London Trader Dubai Offshoot Demand '100 calls a day'

Make 100 calls a day, City wealth fund orders trainees on £24k

So ran the broadsheet headline this month opening a piece destroying the ethics within a financial boiler room. For good measure, warning from the off that 'the job is ‘not for the faint-hearted’ despite low salary'.

Here's samples uncovered from the alleged job spec.

• a challenging and highly demanding position that requires exceptional resilience and a strong work ethic
• candidates must be prepared for a phone-based role for a minimum of the first two years, making at least 100 calls daily and securing at least one booking per day as a non-negotiable minimum standard, &
• the position is not for the faint-hearted and requires unwavering commitment

I note that whilst banned since 2023 by the City watchdog in the UK, financial services cold-calling is permitted in Dubai, but restricted to office hours.

Perhaps even more alarming was this reveal;

'trainees were expected to secure five hours of talk time and five booked meetings each week'.

At this point, you realise that those in charge do not know what they're doing.

Conflating talk time with success in this way is the rulebook of prospecting failure.

Even more perplexing is their claim that all those rang have already expressed an interest in their services. All these curves a quadrilateral does not make.

The employer concerned boasts numbers. £2.5bn assets under management across 9 global offices for 10,000 clients. Cross-off those noughts and it equates to £¼m a customer. Which might give interesting glimpse as to their clientbase?

5pc commissions are dangled in front of callers. Which without a given OTE is tricky to gauge. Yet it surely offers insight into the sector as any generated 'leads' in terms of the stipulated meeting-per-day you'd think traditionally goes to a more senior 'closer'.

The basic structure of this approach is misguided. If you're also doing it this way, you must adjust. Sharpish.

It may well be considered as 'working' for them in this exposé, who knows. But it is neither sustainable, scalable nor optimal.

Take this dozen-calls-an-hour rubric as one extreme. How about what must logically be at the other; you make one call a day, and gain one conversation. And it is on knowing what that represents upon which standout careers are made.

An ideal perhaps, yet eminently possible. How close you wish to get to this determines your ultimate career trajectory.