Calls, Calls & more Calls!

I hate telemarketers. I used to try and mess with them. Sometimes I would set a timer and see how long I could keep them on the line before they hung up on me. ;) I'd ask them question after question like I was really interested in their product but never buy. What a jerk I was!

I actually had a job as a telemarketer for 3.5 hours. I was selling AT&T long distance a few years back. They asked me to not come back because I didn't make one sale... well, actually I had one guy wanting to buy but he was an Iranian student without a credit card and we could only sell to those with a credit card. A funny: I'm freaking nervous (and hating myself for actually being a telemarketer!), while trying to keep up with the automatic dial system. Every time I hung up a new caller was on the line... in fact most times that person had already said hello before I was connected with them! So I'm looking at all the names quickly pop up on the screen and saying, "Hi! Is this Mr Brown, Mrs Green etc..." In the fray I looked at the next name without thinking and ask, "Is this Mr. Jehova?" The computer had dialed a Kingdom Hall. :)

Anyway, this week I had my third evening of taking part in a calling campaign to get the word out about RPCC. Our goal is to call about 30,000 people! The calling is going a little slower than anticipated because many of our volunteers are freaked out about doing this. Our calling has been overwhelmingly successful thus far and I've actually been enjoying it a lot! The cool thing is that we're not selling anything and we're actually not even asking people to go to church. It's a very 'soft' sell. We just tell people we're a new church in the area and ask if we can send them information to keep them updated on our progress. That's it! So every address we get we're sending them information.

Here are my numbers so far.

Dialed: 652
Addresses received: 53
That's 8%.
(Keep in mind that the majority of the numbers dialed were answering machines and we will call them back. We anticipate that we'll get addresses of at least 10%.)

If we call 30,000 people that's 3,000 people who will receive a few mail pieces from us and a follow up call! I'm excited to see what God is gonna do with this! We're inviting all these people to come out Oct 24 to a special Saturday evening service at the barn. If you want to be a catalyst for life change for people you don't know come and make some calls with me. I'll be doing it again tomorrow night and at least two nights next week. It's really fun because you never know how people will respond. I'd say 95% are very polite and are not put off by the call. I get a few hangups and a few "I've got my own religion... click" but I've also had great conversations with people including one guy who is a Hindu, attends a Hindu church but asked me to send him information. How cool is that???