Once again, guest poster Rob Fraim delivers some market related humor:
Back in the 19th century when I started in this business I had to go to the company home office for several weeks of training. On one of the final days all of the rookie brokers were required to make a presentation to the class – a speech regarding the business, goals, aspirations, motivation, blah, blah.
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“Since so much of the new-guy training back at the firm where I started in the business was about sales stuff (rather than teaching us anything about investing) I wrote a song. I had my guitar with me and so instead of giving a yada-yada speech I sang my song.”
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Cold Caller Blues lyrics:
“When I got to my office this morning
I felt so all alone
My manager was waitin’ for me
He said “Boy, get on the phone.”
I’ve got the cold call blues
I’ve got the cold call blues
Got the cold call blues
They tell me I gotta pay my dues.
I got annuities, bonds, and mutual funds
Aggressive stocks, conservative ones
Options, shelters but my oh my
The problem is I’ve still got ‘em – ‘cause nobody will buy
This broker’s broke . . . give me a break.
I’ve got the cold call blues.
-Chorus, hot guitar licks, requisite cool scrunching of my face-
Co-woah-old call blues
Co-woah-old call blues
The baby needs shoes.
I’ve got the cold call blues.
What’s that you say?
Somebody here to see me?
Somebody that I cold called
And now they wanna buy?
They’ve got…four truckloads of money?
That ain’t chicken feed, honey.
It’s about a $80,000 gross.
I’ll buy a condo on the coast.
Give me the phone I wanna call some more people,
‘cause there ain’t no such thing
as the cold……call….….blue-oohs.”
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-Rob “Toast and Jam Master DJ/Leadbelly-Lardbutt-y” Fraim
Yeah 20 years ago you could call into a company and get someone significant. Now it’s exceedingly difficult to communicate in. Email is the same.
A very serious consequence of people using “information tachnology,” in this case overall productivity is lost. At a time when organizations need to be increasingly aware of ideas out there it is hard to get in. Very often the customer service department is people spouting canned responses, non standard issues don’t register.
Companies need to do 2 things. One: Have someone “data mine” incoming corrospondence, someone with analystical ability and the capacity to knock on the relevant doors, eg. some internal juice.
Two: Scan public sources, especially the net for relevant comments and issues, not being afraid to contact and intervene. The really wonderful thing about this is that with high quality blogs and the like a lot of once expensive research is being done for free. If companies start cutting their consulting fees and use the saved money to get lots of executives on google a couple hours a week, they will get a cheaper better “research product” in many cases.
David Bennett
davibennett@yahoo.com