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December 2009 | Volume 28 / Number 7
Publisher's Outlook

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Call Center Farewell and Time for the Changing of the Guard
Part II



By Nadji Tehrani,
Chairman and Founder, Technology Marketing Corp.


After 28 years of industry leadership, it’s time to ask my son Rich, to write my “Publisher’s Outlook.”


In The Beginning Wow, it has been 28 years?? It’s hard to believe!! Where did the time go? It has been an incredible ride to be at the center of a market that we started, grew and evolved to the point where it is a global multitrillion dollar market and changed the way all companies do business and allows consumers to have closer connections with the companies they purchase from.


It has been tremendously rewarding to be involved in taking this industry global, ranking many of the players via a number of awards and, moreover, helping service agencies get on the map and become the heart of a multibillion dollar outsourcing/BPO market. How exciting it has been to apply for and receive a registered trademark on the term “Telemarketing” back in 1982, when it was barely even beginning! This was five years before the term “call center” even became popular. Moreover, watching this publication evolve with an industry that changed the world of commerce and communications has been even more exciting and rewarding.


The plaque presented to me reads as follows:

  • 25 Years of Excellence
  • Presented to Mr. Nadji Tehrani
  • Teleservices Industry Founder, Leader and Visionary May 24, 2006

“In just 25 years, we went from non-existent to a proud industry, which laid the foundation for every corporation in America and around the globe.”

“Every company is a call center!”

“Quality and marketing are not part-time jobs.”


How We Got Started

In the early 1980s, I became disenchanted with advertising sales done by my traveling salesmen trying to sell for our magazines.


One day, I decided to pick up the telephone and try and sell something. Lo and behold, I was able to sell 3-4 pages of advertising during approximately one hour of phone calls. In order to confirm the telephone would really work, I decided to spend one hour a day selling on the phone and the rest of the time managing TMC. By the end of the week, I had sold 15 pages of advertisements with no big expense accounts, no car allowance, no gas payments, no hotel, no reservations, nothing.


Mistake #1

The first thing I did was bring in my two outside sales people and put them on the phone and asked them to try to sell by telephone. By the end of the week, both salesmen quit. At that time, I did not know why they quit, and now I know. The answer, the skills you need to sell by phone are totally different than the skills you need to sell in person.


Mistake #2


I interviewed various candidates in person, none of whom could sell anything by phone. Once again, at that time, I had no idea why, but today, we know that if you want a telephone sales person to be successful, you must interview them on the phone.


In desperation, I decided to ask one of our secretaries to get on the phone and try to sell something. She was extremely reluctant and wanted to have nothing to do with selling. But, I asked her to come to my office and I told her, “you have a $500 bonus if you change your attitude towards selling and genuinely try selling before you decide you don’t like it.” And, to take the pressure away, I told her, “You don’t have to sell anything. I just want you to give it a try.” She asked, “I don’t have to sell anything?” I said, “That is correct, but I want a good effort.”


So, in this manner, she got on the phone and, lo and behold, she started selling more and more ads every day and sales went up by 50 percent within the next three months. The only expense we had was the telephone charges, which were practically negligible. Now I became encouraged knowing that someone else besides me can sell by phone, so the first thing we did was apply for a registered trademark for the term “Telemarketing.” Soon thereafter, the trademark was granted and, in June 1982, we started Telemarketing® magazine, which laid the foundation for what is now a multibillion dollar industry.


After the first issue, we ran out of things to write about. My editor came to my office and asked “are you sure this is an industry?” My answer was, “no, but we are going to make it an industry.”


With Blood, Sweat and Tears We Got This Industry Going.

Soon thereafter, in the spring of 1983, in this editorial, I called for the automation of the telemarketing industry and, sure enough, many entrepreneurs agreed with me and started developing all kinds of different software and hardware products to automate the handling of calls.


In 1985, we launched TBT (Telemarketing and Business Telecommunications), the world’s first call center event in Atlanta, Georgia. To make a long story short, this show was extremely well received and, in fact, conferences sold out and people were actually standing in the hallway listening to the lectures inside the rooms. At that time, I recall receiving a phenomenal testimonial from the president of one of the software manufacturing companies which wrote me the following testimonial:


“Dear Nadji:
Congratulations on the success of TBT ’86!


