Money Money Money
How I First Got Into Sales
It was a hot summer In ‘02
“Is that crane driver naked?” Phil asked, pointing up.
I looked up at a distant crane on top of a skyscraper and a crane driver barely visible to the naked eye. When I looked back down, half of my curried egg sandwich on wholemeal bread was gone, and Phil was happily munching it down as if nothing had happened.
I observed his barely touched Greek salad, now abandoned between us on the brick wall.
Phil was what we humans call a kleptomaniac — a somewhat cruel name for someone who can’t stop stealing things. He was by no means a maniac of any kind. He lived his klepto existence as if it was no more than a slightly inconvenient mole on his left bollock.
However, there was nothing insignificant about my curried egg on wholemeal. Since I learned the secret recipe from an Indian friend in 2002, these legendary sandwiches had grown in reputation. The secret was a special masala known as ‘Kitchen King’.
It was around the same time that I had first met Phil.
***
Just after the September 11 attacks, I got into Buddhism, split up with my girlfriend of five years, and went back to live with my parents.
I had given up alcohol, knowing without a doubt that there were no Buddhist drinkers in the world. But, I was smoking easily twenty bongs a day and masturbating about an equal amount. I wasn’t the depressed kind of weed addict. I wasn’t smoking to hide some sort of sadness. I just loved it.
From my mid-forties, clean, boring life perspective, I look back on those days of wanking and smoking with a sense of nostalgia. It was a time of luminous freedom.
The problem with cannabis is that it is expensive. To make matters worse, I was also a tobacco smoker. So I had to make money. The dole wasn’t going to cover these damn habits.
I was out picking up from my weed dealer Ben. This guy was always god damn late — often because he was picking up himself. I used to call him Aquaman behind his back because, besides lateness, he was known for his wet deals.
In other words, he would sell you weed that wasn’t properly dried and cured.
Water weighs more than weed, so I would get ripped off. Still, I knew Ben wasn’t the grower, so he was also getting ripped off.
Smoking wet weed is a fucking downer. Wet weed sits in your chest while overly dry weed gets you in the throat. Still, it gets you bent, and the only other choice is to dry the bastard out, meaning you end up with four grams instead of the seven you have paid for. For me, I’d rather smoke the water. At least then you know you are getting some kind of value.
I was strolling down Acland St in St Kilda waiting for Ben when I saw a little sign taped to a pole:
Outgoing People wanted
Earn up to $2000 a week
No Experience Necessary
St Kilda Marketing
I was almost certain this was some kind of sexual job — two grand a week and no experience necessary. Outgoing people? What did it all mean? I wasn’t up for doing anything too hard, and I figured sexual jobs must pay better than ordinary jobs. So I called the number and arranged a meeting.
***
“Frank Bird,” I said into the intercom. “I’ve got an appointment with Wilf.”
The front door buzzed, and I walked out of the steaming heat into a cool echo chamber of a foyer. I got into a lift that looked like it needed a good service and checked myself out in the mirror.
I looked like a drug addict in my borrowed tweed suit, three sizes too large and covered in a thin layer of dog and cat hair. I had shaving rashes on my face after shaving for the first time in months. My hair had the mild grease of a masturbating weed junkie.
When Wilf met me in the reception, my fears disappeared. Wilf looked like John Candy during a breakup. He had some kind of yellow powder on his chin, and the top half of his t-shirt read,
I’m a sexy bastard
Wilf was by no means a sexy bastard, but I admired his confidence.
When we returned to his office, the origin of the orange powder was revealed as a giant bag of cheap corn puffs on Wilf’s desk.
“Coffee?” he asked.
I shook my head. I had already downed a Red Bull on the way over and was feeling decidedly paranoid that I was about to be sodomised on film by Wilf.
“Do you know what we do?” Wilf asked before stuffing a handful of corn puffs into his oversized mouth.
“Porn?” I asked mentally.
“We sell electricity,” he said before I could answer out loud.
“Okay.”
Wilf went on to explain that the people in the tiny call centre behind him were calling strangers out of the blue and convincing them to switch over their electricity to this company called Stripe Energy.
He further explained that the people were not paid any salary but worked exclusively on commission, a fixed amount of money paid by Wilf’s company for every customer they switched over.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. At first, I wondered if it was legal. Next, I wondered how you would go about starting such a random conversation.
Wilf said I would soon pick it up after a few days on the job.
“Is there any kind of training?” I asked.
He told me training was all on the job. I was to sit next to one of his guys for two days listening and watching. Then I was on my own.
After the interview, I walked down to St Kilda beach and sparked up a tiny doobie.
Inhaling, I listened to the sound of the ocean and closed my eyes. I was pumped about the job. I knew I could talk to people. Wilf said that his best people were earning well over $2k and were only working two days a week. This was the perfect job for me.
The ocean was beautiful. The wind blew on my face. I pulled the tweed jacket over my head to keep out the scorching sun.
Then, the weed kicked in.
Maybe this marketing thing wasn’t such a good idea. I mean, I couldn’t really talk to people. I wasn’t much of a socialiser. Maybe I should study journalism or something. I much preferred writing to reading.
