Feeling blue about extended warranties

[Phrancis]

I work for a warranty underwriting company. I used to work in contractor support (inbound calls), but a few months ago got promoted to inside sales. In other words, I now spend the better part of my day making phone calls to contractors, mostly residential, in order to convince them to sell extended warranties. The pay is not that bad, for a call center job that is. But 9/10 calls I end up leaving a message with a receptionist or answering machine. I've come to feeling sort of blazé about the whole thing and feel like my job is on the very outskirts of usefulness. To most contractors I'm probably "just another salesperson".

I'm just getting kind of frustrated by my lack of purpose and wanted to know if you all could offer any advice as far as career advancement is concerned. I'm terrible with my hands, but very good with my head. I know pretty much all there is to know about warranty and quite capable in office work. Can anyone suggest some route I could look into? Wholesale distribution? Working for large franchises such as Service Experts or One hour? Or smaller companies?

[patrick]

I work for a medium size light comercial contractor. We have a guy who sends proposals to our property managers of the things we wright up during our quarterly maintenances. You could do something like that sence you already know the parts of a system.

Or you could work at a supplier as a parts/counter guy or outside sales.

[Phrancis]

Is this the kind of position you could get into without having technical experience installing or servicing the equipment, or something that could be learn "on the job"? I'm in kind of a bind when it comes to technical knowledge, being that I work strictly on the warranty side...

[bb]

Quite a few manufacturers need warranty reps these days as a lot of manufacturing has moved south of the border.

[Six]

I work for a warranty underwriting company. I used to work in contractor support (inbound calls), but a few months ago got promoted to inside sales. In other words, I now spend the better part of my day making phone calls to contractors, mostly residential, in order to convince them to sell extended warranties. The pay is not that bad, for a call center job that is. But 9/10 calls I end up leaving a message with a receptionist or answering machine. I've come to feeling sort of blazé about the whole thing and feel like my job is on the very outskirts of usefulness. To most contractors I'm probably "just another salesperson".

I'm just getting kind of frustrated by my lack of purpose and wanted to know if you all could offer any advice as far as career advancement is concerned. I'm terrible with my hands, but very good with my head. I know pretty much all there is to know about warranty and quite capable in office work. Can anyone suggest some route I could look into? Wholesale distribution? Working for large franchises such as Service Experts or One hour? Or smaller companies?

Night school and move towards a degree in a marketable vocation. If your not good with your hands your prospects are limited.

So many people spend an enormous amount of time and money and come out with a degree in " communication " or soft sciences and then complain about being chronically unemployed.

I wonder if it's that difficult to research what fields are going to be relevant and in demand 4 or 5 years down the line ?

[Moonrunner]

Night school and move towards a degree in a marketable vocation. If your not good with your hands your prospects are limited.

So many people spend an enormous amount of time and money and come out with a degree in " communication " or soft sciences and then complain about being chronically unemployed.

I wonder if it's that difficult to research what fields are going to be relevant and in demand 4 or 5 years down the line ?

I fell for that crap too and wasted a few years in the job market running to stay in place. Since day one we were fed the bs that you had to finish university to get a good job and many of us didn't have a good overview of our options. Fortunately I am good with my hands and still young enough to correct the error

[Phrancis]

I've actually studied to do music recording and production, realizing after the fact that the market is over-saturated. Darn those college sales reps.

[George2]

Read the book "Question Based Selling" by Thomas Freese (or Freeze). It might give you some insight to get past the gatekeeper.

[XcelTech]

Get hired on as a commercial salesman selling PM full service agreements. Its kinda what you do now its just better pay and more freedom if you are a good salesmen.