Early, Cloud & Company applauds your grasping the leadership baton on behalf of the young telemarketing industry. Early, Cloud & Company will be back for TBT ’87 as we had a very successful show.


To date, we have proposed 3.4 million dollars as a direct result of the contracts from TBT ’86. As a vendor, the show was significant – not only did we go through 500 brochures in the first hour, but you brought decision makers to Atlanta which we had direct access to.


ECC applauds your leadership, my compliments to you and your staff.”


Kindest regards,
John P. Early

President
Early, Cloud & Company


As such, TBT kept growing and growing and with it the industry kept growing and growing and our magazine and seminars and conferences continued to grow and grow.


Going Global


Then came the opportunity to go global. I was invited to take the show and the magazine to various countries, among them, Mexico, Brazil, Japan (twice), Rotterdam, Belgium, Canada, London, Hong Kong and France. In fact, our Telemarketing magazine was translated into Japanese for several years, into Portuguese for use in Brazil.


The Evolution


TBT eventually evolved into CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) and then to Communication Solutions, which eventually spun off ITEXPO. Thanks to readers like you, ITEXPO has been a classic success for the last 10 years, with happy attendees and exhibitors, all learning and buying, selling and networking. More recently, ITEXPO has seen exciting collocated events representing some of the most important new areas of technology markets:

  • Smart Grid Summit
  • 4GWE Conference
  • M2M Evolution Conference (Machine to Machine)
  • Cloud Communications Summit at ITEXPO
  • Virtualization Summit at ITEXPO
  • Digium|Asterisk World
  • Startup Camp Telephony at ITEXPO

As such, ITEXPO continues to grow as the industry’s top destination for information and the single place where you can see all of the important companies in a variety of markets.


I Could Really Write A Book


How could I possibly squeeze the excitement of the industry and the evolution of media we have witnessed in the last 28 years in a few pages of this editorial? It cannot be done in a few pages. But, I could provide the very few highlights. However, to do justice to it, I should write a book; maybe some day I will do just that!


A Few Highlights


The Japanese exposure


As I indicated earlier, I was fortunate enough to be approached by a reputable Japanese publisher who visited us in our offices and asked to translate our magazine in Japanese. I was impressed with the charm of our new partner and agreed to do so. In a matter of weeks, our magazines were going to Japan and then the translated version in Japanese would come back to us. This was an exceptional feeling, as we were producing a publication that Japan, one of the most advanced countries in the world, was interested in translating. Moreover, I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak repeatedly at related industry events in the country. The country of Japan, with its rich history, was something beyond the scope of my imagination and it was an honor to have been invited. The conferences themselves went exceptionally well and I must share with you a funny thing that happened during one of my presentations:





First of all, the Japanese requested that I speak for five minutes and then stop for translation, and then continue to speak again, and so on. During one of these five-minute speeches, I presented a joke to the audience, the majority of whom did not understand English. However, after the translation, the Japanese laughed as hard as possible. I was pretty shocked by this reaction, as the people at the conference seemed so serious up until that point and the joke wasn’t funny enough to warrant this reaction. I went to the translator later and asked, if he modified my joke. He told me he said, “Our speaker has told a joke and I want everyone to laugh as hard as possible.” Anyway, we made our presentations in Tokyo, Kyoto, and other cities, and were invited a couple of years later to come back to do it again.


The Brazilian Experience


At one of our TBT events, I met with a gentleman, believe it or not, by the name of David Letterman. He came and insisted that he wanted to take our TBT show to Brazil, and made many promises that that would be a tremendous opportunity for all of us. I agreed, and we took our show along with three of our top speakers – Steve Riddel, Judy McKee and Robin Richards – and it turned out to be another fantastic success. During my personal keynote, I talked about the differences between the requirements of inbound and outbound telephone calls. At the end of my speech (after one hour), someone raised his hand and asked, “what do you mean by outbound?” In other words, no one had a clue about this industry. I thought it was partly funny and, on the other hand, I gave him credit for wanting to learn.


The Mexico City Experience


In the early 90s, as usual, I stayed late in my office to get caught up with work. At about 8pm one Monday evening, the phone rang and a gentleman from Mexico City was calling me. The conversation went something like this: “Señor Tehrani, I want to come to America and spend one million dollars to buy telemarketing technology, and I want to build a call center in Mexico City in the next two to three months.” Then I said, “Do you know anything about the industry?” He said, “No.” I asked, “How are you going to buy one million dollars worth of technology?” He answered, “I went to the telephone company in Mexico City and told them what I wanted to do, and they showed me a copy of your magazine with your picture on it and the General Manager of the phone company told me, “If you really want to have a successful telemarketing operation, you must go and meet with this man and whatever he says, you do. Now, you tell me what to buy and I’ll buy it.”


