Dialing for Dollars

But enough of love and war, I need to get back to finding new ways to make money, since my perfume career had come to an abrupt halt, and I have yet to start earning money consulting to small businesses or by resurrecting Empire State Chocolate. A return to the insurance career which I started in mid July seemed like the logical choice.

The Lawd/Universe has a sick sense of humor. As I have mentioned many times, I was the girl who could barely sell Girl Scout Cookies. If I invented sushi, I would call it dead raw fish. My sales challenges contributed to the cryonization of Empire State Chocolate. I have overcome and mastered many things in life that came very difficult to me: networking mixers, the Spanish language, driving a stick shift, learning to do so in the mountains of Spain with driving instructors who mostly speak Catalan, which I do not. In some ways I consciously and unconsciously implored the Lawd/Universe to help me develop sales skills, preferably at no cost to me.

In some ways, the Lawd/Universe granted my wish. I began looking for jobs to supplement my income in June. Generating Leads for the Pahn Insurance Agency presented itself as my first and only opportunity. I will not sugar coat it: it is tele-marketing. Mr. Pahn gives me a list of 100 or 200 businesses and I have to called them all and cajole them to not hang up on me, revealhow many people they employ, allow me to tempt them with the prospect of getting a better benefit value for the buck, and then provide me with the name, age, zip code, and dependent information for each employee. Easier said than done, since one in ten is disconnected, about three in ten can barely make payroll, and about three in ten would never spend the money giving their employees health insurance. Of the two in ten who do consider providing health insurance for their employees, at least one of them gets it from their brother-in-law or best friend from high school, and would never consider changing even if it saves them thousands of dollars per year. People do not like to change, even when it behooves them.

The irony of the situation is not lost on me. I work as a 1099 contractor, which means my “employer,” Mr. Pahn does not provide me with any benefits, and I call up struggling business owners and attempt to convince them to provide benefits to their employees, something I could obviously not afford to do myself, when I had employees.

Although I do not particularly like what I do, I genuinely like Mr. Pahn. I learn from him. He has the ultimate sales personality. He tells me to always agree with the customer, something I never would have thought to do. I respect Mr. Pahn for attempting to do things differently for this economy. He says he doesn’t know what’s happening, he said it was easier to make money back in the height of the 70s gas crisis than it is now. He asked me if he thought it would make difference if I bribe people with a $5 Starbucks card if they give me the census data. I told Mr. Pahn that I was no marketing genius, but when I struggled to make payroll, a $5 Starbucks card would not be enough to send me on a health insurance shopping spree for my employees.

Still, we press on. I have worked my way up. When I started off I made $5 per hour, and $10 per census. After I received three censuses, I made $7 per hour, and $13 per census. Finally, after I received eleven censuses, I made $10 per hour, and $20 per census. At least I felt like I was on easy street, but getting there was not easy. People hung up on me and said mean things, which I did not like, although the tutelage of Boss J helped me to get over that.

Then Mr. Pahn changed the rules. From now on, he would only accept censuses for businesses with at least three employees, and we must get at least one census for every ten hours of calling. Since I already have two censuses, that means I can mindlessly call for twenty hours this week and get paid for it no matter what. Is the universe great or what?