Skills Learned Through VSA's Cold Calling Program Benefit Many Varied Career Paths

VSA, Inc. is a NJ based cold calling and appointment setting firm that helps companies increase their sales. Hour after hour, day after day, the VSA team makes telephone calls and sends emails on behalf of clients across the country.

The team’s goal is to find interested decision makers, qualify their needs and set sales appointments. VSA staff become an extension of their clients. The senior level executives believe they are talking to someone sitting in the client’s office, not in an outsourced organization.

Mainly, VSA employs a team of experienced employees with deep inside sales skills, and the company has strong employee retention.

But, some former VSA employees do not continue in sales. Instead several have decided to pursue professions in law, architecture, medicine, teaching, finance, neuroscience and foreign policy. To be sure, it’s not the VSA experience that caused the career shifts. In fact, these VSA-alum view their time at VSA as a highly formative period.

Valerie Schlitt is founder and CEO. “I remember when one of our star former employees told us he used his cold calling experience to help his academic department get a grant.”

Periodically, VSA needs to add to its traditional experienced staff and has given opportunities to college graduates, despite knowing they won’t stay. Through the firm’s personal network of friends and neighbors, VSA has been lucky to find some truly talented, hardworking and ambitious college students.

“This has been a win for everyone. Our clients, VSA and the graduates who are looking for work,” Schlitt said.

For most of these graduates, the temporary role at VSA was not in their long term career path. But for virtually all, the experience has been life-changing.

Schlitt says that former employees often tell her how surprised they are at how cold calling helped them in their unrelated careers. “At first I was surprised to get this great feedback,” Schlitt remembers, “but I really shouldn’t be. Knowing how to start a conversation, develop new relationships with influential people and ask for something you want are universally needed skills to succeed. We teach those skills, albeit in the form of a cold call.”

For more information about VSA, Inc. visit our website.