I once worked for a call center that had rather stiff and unfair upsell goals. As I later found out, they made them even higher than the client we were working for actually demanded in the hopes to get more money for more sales.

The problem was that the client we worked for was an Internet provider who hadn’t expanded or upgraded their network for a very long time. Actually, they’d even sold several areas of their network to other providers, so it was really hard to even get one customer on the line where upsell was even possible, and the few we got often had their reasons why they didn’t expand their services already or were not eligible for an upgrade for reasons like bad payment habits or stuff like that.

To make it even harder, we were a service hotline where people would call when their Internet didn’t work. Upsells in that environment are a very delicate affair that have to be handled carefully or the customer will be rightfully pissed.

Still, our manager, who had no more knowledge about proper sales techniques than a footstool, and her boss, who knew a lot about outbound sales but had no idea about upsells in an inbound setting, were convinced that if people would just offer more, the sales would go up.

I am a certified sales trainer. My own numbers have always been high in other settings because I know how to identify possible customers and how to find the perfect contracts for them. Also, I could talk quite convincingly without being pushy and made proper callbacks when customers wanted time to think stuff over.

Management then wanted me to demonstrate that it was possible to upsell 30% of all callers in one day by doing it myself. I showed them my marketing analysis from the previous three days. Our best team —- which I had just trained for sales and where everyone was really doing their best — had managed to get a 5% upsell rate. From the whole lot of customer accounts, our system had only flagged 10% as ready for an upgrade, which means better service was available to them if they wanted it. I had personally checked all customers that weren’t upgraded on those days and found out that if I subtracted all those blocked from all upsells, only 8% of the callers could have been upsold, and the team managed to get 5 % of them to get new contracts. That was an excellent rate!

This meant that 30% was absolutely impossible! There weren’t even enough customers to sell to!

Still, my management demanded that I try it, and I told there was them no way in h***. They were still convinced it was doable, so our boss and my manager decided they’d do it themselves. They took an eight-hour shift and announced that they’d prove to the whole company that it was possible to get a 30% upsell rate in only one day, not even realizing that time wasn’t a factor in this.

Neither of them even made one. Single. Sale.

I later made an analysis of their callers’ accounts. They could have gotten a maximum of 2% of those who could have an upgrade would have taken it. Every other account was either non-eligible or it wasn’t technically possible.

I let the sales team do callbacks to the 2% and they made some sales. The customers who took the deals said they didn’t like the people who they’d talked to before; they were too pushy.

I quit shortly after that when management started calling people who couldn’t make the goal into the office to berate them for their “laziness”.

I’m all in for sales. I believe it’s okay to make offers to adult people, telling them their options and letting them decide if they want to buy or not. And if the product is good, I don’t mind pushing it a little.

But in the end, however good you are, it’s the customers who decide, and no salesman can magically make a sale that’s literally not there.

I was friends with one guy from the clients and they told me they separated from the company when suddenly customers complained about getting contract verifications for contracts they’ve never agreed to. The center had to close after that.

I still don’t know if those two sleazy bosses upsold people who didn’t consent or if they pressured their employees into desperation so they did it to get peace. I’m just glad I could leave in time and feel very sorry for those who couldn’t leave and were desperate for the job.

I’m a sales manager again. But at least we sell to customers who actually call to order stuff and not people who initially called to get something repaired that didn’t work.

I work in a dealership. One of the service advisors brings a customer up to me, the cashier. The customer is an old woman. He talks to her a little bit about what they did and the recommended service for next time. I wait for them to finish up before I talk. The service advisor hands me the paperwork and keys and goes back to his desk. The customer tries to reach through the gap in the plastic separating us to get her keys, but I move them out of her reach. It’s policy to not let the customer have their keys until after they have paid.

Me: “Hello. It’s [total]; just go ahead and stick your card in there.”

The customer huffs but sticks her card in. The machine spits out the credit card slip for her to sign. I also mark where on the paperwork she needs to sign.

Me: “Okay, I need a signature here and here.”

Customer: *Suddenly snaps* “You have an attitude; you need to back off.”

Me: “Uh—”

Customer: “Ever since I got here you’ve had an attitude. And you need to change this. That’s not me. Change the name.”

Families tend to share cars, so we usually only keep the main driver’s name on file, but we have no problem if a spouse or child brings the car in for service.

Me: “I can’t change it, but I can ask [Service Advisor] to change it once we’re done.”

The customer storms over to her service advisor and drags him back up to the cashier desk. She refuses to sign the paperwork until he changes it to her name. This takes a few minutes. She’s super huffy the whole time and glaring at me. I think I hear her mumble something about young people being useless, but I’m not sure since I took a step back to take some deep breaths. I turn to the computer to finish up the task I was doing before she got there.

Eventually, the service advisor returns with the changed paperwork. She huffs some more as she signs it. There are two copies of the paperwork: a blue copy for the customer and a white copy for us. The only difference is the color of the paper. I take the white copy and hand her the blue copy and her keys.