I strolled up and ate a falafel. Then I caught a tram home.
That night I watched the Boiler Room, that Vin Diesel movie and was pumped up again for about five minutes.
***
On the day of the curried egg incident, Phil had his natural brown curly hair.
But when I was first stuck with him at St Kilda Marketing, he had bleached blonde straight, slightly spiky hair. He looked like a knobhead from Green Day. He also wore some kind of coral necklace and a rip curl t-shirt. The dickhead thought he was a surfer even though he couldn’t surf a fucking puddle on a rainy day.
“You can fucking listen to me, no problem, Bro,” Phil assured me in his thick New Zealand accent. “But I must tell ya that this is my last week on the phones here.”
He looked around at the other losers in the call centre.
“You wanna know why?”
“Not really.” I genuinely didn’t.
He told me anyway.
“Couple of reasons, actually. First, that fat cunt Wilf never pays anyone. The prick owes me about two grand. Secondly—”
He paused and dialled a number as Joel, Phil’s scrawny, suit-wearing number two, came walking past.
I got the sense that everyone in this stinking, cramped place was a junkie of some kind, except one guy — Reuben.
Reuben was a slick-looking Indian guy with long, greasy black hair.
Rueben sat in the corner, away from everyone.
Reuben never spoke to his colleagues.
Reuben would play DVDs on a mini player while he worked. His headset was on one ear and his ear pod in the other, listening to vintage action movies while he worked.
Reuben wasn’t a junkie.
But the rest were.
“5623 4944,” came the voice on the other side of the phone.
I never understood why people answered the phone with their phone number. Kids these days wouldn’t understand, but people did it all the time back then.
It’s like, I know Motherfucker — I just called you.
“Yes, hello, Madam. This is Phil from Stripe Energy. How are you today?”
“Not interested, thanks,” the woman said, and she hung up.
Phil reached into his bag and pulled out a muesli bar.
“You want some?” he asked.
I shook my head.
“Do you often get people hanging up on you?” I asked.
“Not that many,” he said. “Probably only one in three.”
That sounded like a lot to me.
“Anyway,” Phil said, continuing his conversation from before. “Electricity is good, but it’s too soon. There just no fucking innovation, you know?”
I didn’t know.
“I mean, we can’t offer anyone a better product than what they have now. We can only compare their rates. And that’s good, but it’s not a blinder.”
I still didn’t know, but I listened anyway. I got the sense Phil knew what he was talking about. I looked for my pen to start writing down his advice, but I couldn’t find it.
“I’ve been doing sales for about five years,” he said.
“One thing I’ve learned is that you can’t make big dollars by selling somebody something better than their already functional product.”
“You can’t?”
“No, What they got has to be broken. If it’s broken, they will buy off you if you offer them the solution.”
It kind of made sense.
“Do you have a pen?” I asked him.
He pulled my pen out of his pocket and passed it back to me, but I didn’t say anything.
The phone was ringing again.
“Hello, Burton residence.”
“Yes, good afternoon. This is Phil calling from Stripe Energy. How are things?”
“Yeah, not bad, Phil. How are you?”
No hang-up. That was a good start.
I noticed Phil was tapping his foot like a speed addict. It wasn’t surprising, given the stack of Red Bull cans on his desk. The trouble was, it made my writing shakey like a pensioner’s.
“The reason for my call—” Phil continued, “—is that I believe that my company has better electricity rates than yours. Grab a bill, and I’ll do a comparison for you.”
I couldn’t believe how straightforward Phil was. I always thought salespeople had to have the gift of the gab. Perhaps I watched the Boiler Room too much. This was just too simple to be true.
“Nah, I’ll be alright. Thanks, Phil,” the man said and hung up the phone.
At that point, the job pretty much seemed impossible. I took out a bottle of water from my bag and took a few swigs, belched then turned to Phil, who had pulled up a website for a company called ‘Salesforce’.
“This is a tough gig, innit?” I asked Phil.
“Nah, Bro. It’s fucking easy as long as you realise two things. First, only ten out of a hundred people will give you the time of day and two, look at your results over a month, not over a few days.”
I wrote it down word for word.
“Ya see this,” Phil said, pointing to the screen.
“These fuckers are working for that big company Yellow Mobile. This shit is where it’s at right now. It’s a mobile phone that you can use as a home phone, AND it’s on the CDMA network rather than this piece of shit GSM system. Its seamless technology.”
“So, what does that mean?” I asked.
“Fuck knows,” he said. “But it’s gotta be different to what they have now, right? Every bastard is talking about these things. So, anyway, Im off to work for them next week.”
“Okay, fair enough,” I said.
I didn’t say too much as I didn’t want Phil to get distracted from teaching me the phones. I sat and waited for the next call.
“Thing is,” Phil said. “It’s not a phone job. It’s door to door. My cousin Ally is doing it. Doing this piece of shit Stripe Energy gig for Wilf, I’m pulling eight hundred a week if I’m lucky. Ally is fully three and a half K without breaking a sweat.”
“3.5 a month? That’s nice.”
“3.5 a week, Bro,” he said.
That sounded alright — but without breaking a sweat?
I fucking doubted that.
