It seems that nowadays we can’t walk down the street without someone with a clipboard wanting ‘just a minute’ of our time. My approach is quite simple. I just state ‘Sorry I don’t conduct any business in the street’. I extend this to people knocking on my door (‘Sorry I don’t do business on the doorstep’). However, for telephone cold-callers I adopt a slightly different strategy. In my coaching practice I encourage clients to seek out opportunities to develop life skills such as assertiveness and self-confidence. Rather than an annoyance, cold-callers offer such an opportunity.
Despite registering with the telephone preference service I still get unwanted calls. Surveys and market research is not covered (honoured) by this opt out. Of course, it should, morally speaking. Any reputable company would make the assumption that if people have taken the time to register with the service then it’s likely they don’t want to be bothered wasting time on surveys. One of my first approaches was to discuss my fees with them. This doesn’t work. Unless of course you follow up with a letter in writing to let the company know that you will charge an administration fee for future calls. You are then within your rights to send them an invoice and if its not paid, you can proceed through the small claims court. However, I digress.
Recently, I tried out a new approach which proved to be great fun. I’d decided the next time I was cold-called I was going to take the opportunity to sell my own services of coaching, training, broadcasting, writing and research. So I prepared a brief spiel and waited for the inevitable call.
The call came and was from someone purporting to be from the National Accident Helpline (NAH). In the past I have reported such calls and found that it’s common for dodgy companies to impersonate the NAH. The real NAH does abide by the telephone preference service. So I began:
Me: ‘Thank you very much for your call. It is coaching, training or research that you are interested in?’
Cold-caller: ‘Sorry?’
Me: ‘How exactly can I help you?’
Cold-caller: ‘I’m calling from the National Accident Helpline’ (lie)
Me: ‘Splendid. So is it coaching within your organization, training, researcher or perhaps you’d like me to front a media campaign’.
Cold-caller: ‘Sorry. Who are you calling from?’
Me: ‘Actually you called me and I’m trying to establish which of my services are of interest to you’.
Cold-caller: ‘Sorry. What company are you from again?’
Me: ‘Well you called me. So which of my services interest you?’
No doubt we could have continued along these lines for longer but I’d run run out of script. Next time I will run through a description of each of my services.
The value of this type of opportunity is that you have a captive audience. It’s up to you to take control of the situation and have fun with it. If you don’t have a service to promote then perhaps you could pretend to have a sofa for sale and describe it in great detail. Ask the caller what they look for in a sofa. If they are not interested then try to sell them something else. The value of this is that you get to role play for free and will probably have a good laugh too.
Speaking in public is one of the most feared challenges, so cold-callers offer a great opportunity to practice those skills too. Assertiveness and confidence are built in small steps and start with a state of relaxation. Find other opportunities in life to develop people skills, such as small-talk at the supermarket or at the bus-stop. Losing your temper or being rude is not assertiveness, it’s aggression. Just have fun with it.
I’m now looking forward to the next opportunity to practice my sales pitch and who knows I may try to sell my old chaise longue.
Links:
- Householder bills cold caller £10 for every pesky minute
- Other coaching and confidence blog posts from Gary Wood
Applied Psychology and Solution Focused Life Coaching with Dr Gary Wood 