A few weeks ago I thought it might be helpful to get some calling practice without pressure. I signed up at a telemarketing company to see how they handle stuff.

Now, a few weeks later I was asked for a first shift. I’m a lot more connected with how I feel about what I do, and I noticed I had a hard time explaining myself why I was doing all of this. In the end, I just went with it, and would see what happens.

It was fun to experience learning something. I really like that feeling. First there was a briefing on the project and the script. Then I did some calls for about 90 minutes. Doing all of this I noticed two things:

• I was learning stuff, but it was heavily scripted and focused on numbers. There was a lot to learn that is valuable to me, but I also felt I had to constantly second-guess myself. I was trying to make sure what I doing wasn’t going to hurt me in the long run, trying to learn Idea Extraction properly.
• Making successful calls gave me short bursts of feel good, but the more I could imagine this call script to work out, the more I felt like a monkey in a cage doing nothing but this trick the best and fastest I can. Hardly any perspective.

Within 1,5 hour I checked my screen for the clock for three times. And I knew enough… This was not for me.

A script too good to be true

I did have a big learning though, helpful for Idea Extracion. I was working with a call script that was too good to be true: the leads were smoking hot. We were calling our own subscribers and asking them to sign up for a befriended company. Costs? Just a few euros for an annual contract. And if they refused, my company would pay their subscription fee for them. Yes, it would be totally free. All they had to do was say yes.

And guess what, most did. But even here I didn’t get to 100%. Some people just didn’t want to, no matter what. Would even get a little angry (you could blame me for that). I learned that, no matter how good the script, you will always find people on a bad time for them. And that’s just fine.

Follow your gut

After my shift, we planned two more shifts for the next week. Going home I wasn’t sure  about this whole experiment anymore.

Signing up felt perfect initially. I wanted to live with the total freedom I have, and work the way I felt like in the moment. I also felt confident it was good to see this whole telemarketing thing for myself and give it a second chance.

Even if it was just for 1 day, I learned a lot it about it, and found out it just wasn’t for me. So I called them them and resigned. Somehow I felt sorry for trying. At the same time, it felt super cool to do these kind of experiments whenever I feel like.