The New Normal – Through the Eyes of a B2B Telemarketer

As our usual way of work and life has been changed completely over the past couple of weeks, it has been a challenge for a lot of us to find the ‘new normal’. Working from home, when you’re so used to the office environment and camaraderie, is something that everyone from our offices had to get used to. No amount of Zoom, Whatsapp, Skype or emails can beat a face to face conversation.

Transparency and honesty is interlaced in our core business values, and in challenging times like these, we believe that it’s more important than ever. That’s why we have released a series of blog posts, written by our fantastic team of telemarketers across our group of companies, to showcase their days working at home – their trials and tribulations and, of course, their triumphs.

One of our senior telemarketers, Lochy, who has been with our company for 5 years, has written below about working from home and how that has impacted his work day.

Covid-19: Working from Home

Due to the recent pandemic we’re all facing, the decision was made a week ago to close our offices and work from home. After hearing the news from our Managing Director last Monday, my initial thoughts revolved around how our jobs will be affected moving forwards. Thankfully, due to the nature of what we do, we have been able to adapt our approach to work from home comfortably without much disruption, if any at all.

As for myself, this did change my approach completely to the workload I was able to carry out for my client, Jacob Douwe Egberts. This is mainly due to my normal working day consisting of contacting all businesses by telephone, predominantly within the hospitality sector, to discuss coffee provisions for their business. Needless to say, most if not all of these businesses are now unable to operate as they normally would during this pandemic, therefore affecting my ability to book meetings with potential prospects. I have had to adapt my approach in order to ensure that both our client and I are making the best use of my time whilst I am working from home, as I unable to book new appointments for their Business Development Managers during this uncertain period of time.

The decision was made to spend the next four weeks (or so we think) mapping the country and researching hotels that meet specific qualifying criteria set by our Jacobs Douwe Egberts and build a solid database of prospects that we know will fit the criteria of our client.

We felt it was important to do this in order to keep momentum going, and more importantly, we know that when business is back to normal, the Business Development Managers at Jacobs Douwe Egberts will have had a significant period of time without any new appointments allocated to their diaries. Our current process of building a solid database containing pre-qualified contacts will ensure we are able to fill their diaries with qualified appointments as quickly as possible, and as a result, the Business Development team will not be left with empty diaries when it becomes safe to travel again.

However, there have been some challenges that myself and many others have faced when working from home, a key example of this is being a parent with children who are now unable to attend school due to the current situation. Naturally, having dad at home during the week is a novelty for the children, and my attention is in high demand. Fortunately, this has been manageable and has not caused any major disruption as I am not making phone calls as often as I would be. Another key challenge, and probably the biggest challenge, is losing the atmosphere of working in a fast-paced office which provides you with a natural sense of motivation, which inevitably happens without having your colleagues around you. As a result, you find yourself having to provide your own self-motivation when working from home on your own.

In conclusion, I can honestly say that The Lead Lab and I have been able to transition into working from home very successfully, and we have demonstrated that we are still able provide a very good service for our client by making the most of out a bad and unpreventable situation in order to maximise campaign activity and ensure we are using the client’s time as effectively as possible.

Lochlan Choules

The Lead Lab