Customer: “I need a copy of that.”

Me: “Yes, it’s right here.”

Customer: “No, I need a copy of that that I signed.”

Service Advisor: “This is your copy here; it’s the exact same thing. It explains everything that was done to the vehicle.”

Customer: “No! I need a copy of that! That’s different, what I signed. I need a copy of what I signed!”

I grab the white copy and throw it into the copier. While my back is to her, I take some more deep breaths because I know she is trying to goad me into a reaction. She watches me do this. I hand her the copy of the white copy.

Customer: “This isn’t the copy.”

Me: “Yes, it is. That’s where you signed right there.”

Customer: “No, it’s not. Show me the original.”

I grab the original and show her that, yes, it is a copy of the white copy.

Customer: “Hmph. I guess it’s okay. Where are my keys?”

They’re literally right in front of her. I move them closer to her.

Me: “Right here. Have a good day.”

I step back and return to the computer and the service advisor returns to his desk. With no one else around to yell at, the customer huffs and leaves. As soon as she’s gone, the service advisor comes back up to me.

Service Advisor: “Man, I hope when I’m that old I’m not cranky like that.”

Me: “Same.”

The only thing I can think of that set her off was that it was early in the morning and I’m not perky at that hour, which she interpreted as an attitude. Or she was just looking to pick a fight.

In Germany, we have these things called “grill huts” in some places. They are very simple little houses somewhere out in nature, and you can have barbecue parties there. They are public and can be rented from the town for a small fee and with a deposit.

Three years ago, I worked at the front desk in a holiday resort in Belgium, and we had little holiday houses that we rented out. There was a maximum of eight people, and you had to pay extra for more than six people. You could NOT rent them for just one night because we had to have the whole little house cleaned before the next guests came anyway, and that just doesn’t work. We had rooms and a camping site open to people who only wanted to stay for a night, but not those holiday houses.

Because we spoke German, many people didn’t understand that this site was in Belgium and assumed that everything worked the same as in Germany.

One day, I took a call from a German woman.

Customer: “How much would it be to rent one of those grill huts for one night?”

Me: “Do you mean the holiday houses? We don’t rent those out for single nights.”

Customer: “But I just want to have my barbecue party there one evening! How is it fair that I have to rent it for two days?”

Me: “Excuse me. What do you mean by ‘barbecue party’?”

Customer: “I want to have a barbecue with my friends. We wouldn’t even sleep there! Can’t you make an exception?”

Me: “I am very sorry, but no, you have to rent it for two days if you would like to have your barbecue here. Also, how many friends are you bringing? Because we do have an eight-person limit per house.”

Customer: “Just eight people? But I want to bring twenty! What kind of a grill hut is that?”

Me: “Ma’am, they’re not grill huts. They are holiday homes. And we can’t have twenty people in one holiday home. I am very sorry.”

Customer: “But we don’t even want to use it as a holiday home! They are not even sleeping there! This will be way less effort for you. Why can’t we have it for just one night?”

Me: “Because we don’t rent them out for one night and because they aren’t grill huts. I’m sorry but this won’t work that way.”

She continued on and on, and at some point, thankfully, my colleague took over.

We had to explain to her several times that they were not grill huts and she still did not get it. She also had the audacity to be upset about our rates. Yes, obviously, a fully furnished holiday home with bedrooms, bathrooms, and a real kitchen would be more expensive than a grill hut. And also, why would we make an exception and rent it to you for one night, if we know you are going to bring at least twenty people when only eight are allowed, it is probably going to be loud and other guests will complain, there will be alcohol, and you don’t want to use our restaurant OR hire our cook who can prepare sides and barbecue for you in our paved area (where it is SAFE to barbecue) because you are cheap? We know people probably WILL sleep there, even if you say they won’t, and even if they don’t, we will still have a lot of cleaning to do with twenty people walking in and out of the house to use the fridge or bathroom, so NO, it would not be less effort for us.

It was the middle of a very hot summer, and it would be a fire hazard to have twenty probably drunk people just barbecuing probably somewhere in the middle of our area. IT WAS JUST NOT A FREAKING GRILL HUT!

I just don’t know what some people are thinking.

I worked at a superstore where we wore red shirts with tan pants. We often had customers approach us when we were off the clock — trying to buy food for lunch, shopping after work, etc.

Management told us to wear another shirt under our red shirts to avoid this; it never helped.

I once had someone yelling at me to help them while I had a cart full of stuff and my purse as I was buying stuff after my shift.

Client: “It looks good, but I just want the text to pop more. I want more contrast.”

The text is white on black.

Client: “Can we change it to, like, a gray?”

Me: “Gray on black?”

Client: “Yeah, I think that would make it really stand out.”

Fast forward five color changes.

Client: “I think white would look best here.”