Over the last few days I have had phone calls trying to get me to switch my power, phone calls asking why I have not been spending money with Betfair and calls asking if I want a new mobile phone contract. As you might guess, each and every one of these was unsolicitored and in no way encouraged by myself and surprisingly I did not take up any of these ?great? offers. So who buys over the phone these days?

The amount of calls got me thinking who actually buys anything over the phone these days? Surely we are buying more and more goods and services online, where we know who we are dealing with and more importantly we have somewhere to go back to if it all goes wrong. The days of the massive call centre sales teams are numbered with more and more customers choosing to go online and investigate the best deals for themselves, but will we be any worse off when the call centres disappear?

Personally I have found every single unsolicitored call which I have taken to be a waste of time, indeed there have been moments when I have deliberately kept the caller talking for long periods of time without buying anything, just to see how determined they were. I have also taken many phone calls where the ?salesperson? has no record of who I am, but they have my number on a ?list? ? and can still beat my current mobile phone deal, whatever that may be!

These sales people are actually prepared to talk all day and all night if they can sense a sale, but surely they must be under pressure in the current climate? Perhaps you might like to post your stories and experiences with regards to cold calling, and hopefully we might even find one call which was successful and resulted in a sale.