Soft Sell From the Nation’s Heartland

LAMONI, Iowa —  Tammy Lane is making a sales call that will probably fail.

“Hello, Mr. Patterson? This is Tammy Lane. We’re making courtesy calls today,” she begins.

A computer screen in her tiny cubicle tells her what to say. Variations are not encouraged. Anyone with a phone has gotten a call like hers, including Mr. Patterson.

Lane would like him to buy insurance that would pay his credit card debt in case of disability. It’s only 87 cents a month per $100 balance. Mr. Patterson is not interested. Lane makes a second try--it’s in the script--and when Mr. Patterson declines, she thanks him and hangs up.

“It’s soft sell,” said 48-year-old Doris Leeper, who, like Lane, is a telemarketer at Professional Communications Inc. “You tell people you’re a telemarketer, they think we’ll just hammer and hammer at them until we get their money. We’re not sleazy . . . with visors, dialing and dialing. We’re not the type that sneak out of town at night.”

In fact, more and more are coming to town, especially small towns in Iowa.

The Iowa Department of Development doesn’t keep count but said the number has grown by several thousand in the last few years.

The companies are drawn by the ready pool of workers, many of whose farm jobs have disappeared as family farms give way to large-scale corporate operations, said Chip Eagle, director of Budget Marketing of Des Moines, which sells magazines by phone.

The bland, unaccented Midwestern speech is a plus too, he said: “If I’m running a room in Brooklyn, that accent will annoy . . . people in Mississippi.”

One company alone, APAC of Cedar Rapids, has 5,000 employees in 29 Iowa cities. ProCom has 150 workers in two towns.

The state keeps a close eye on telemarketers. Attorney General Tom Miller has made Iowa a leader in battling telephone scams. A nationwide sting last year that netted 422 arrests in 15 states was modeled on Iowa’s practice of tapping the telephone lines of scam victims.

The state enacted new regulations this year to deter “boiler-room” telemarketers, who set up skeleton operations that allow them to flee once victims or authorities become suspicious.

“Our efforts are to try to make it a safe business for both the customer and telemarketers as well. Frankly, we have found that honest telemarketers welcome our enforcement efforts,” said Miller’s spokesman, Bob Brammer. “Telemarketing is an important business in Iowa. They’re good workers. It’s a good setting for this kind of business.”

Lane, 31, of Blythdale, Mo., certainly won’t sneak out of town. Like most of the others at ProCom, Lane has lived in the area all her life. She followed her husband to work on a hog farm, then made electrical harnesses at a now-closed factory and is raising three boys, 3 to 11. She has worked at ProCom for 4 1/2 years.

“It would be awfully hard to go somewhere else. People here are really there when you need them,” Lane said.

ProCom operates from a metal building in the middle of rolling pasture and cropland. There are several rows of cubicles, each with a computer monitor. None is personalized, since workers don’t have assigned stations.

A breath after Mr. Patterson’s rejection, Lane talks to another customer, one of 30 or more per hour she will contact. An automatic dialer weeds out answering machines and busy signals.

It’s not an easy job. ProCom Vice President Leanna Martin said the market is saturated and turndowns are frequent.

But Lane and the others are doing well today. The goal with the credit card company is to get three sales per hour per caller. Lane is well above that.

Starting pay at ProCom is $5.50 an hour. That will rise by $1 for workers who stick around a year and maybe up to $7.50 an hour after three or four years. Sellers who are “above goal” get bonuses, perhaps a quarter a sale.

It’s important income for Shari Baker, 35, of Hatfield, Mo., a mother of 18- and 13-year-old boys. Her husband runs a small farm, but times are hard.

“This is more or less the main income right now,” she said.

It’s the only income for Travis Shields, 18, of Lamoni, who is earning money to return to college. Like the others, he said the hang-ups and rude receptions are frustrating.

“Sometimes, you get on the phone and you don’t even say who you are and they hang up,” he said.

Considering that, the low pay and the frequent rejections, turnover is high.

“It’s a difficult environment. It takes a unique person to do it,” Martin said.

“I hope people understand, these people are trying to sell a valuable product. They’re not trying to intrude on somebody’s personal life. And people should also realize, our company and companies like it have helped a lot of rural communities hold on to jobs.”