
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, June 20, 1993                   TAG: 9306170075
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: F-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DWAYNE YANCEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

`WHAT DO I HEAR?'

Cattle auctions by telephone and television work a little differently from those in person.

For one thing, the auctioneer can't talk as much. Instead of going into his trademark "chant," the telemarketing auctioneer has to say less and say it slower, lest he miss a bid.

"You can't look and see who's bidding, you have to listen," says Joe Meek, the general manager of the Pulaski Livestock Auction in Dublin. He usually serves as the auctioneer on the conference-call sales sponsored by the Virginia Cattlemen's Association.

That's been an adjustment both for the auctioneer, as well as the bidders - because they no longer can eyeball their competition to get a feel for whether he's about to drop out of the bidding.

Usually, the Cattlemen's Association's telephone auctions are set up at the Pulaski market, with only Meek, the association director and a telephone technician in attendance.

But once, the auction was run out of a phone booth.

"In the fall of the year, we'll have sales going all over the state," says Reggie Reynolds. "Once we had two or three going on at about the same time and the same auctioneer involved with each one. We had to stop at a pay phone and call in [to do the Tel-O-Auction.] It's something you don't want to do, but it can be done."

by CNB