AUBURN – AdvanceTel Direct sales agents answer up to 6,000 calls a day from people around the country who want to be thinner, want great abs or want their hair to grow back.

Now they’re putting out the call for their own want: more employees.

The in-bound call center is adding 70 new full-time jobs in Auburn and 30 in Augusta, according to President James DeWolfe.

The firm recently landed a lucrative account for fitness equipment. “We’re in a mad rush to get as many employees as we can,” he said.

AdvanceTel Direct makes its headquarters in a nondescript single-story building on Mill Street next to Barker Arms. Founded in 1998, it employs 236 people. About 60 are in Augusta. The rest work answering phones in Auburn or shipping inventory from a warehouse in Lewiston.

It’s also looking to add a fourth site that will employ about 50 people, DeWolfe said.

His sales agents answer 1-800 numbers tagged at the end of infomercials, radio ads and one-minute television spots for more than 30 products. He declined to name clients, but wares range from smoking cessation pills to protein shakes to special shampoo.

Each call taker is versed in every product. Some are “soft sales,” items whose prices are only revealed when someone calls for more information, and others are “hard sales,” typically where the cost has been advertised as so many payments.

In both cases it’s up to the sales agent to lay out the benefits and features, DeWolfe said, to work the sale. “I empathize with the people who take these jobs; it’s a tough job. They’re not order takers.”

He started in the industry about a decade ago as a sales agent for Talk America selling memory aides.

AdvanceTel Direct has a screening process for employment that includes a 165-question test to gauge personality. Is someone bold enough and independent-minded enough to be a telemarketer?

Hourly pay starts at minimum wage, $6.25, plus commission. The company-wide average from sales is $15 to $20 an hour, DeWolfe said.

The average length of employment has been one year and two months.

Kempton Gerard, the company director of human resources, said AdvanceTel Direct will participate in a job fair at the Career Center in Lewiston on Thursday.

“I think there’s a misconception about call centers, first of all, they think out-bound, ‘I have to call people, bother them.’ Or they think they have to push people into product,” he said.

For a lot of products the company does aim for a closure rate of about 30 percent – making a sale every three out of 10 calls.

It had it’s first lay-off ever in October, 40 people, when it lost a major client, DeWolfe said. He’s since hired two people to focus on new clients and plans a campaign later this year to advertise itself nationally.

The company was formerly PowerTel Technologies. It operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week.