print pageI have been told that I need to be more effusively enthusiastic about the common good bank project. So I am making an effort in that direction.
Once today when the phone rang and I answered (as usual) “Common Good Finance”, a computerized recording responded “Don’t be alarmed, but this is your final notice to get lower interest rates on your credit card. Press 1 to speak to an agent.” So I pressed 1 and launched into my elevator pitch for common good banks. Figuring that the agent was probably not wealthy, I focused on the ways that common good banks will empower the disenfranchised. I had a nice brief chat with the telemarketing agent, who was very interested and said he would definitely check out our website when he got off work.
The rest of the day I prepared press materials for newspapers, posters, partner emails and non-partner emails, for the 27 talks scheduled in December and January. Here’s an example poster:
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Thanks Dan. I start with “I want to tell you about a project I am working on. We are creating a new kind of savings bank called ‘Common Good Bank’, designed expressly for economic justice, sustainability and strong local economies ~independent of the dollar~.”
Then I ad lib some angle of particular interest to whoever I’m talking to. For the telemarket agent, I said something like “The profits go to the community and you get to vote on how they’re used. It will especially help people who are the most disenfranchised under the current system.”
Actually, I don’t think it matters exactly what you say as long as you can say it with honesty and passion.
Cost to telemarketing outfit of phone call: 10 cents
Cost to pay minimum wage for the agent to talk to you for a couple minutes: 22 cents
Turning a phone call designed to scam you out of your money into a reverse pitch for something that may actually help the guy on the other end get out of the cirumstances which forced him to work for a scam telemarketing outfit in the first place: priceless
Now that’s economic justice (on a micro scale)!
Can you post a script of the “elevator pitch” you use? I’d love to use it on telemarketing agents that call me at all hours of the day…