At TeleReach Corporate we’re so in love with the freedom of working from home, we’re willing to fight the unlovable dark side of working from home. We’re rebels….with a hot cause…. and we’re winning. We’re on the side of freedom from the rat race, a freedom and work from home way of life which must prevail. This article features a variety of ways, cool solutions to a hot cause, to minimize the unlovable disadvantages of working from home, and better yet, simply stamp them out of existence. That’s our mission and hot cause.
Each year when the month of love rolls around in February, Speed Dating and TeleReach Loves Talent are two of the cool solutions we offer to our hot cause. The hot cause is converting the unlovable aspects of working from home into fun, and the cool solutions are team contests. There are well known lovable and not so lovable aspects of working from home. Some of the lovable aspects of working from home are the ability to have a flexible schedule, the time savings of no longer commuting to an office, the money savings on all kinds of things such as gas, dry cleaning and lunch, the ability to knock off some items on your weekend to-do list, and the ability to wear your bunny slippers and sweat pants to your home office. Working from home can provide less stress, more peace of mind and more support to your family.
Let’s take a look at the ugly, more unlovable aspects of working from home, not to dwell on them but to call them out into the light and give the enemy a name. Studies show that office workers who are assigned boring tasks perform better and faster in a regular office setting than working from home. Home-life distractions are more likely to prevent productive work when people don’t enjoy the work. Let’s face it, our lead generation job which is making outbound phone calls, saying the same thing all day, can become tedious and boring, and especially when combined with the other more general disadvantages of working from home. That study may be accurate but it’s a very unlovable study. Fortunately, there are solutions.
The unlovable shall be named
- Monotony
- Isolation, lack of community and teamwork
- Lack of motivation
- Burnout
- Distractions
- Loss of productivity
Fun and loving, cool rebel solutions to a hot cause
At TeleReach, we’re both lovers who fight and fighters who love. At Valentine’s Day, we just love to give our steely, gunfighter stare straight into the enemy’s ugly eye by holding two annual contests which run simultaneously, Speed Dating and TeleReach Loves Talent. Cold calling all day is a hard job and we do work hard, all of us, but we do it as a team and fortunately, there is no rule that says work can’t also be fun.
Speed Dating – Our virtual call center speed daters have a speed date with an appointment. Appointment setters are paired up into buddy sets of 2 or 3 on each team and points are earned based on productivity. Newbies receive more points than veterans. Not to worry if you don’t like your speed dating buddy, because the sets are changed out with every speed dating round. In the event of a tie, dials are the tie breaker. Buddy teams win throughout the duration of the contest and there is also a way for individual competitors to win as the week’s MVB- Most Valuable Buddy. The fast pace of Speed Dating makes it next to impossible to get bored and lose productivity.
TeleReach Loves Talent – TeleReach Loves Talent is another month of love contest in which talented appointment setters submit their best turnaround calls for voting. The appointment calls are played on group meetings and voted on by the team. The duration of the contest takes several weeks as the vetting and voting goes through the process of first, narrowing the calls down to the finalists and then, ultimately to the final voting of the top three appointments. It’s a fun way for our lead generation specialists to build skills by getting to hear other people’s calls. Turnaround calls are calls in which some type of objection has been overcome. The most common types of turnarounds are when the prospect says “send me something” or “I’m too busy, call me back” but there are various other types of objections we encounter depending on the Client account. When the prospect offers some type of objection, and the appointment is booked anyway, that’s a turnaround.
Focusing on the rewards – Both of these contests immerse the participants in a sense of community and teamwork which is possible to create, even in a virtual setting such as ours. The Speed Dating contest goal is all about productivity, whereas the TeleReach Loves Talent contest goal is about skill building. Higher skills translate into higher pay. Our performance-based pay combined with the consistent contest checks ins, keep the team focused on the rewards which turns what might otherwise be a boring job, into a fun work environment with positive team energy.
Bloopers, just for fun – We sometimes play blooper calls, just for fun. Fortunately, in the business to business realm that we’re in, we don’t tend to get that many rude, grouchy hang ups, because we are only calling professional business people about business products and services, however, we do get our fair share of goofy and weird calls. Here’s a link to a blooper call made on Christmas Eve, just for fun: Click Here
This February, if you’ve fallen in love with all the lovable aspects of working from home but not so much the unlovable parts, we’ve got cool solutions to our hot cause. Join our fun-loving team of rebels with a hot cause for some Speed Dating and TeleReach Loves Talent!
About the Author
Tracie Chancellor, CEO and Founder of TeleReach Corporate, national business to business call center specializing in sales appointment setting and lead generation, based in Houston, Texas. Chancellor is an MBA graduate of the University of Houston with over 20 years hands-on sales and marketing experience, working with privately-held businesses, universities, non-profit organizations, as well as Fortune businesses in the business to business marketing space.