How Lays and Pringles Made Me Leave a Sales Account

I will never forget how Lays and Pringles gave me the hardest days when I was a call center agent.

I worked in an account that sells customized computers. This account was known to be generous to their agents by giving different freebies per week. So if you have a number of completed sales in a day, you’ll surely get home with a lot in your hands.

I will never forget the second week of February 2002. That week was tagged as the ‘chips’ week because the client will give away a large bag full of (Lays and Pringles) chips for every completed sale. Everyone was very excited to hit their target because of those treats.

And so I took calls and did everything to make a sale.

One, two, three hours had passed, sad to say that I never completed any. Just when I was about to ask for the sale, they will respond with either, “No, I won’t get anything from you today, I’m just shopping around” or “I’ll just think about it.”

Those lines seemed to echo in every call that I took that night.

But when I glanced at my teammates’ workstations, I noticed that they have those bags. I just said to myself that I’ll be fine and I will definitely close a sale later.

I continued to concentrate on my work, had my lunch and took calls again. But still, there was no luck for me.

And so I went out of the building (on my last break), ran into the nearest convenience store and bought those chips instead. It was never the same size though, but it brought my confidence back.
It was just one of those nights that I had a zero sale.

Guess what happened next? I resigned a week after that night because I believe that I’ll be more productive somewhere else. I know that I might land another call center job after, but I will never let myself to be profiled and join a sales account again.

Note:

I shared this experience in a Leadership Training that I attended recently. This story meant to reiterate my point on two things:

1.) That proper profiling is an important part of recruitment process in a call center to reduce attrition rate and;

2.) That call center agents might ‘value’ things that are significant to them even if it’s not pricey. Based on my experience, it’s not about having those bag of chips to bring home. Instead, it’s the success value that’s attached on receiving those goodies. That attached value is significant because it might make or break an agent’s motivation in terms of performance.

Again, in my experience, it made me realize that I should not profiled for a sales account.

What’s your take on this? What are your other sources of motivation aside from monetary compensation? I’d love to hear your answers here.

Till next post,