Sales calls in the off peak season
I can usually tell when recruitment is going through a quiet period - we get sales calls from all and sundry. I have been in the trade for 7 years now, and prior to this practised as a solicitor, and you can almost guarantee that whenever the office goes quiet, someone phones up to sell something. In all that time I have never purchased any of their services, and even ones that sound interesting have never sent through their details in writing when requested. On one occasion in practice when I was a solicitor I pretended to have a heart attack halfway through the conversation and then hung up. The salesman was so cross he called the senior partner and complained that I had shown a lack of professionalism on the telephone!
I usually allow sales calls about 10 seconds of my time, and then hang up. If you take the calls you are wasting billable hours, and each call takes you away from whatever you were concentrating on, and as a result this affects your work. I am not sure what the statistics are for cold calling, but they can't be that impressive. The major annoyance for me is the amount of times they use your name per sentence - nice technique for remembering your name, but extremely annoying to listen to.
Jonathan Fagan, MD of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment - no.1 online UK legal recruitment agency - save time, skip the legal job boards and let us do the work - register online at www.ten-percent.co.uk/register.htm
I can usually tell when recruitment is going through a quiet period - we get sales calls from all and sundry. I have been in the trade for 7 years now, and prior to this practised as a solicitor, and you can almost guarantee that whenever the office goes quiet, someone phones up to sell something. In all that time I have never purchased any of their services, and even ones that sound interesting have never sent through their details in writing when requested. On one occasion in practice when I was a solicitor I pretended to have a heart attack halfway through the conversation and then hung up. The salesman was so cross he called the senior partner and complained that I had shown a lack of professionalism on the telephone!
I usually allow sales calls about 10 seconds of my time, and then hang up. If you take the calls you are wasting billable hours, and each call takes you away from whatever you were concentrating on, and as a result this affects your work. I am not sure what the statistics are for cold calling, but they can't be that impressive. The major annoyance for me is the amount of times they use your name per sentence - nice technique for remembering your name, but extremely annoying to listen to.
Jonathan Fagan, MD of Ten-Percent Legal Recruitment - no.1 online UK legal recruitment agency - save time, skip the legal job boards and let us do the work - register online at www.ten-percent.co.uk/register.htm
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