Friday, finally

by John Passmore

Emily and I are getting along splendidly. Emily is the telesales executive with ClickCover, the Utility Warehouse partner which has just cut my household insurance from £800 to £300!

Anyway it’s all sorted and of course I complimented her on her telephone manner.

“Actually, I said. “I’m always on the lookout for people who are good on the telephone…”

However it turned out she knew all about the TelecomPlus opportunity - every distributor she speaks to sends her a DVD. She’s got dozens.

“And have you watched any of them?”

“No.”

“Well,” I said after a significant pause, “It you knew you were going to be paid £50,000 for watching one, when would you do it.”

“Right now.”

So now I’ve sent Emily an email and I’ve got her phone number and we shall see… and she was the first of my six.

The next one was someone who had turned down my invitation to a networking breakfast: “Since you won’t be coming, you won’t hear about my business. So how would you like to take 30 seconds to hear about it now?”

“OK,” he said – they always say “OK” because they feel guilty about turning down the initial invitation and this is a cheap get-out. Isn’t psychology wonderful…

Then it was off to Ipswich to take Tamsin’s defunct camera to Jessop’s the photographic shop. Apparently there was a design fault. They looked up the number for me to phone for a replacement.

“You’re very efficient, “ I told the young man. “Do they pay you well?”

“Not well enough.”

“Well, would you like to take 30 seconds to hear how you can earn what you’re really worth?”

“Yes please,” He said. So I told him.

Next, in Staples, buying mini labels for my DVDs, I wandered round the furniture section marvelling at the opulence of the executive chairs. The sales manager hovered. We fell into conversation (oh, how easy it is to fall into conversation when there’s money in it!)

I suspected that he must do well in a recession – what with companies looking to save money. That got us onto the subject of money and… you guessed it, he wanted to take 30 seconds to find out how to make more.

Then off to the Sainsbury’s petrol station to fill up the Mini. I love a long queue. A couple of people weren’t interested – and one had even received one of my texts. But I did find an existing customer.

“Did you know you can make money as well as save money?”

“How’s that,” he asked (oh dear, somebody hasn’t done their job properly).

So I filled in the gaps and he likes the sound of it.

If you’ve been counting, this took me up to five. The trouble was that by now the queue had disappeared and I think you always need a reason to talk to people rather than just walking up and accosting them at the pumps. For some reason no opportunity presented itself. Now at this point, I could have called it a day and gone home. But when you know you’re going to sit down in the evening and write a blog, you can’t stop until you’ve got the six.

Actually that’s what the blog is for. You might think I write it for your benefit – not at all! It’s for my benefit: as long as I know one person is reading it – and I can always count on John Breadstill - I have to put in the activity.

So I was about to take a turn around the car park looking for vans with mobile numbers when suddenly I realised that if I didn’t phone Casio about the camera by the end of the working day, it would take another three days to get the battery (by which time the puppies would be three days less photogenic).

Sitting in the car I rang the number, worked out how to get the battery out of the camera, read off the serial number etc.

“We’ll send out a replacement within seven working days,” said the man on the other end.

“Terrific. Thanks very much, goodbye.”

“Goodbye.”

… goodbye? Something wrong there. Ohmygod…

“Are you still there? Hello? Hello?”

He was. Thank heavens for that. “Look, I just wanted to say how good you are on the phone. Has anyone ever told you that….”

And there we were – got the six. And five of them gave me their phone numbers and email addresses. A good day all round – and that was without counting the letting agent I phoned about something else entirely and who wants me to go and see him next Wednesday. I couldn’t count him as one of the six because he didn’t get 30 seconds. He got five minutes.

And this is the postscript. At five O’clock the man from the furniture warehouse delivered the dilapidated Victorian chest of drawers for Owen’s new bedroom. £165 worth of good investment, apparently.

I wrote out the cheque with a flourish. Then: “A pleasure doing business with you. Now, whenever I do business with someone, I always take 30 seconds to tell them about my business. Does that sound fair?"

Nobody is going to say “No” to that. How could they?

All we have to do is ask.