-goat for every of life's problems. I turned and walked away before she could catch her breath and move into a second sentence about how awful I am.
As I moved on to the next house, a few thoughts crossed my mind. Before visiting her doorstep, I had visited her neighbours. It just turned out that I had managed to save her neighbour something like two hundred dollars per year. Maybe if she had let me get a word in I could have done the same for her. And, beyond that, if I had spoken to her like that, she probably would have called the cops or something. But she thinks if she never sees me again, why not accuse me of being the devil? Some courage that must take.
The next day, a friend of mine had a customer call him to cancel everything he had sold her only minutes earlier. Oh, the wonderful world of the Internet. She had done her research, found one complaint about the company online, and decided that my friend was a liar, a scam artist, trying to rip her of and ruin her life.
At this point I really couldn't take it any more. Someone has to speak for all those people trekking around living their lives in front of your doors. Someone has to tell you that just because one person did their job wrong at the door, doesn't mean we all do. Also, that one person giving you a bad first impression does not mean the whole company is a scam. How does the company know what this one person is saying? I get so frustrated hearing these stories and complaints, because almost all of them could be prevented by a little bit of education.

So, since no one else is out here, opening the door so you can see the other side, I guess I'll do it. I'll try to be here every day, giving up little bits about the secret life of a direct marketer.
Questions or comments about your experience with agents, or as agents? YES PLEASE!!!

By the way, it's 17c below today, and I'll still be out there, knocking away... hope to see you behind the next door!