TESTIMONY. Telephone canvassers: his trick to get rid of them

CPF, bank or electrical component, cold calling is a sales technique used in many companies. However, it is an annoying practice for many people because the calls are sometimes recurrent and can even, in some cases, amount to harassment.

Thus, the techniques to get rid of it are multiplying but they are far from being as effective as each other. Pierre has his own trick that allows him to neutralize calls from canvassers, but also to have fun. “It’s a little game that amuses me a lot,” exclaims the 30-year-old. But what is Pierre’s favorite trick?

“When we receive a call like this, we usually don’t understand anything from the start because, in a few seconds, the caller is babbling three sentences and we never know who is calling us or how they get the number.”, begins he.

To prevent these situations from occurring too regularly, Pierre’s idea is simple. Each time the Parisian receives a call from a telephone salesman, his favorite activity begins: wasting their time.

“As we don’t understand much at the start of their call, I start by making them repeat, gently.”, explains the young man. But his process is much more precise than it seems since Pierre actually has a sheet summarizing all the questions he can ask the canvassers. “I start by asking for the surname, first name, then the company of my interlocutor. In general, from that moment on, one out of two canvassers hangs up,” he specifies. If he is still at the end of the line, he begins phase two of his plan…

After this first skimming, Pierre continues his game, while claiming to be interested in the product in question. “You must always say that you are interested, then note at the same time everything that is said, all the inconsistencies.”, he advises.

Recently, during a conversation with a telephone canvasser, the thirties noted an interesting one. “It was for the CPF (personal training account). The canvasser offered me training on the basic levels of Excel software, thanks to which he himself had become a doctor in computer science.”, he says.

Similarly, Pierre does not hesitate to sometimes use more crazy methods to overcome canvassers. “Once, during a canvassing for the CPF, the woman on the phone asked me the training that makes me dream. At that time, Thomas Pesquet was in space and suddenly I claimed that I dreamed of becoming an astronaut. The canvasser says that she unfortunately does not have a corresponding offer but insists. So I myself insisted by making ever more grotesque proposals.”, laughs Pierre.

While this technique takes him a little longer than just saying “I’m not interested no thanks”, it has proven to be effective. From now on, he is almost never contacted…

For Pierre, it is important to always go to the end, until the caller gets angry and hangs up: “You always have to go to the end of the irritation, take the time you need. If we just don’t answer the phone our number stays in their database so they keep swapping it and calling us, whereas if we piss them off and waste their time they end up deleting us databases, because we are not profitable, not interesting.”

Thus, this technique is effective in the eyes of the young dad who specifies that he receives only one call every three months, while many people are regularly confronted with this situation. “That’s really the advice I have to give, don’t hang up on them but waste them as much time as possible to be sure of being removed from the lists,” he insists. You know what you have left to do.