Radio Sales Café

Sales trainer Art Sobczak is looking for your funniest or most embarrassing sales call experience, and is offering a chance to win a $300 phone headset system.

Here's the link for entering:  http://www.telesalesblog.com/2010/07/30/what-is-your-funniest-or-most-embarrassing-phone-experience-win-a-300-headset.htmlBut I'm posting this link with a request:  if you enter your story on Art's blog, will you also share it with us here?

Here's the embarrassing phone story I submitted:

A large part of my job is making sales and customer service calls to radio stations across the U.S. and Canada. Several years ago, I was calling on some stations in Quebec, and it soon became apparent that it was common practice for receptionists to answer the phone in French rather than English. My standard reply to their greeting became, “I don’t speak French. Could you please speak English?” and usually they’d switch languages with no problem. But then came the day when, a bit trigger-happy, and not exactly sure of what the receptionist had just said, I repeated my cheerful request, “Can you please speak English?” … only to be met with a long pause, and a constrained voice saying, “I WAS speaking English.” Oops! Turned out that the secretary had simply answered the phone by giving the radio station’s nickname, and I had totally missed it. Needless to say, I was quite embarrassed, but thankfully the lady was quite understanding, and we moved on with the call. It has made for a good story to laugh about in subsequent years — and it taught me an important lesson about listening carefully before I speak!

Well, it looks like I missed the contest, but I have a good one that happened to me recently.

We had just gotten a new GM, and a new Promotions Director, and I was eager to show them my stuff, so I made an appointment with the largest Ad Agency in our market, and invited the GM and Director along so they could see my presentation. 

As I stood at the head of the table, and started the presentation, I felt something slip down around my feet. It was literally my slip! My GM didn't see it, but definitely two of the clients saw it. I lifted a foot, and kicked the thing under the table, managed to keep a straight face, and marched right on with my presentation. Afterward, as I was packing up, I reached down under the table to grab my slip, and it got caught on the foot of the chair. My boss's back was turned away as I wrestled my slip into my briefcase, but of course the clients saw this as well. 

Afterward, we went to lunch and I asked them both "did you notice anything about my presentation that was a little off"? And my GM started talking about typos, and the notes he had taken, I was rolling by the time he finished critiquing me. 

It took me two days, before I went into his office and told him what had happened. He laughed so hard he almost cried. To this day, I don't know how I, or the clients, were able to keep such a straight face.

Oh, wow, that is one for the record books, Rebecca . . . I don't think I would have managed with a straight face, LOL.  Kudos to you for your composure!

I still laugh every time I think about it.

This is less about a sales call but more about a client calling the station.

The caller was a fellow named Happy Shahan.  He was a man of few words and well known locally.  In lieu of saying "This is Happy...", he'd just state his name.  The new receptionist answers the phone with a gleeful cheeriness, hears the caller say "Happy Shahan".  She answers "And a Happy Shahan to you too, sir." 

Happy Shahan, now deceased, was known for trying to make the world aware of Brackettville, Texas by building a replica of The Alamo which was used in the movie of the same name.  All of this because of Happy.

He promoted Country artists too (Johnny Rodriquez was one).  And he had an annual event each year at his ranch.  He also did some bit part acting.

Also humorous was our news director reading a press release from Happy Shahan's Alamo Village when I was a DJ in Eagle Pass.  It announced a Labor Day "Grand Prix Race".  The problem was our news director knew Spanish better than English and nothing of French, so she continued to speak "Prix" phonetically as in English.  I lost it when she concluded by saying "bring the kids to watch the Grand Prix Race Monday at Alamo Village".