Believe it or not, I invited him to attend our shows, I gave him all possible advice and he ignored 100 percent of everything we told him and bought whatever he felt like. Later, when I was invited by the Mexican Direct Marketing Association to come and speak to the audience, at that time, this same gentleman asked me to visit his call center. I could not believe my eyes. I noticed that everyone had a computer screen and computers on practically every station, but no one was using any of the computers and doing everything manually. I asked him, “But sir, why are these people working by hand? That is what technology is supposed to do” His answer was, “Señor Tehrani, in Mexico City, it is more important for the bankers and other customers to come and think that we are using automation than actually using the technology!”


The Domestic Experiences


Of course, with producing a magazine, running several trade shows a year and traveling around the globe, not to mention traveling to Washington D.C., working with senators and the FTC trying to save our industry from harmful legislation, there was somehow time left for me to spend a good deal of time in putting the telemarketing service agencies on the map. These folks, like the old shoemaker, were wearing shoes with holes in them while they were trying to market for everyone else. In other words, none of them had any inclination for marketing or advertising or promotion or anything of the kind.

One day, when I was traveling from Chicago to New York, I happened to be sitting next to a senior executive of one of the leading consulting companies. I asked what he did. He said he was a marketing consultant for senior management. He asked me what I did and I told him that I published Telemarketing magazine. Then he asked if that was really working and I said, you bet. I asked, “Would you recommend it to your customers to use it?” He said no. I said why not and he said a.) I don’t know anything about it b.) it’s too new c.) I don’t want to jeopardize our relationship with our customers. Then I asked why can’t you use service agencies and his answer was “what is that?”


It was then that I realized that the service agencies in America needed a tremendous marketing push. I decided to become the friend of teleservice agencies, which are now known as (teleservices/BPO companies) and came up with ideas such as Top 50 Inbound Awards, Top 50 Outbound Awards, Rising Stars Awards, as well as MVP Quality Awards, with the main objective of introducing service agencies to Corporate America. Those who won our awards received an emblem from Telemarketing magazine and used it religiously on their letterheads, online and everywhere else. For all practical purposes, this was the only claim to fame that the award winners had and one service bureau was honest with me and said, “You know, we get 75-80 percent of all of our new business from your Top 50 rankings!”


Among the elite service agencies that I worked with were WATTS Marketing of America, Gary and Mary West were the Chief Executives of this company and I was actually trained by Mary West who spent a week with me teaching me about every facet of telemarketing, inbound, outbound customer services, and more. In addition, I was later trained by Steve and Sherri Idelman on outbound technologies and later, we developed a tremendous relationship with a company called Infocision, which is owned by Gary Taylor. Since the inception of our relationship, I have noticed that Infocision, alone, has won 16 consecutive MVP Quality Awards and as such, they are indeed, one of the best, if not the best, teleservices companies in the United States.


The Greatest Joy In My Life


In my judgment, the greatest joy in life is to raise a good family, develop a great company, a great team, have many friends and have a great vision and change something in the world for the better. In other words, create something that would be superior to previous technologies and/or ways of doing things. Those of you who have followed TMC’s past know that, as technology has evolved and media has changed, we have always striven to be a change agent – helping to evangelize technologies like CTI, IP communications, Smart Grid, 4G wireless and numerous others.


Future Plans and Move to a New Building


I plan to remain at TMC with a new title of Founder and Chairman of the company. What’s exciting is that I will begin the next chapter of leading TMC at a new address in a beautiful new office. After 23 years at Technology Plaza, TMC is moving to a state-of-the-art new location at 800 Connecticut Avenue in Norwalk, Connecticut – just a few blocks away. The move is indicative of the new era begun here at TMC as we position the company to grow with the call center and CRM industries into the next decade, while expanding into new markets, building and serving new communities.


All the best to each and every one of you. Please read Rich’s editorials on this page and his blog online at tehrani.com and feel free to visit TMCnet.com often. As always, I welcome your comments. Please email them to me at nadjitehrani@tmcnet.com.


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