Fifteen years ago I was a graduate student in Boston and like most students and young couples, my wife and I lived frugally, scraping by from paycheck to paycheck. Two months after we arrived, my mother's cancer came out of remission, and during this difficult time, we became frequent international phone callers. Dialing Israel from the US was expensive at that time, more than $1.50/minute. Our phone bills were large to say the least.
While Bezeq (Israel's leading phone company) enjoyed an undisputed monopoly on the Israeli phone market, competition was fierce between phone companies in the US - with the customer being the direct beneficiary. Suddenly we were getting 'incentives' from competing phone companies. Checks for $50-$150 arrived in the mail, attached to a letter saying "simply sign the gift check, deposit it into your account, and join our international phone service for a better price than the one you are currently paying". Simple. No strings attached.
And so I found myself, in my first year as a student, depositing a new check into my bank account every few weeks; a gift from a different long-distance phone company each time. Our budget enjoyed the occasional respite and our international phone bills kept shrinking as our calls to Israel became more and more frequent.
I recalled this anecdote while I was subscribing to a daily newspaper. Our previous subscription had finished and after a few weeks without it, I decided that reading the paper is important to the family. Especially to our son Ari, an avid sports fan. Each morning before breakfast he needs to read the results from the basketball and soccer games played the night before and update the family over breakfast. Even though you can find all of the news online, I am still an avid fan of a newspaper that you can hold in your hands and read as you lie on the carpet. It's also fun when your son runs over to you to show the scores and makes comparisons between players.
Two years ago I had a subscription to Globes, but I cancelled it since the rest of my family didn't find it interesting. Copies of the newspaper would pile up unopened during my frequent trips abroad, embarrassing my environmentally conscientious family. By coincidence, I received a call from a marketing agent by the name of Yossi Cohen. "We have decided to give you a free month's worth of newspapers," he announced. "Great!" I replied. And so we received a free full month of Globes delivered to our home. In the meantime, the kids kept reminding me that they had absolutely no interest in it. There were no sports pages and they were bored with its business orientation. In the meantime I called "Ha'aretz", my preferred newspaper and found that their monthly subscription was a pricey seventy dollars per month.
Once my month of free newspapers came to an end, I got another call from Yossi Cohen from Globes. "I'd like to interest you in a forty dollar per month subscription". After a long chat we came to the conclusion that I wasn't interested, especially not at that price, but that he could call me again after Passover.
Immediately after Passover he called again. At this point I realized that I was dealing with a top notch telemarketer, one of the best in the business. It was almost impossible to say no to him. After he lowered the price so far down that I promised him that I wouldn't publish it, and he promised that the subscription would automatically expire after nine months, I gave in and signed up for a subscription to Globes.
On my way home from work that evening, I decided to retry "Ha'aretz" and when I spoke to the marketing agent I made it clear to her that I would not consider paying a subscription greater than fifty dollars a month. Thirty minutes later she excitedly called me back with the message that, I received a fifty percent discount, cleared by the supervisor and so the cost of my monthly subscription would be thirty five dollars a month. I was happy. This was the option I had initially preferred. I arrived home and immediately called Globes to cancel the subscription that I had ordered only a few hours earlier and they told me that I would get a call l back from a representative within 48 hours.
Yossi from Globes called at 8 am the next day. At this point I felt like I was speaking to a close friend. "What happened, Sagi?" he intimately asked. I tried to explain. Yossi wouldn't let me go. "It's very important to us that you remain our client! I'd like to offer a few special gifts to change your mind..."
To make a long story short, I finished the conversation with my Globes subscription intact and with several complimentary gifts, for which my need for them was unknown to me prior to the call. Truth be told, I could not say no to Yossi. I felt like a person walking hurriedly down the street but stopping to listen to a captivating street musician. The musician is playing. The music gently engages e passerby, who in return feels compelled to put his spare change in the musician's hat. I felt a real commitment to Yossi Cohen!
The lesson I got from Globes' Yossi Cohen was about determination, sticking to your goal and being creative. At the same time the lesson I learned about the competition between daily newspapers and how the individual customer could use it to his/her advantage, were so instructive and illuminating, that I felt I had gotten my money's worth. And now the Melamed family has two daily newspapers...
environmentally conscientious family. By coincidence, I received a call from a marketing agent by the name of Yossi Cohen. "We have decided to give you a free month's worth of newspapers," he announced. "Great!" I replied. And so we received a free full month of Globes delivered to our home. In the meantime, the kids kept reminding me that they had absolutely no interest in it. There were no sports pages and they were bored with its business orientation. In the meantime I called "Ha'aretz", my preferred newspaper and found that their monthly subscription was a pricey seventy dollars per month. 
