I was spontaneously coaching a teenager the other day who is seeking his first job.

He was calling the restaurant where he wants to become a bus boy for the summer. After submitting an application, they told him to follow-up around the middle of the month.

Right on time, he rang them up, but the general manager, with whom he chatted, has been elusive.

So, while he was phoning in again, possibly for the fourth time, I prompted him; or at least I tried.

“Say, the general manager asked me to call,” I advised.

My protégé was told the GM was on vacation.

Sensing the call was heading straight to the dumpster, I urged: “Ask when he’s expected to be back!” to no avail.

My stage directions were being ignored.

While this was happening, I was in pain, having trained thousands, make that hundreds of thousands if you include my book readers, in the skills associated with penetrating screening and conquering voice mail.

After the call, to further my credibility and get his attention, I tried to tell the teen, “I made a video on the subject,” but as the expression rightly says, “No man is a prophet in his own land.”

By that time he was already onto his next call, chatting with a pal about rollerblading.

Another quote applies to what I was feeling. It is less famous, but dead on:

“Nobody is born effective!”

We all have to be trained and we have to learn. This applies to phone work as much as to being a butcher, baker, or candlestick maker.

The teen, naturally, thinks he can impress all by himself, and I admire him for trying, and then for trying again. He has gumption, which is no small thing.

But, like most, he doesn’t know what he’s missing. There are simple, honest, and powerful techniques for coming across better and being more influential by phone.

But if you keep doing what you’ve always done you’ll only get what you always got, as they say.

For those of us who do training, and who invent new and better techniques for getting past call screeners and voice mail, it would be wise to remember that in a sense, every trainee, irrespective of age, is for practical purposes, a resistant, headstrong teenager.

They just don’t know how much more effective they can be!