MY TELEMARKETING EXPERIENCE! (COLD CALLING - IT WORKS)

This is my first month here (although it seems like it's been much longer!) and I came to terms with the fact that COLD CALLING works, quite quickly. Being a teen who worked in a call center in the past myself, I knew the power (and sometimes, stress) of telemarketing.

I remember sitting there, reading a dull and incoherent calling script for a company, trying to book estimates for thermal windows and doors. It was a boring job to say the least, but I made it fun by competing. I wanted to be the best telemarketer in the building, and after a bit of practise I was.

However, I was so discontent with the fact that I wasn't able to change up the script to my own liking. Nothing crazy or drastic, just a few intelligent changes to hopefully book some more leads, be more productive, and hopefully garner some commissions.

The call center would usually average about 2 LEADS / 3 hour shift (per outbound agent). I usually did 3 or 4 per shift. I remember one day, the manager was home ill, and I was at my wits end. At that point, I didn't care about keeping the job - in fact, I wanted to quit.

I had gotten into small debates with this manager over the script in the past. It's not like I was a bad employee or anything .. in fact the manager favored me over the majority of the agents in the room, simply because as a 15 year old I was booking twice the amount of leads than some of the 40 year old's in the building.

When I noticed that the manager was not in, I decided to take it upon myself to prove a point. I wanted to prove to the manager that his script was preventing agents from making more money for the company. I was no expert marketer at the time (and I'm still far from it) but I KNEW that I could write up a script in a matter of minutes that would BLOW THE CURRENT ONE AWAY in terms of conversions and call center averages.

And so the second I noticed the manager being away, I took a piece of paper and a pencil, and I wrote my own version of the script. It took me about 6 minutes to write an opening and a number of popular rebuttals to utilize.

That day, while neglecting the company's script and using my own modification, I booked 12 leads.

The next day, I walked into work knowing that the boss would be very happy upon looking at the previous day's statistics. I also knew that he was way too egotistical to come to the conclusion that a 15 year old wrote a script in a matter of minutes of which dominated his own.

I walked into the room, and was greeted by him with a huge grin. He obviously heard about me breaking all time company records the shift prior.

"Woah, Jon! I heard you had quite the day yesterday," he stated with delight. "How'd you pull it off?"

"I used a script that is rendered to actually be effective to the prospects this company is calling. Oh, and if you don't mind I'd like to give my notice. I don't intend to continue my employment here by the end of the month."

And with that, I sat down, went through my 3 hour shift and went home; only to return a week later to collect my final paycheck.

I didn't need the job. It was part-time, and it wasn't good pay. I'm just a 16 year old, so it's not like I had bills to pay at the time. I knew that I was too good to be working for somebody of whom was ignorant to change and placed his ego before business.

As it turns out, a friend of mine who continued on working there informed me a couple months later that the manager had gone through my calls that day and actually taken the modified script I used and decided to begin enforcing it verbatim with the entire call center. He came to terms with the fact their initial calling script was far from efficient and even took the opportunity to take the one I made.

Leaving that telemarketing job was one of the best decisions I've made thus far in my marketing career. If there's any lesson to take from this true (and hopefully somewhat entertaining) story is that It's all in the pitch.

Cold calling works. Take some action and find out for yourself. :]