If you are moving into sales from teaching, hospitality, customer support or another field, you already have useful skills: you listen, you stay calm under pressure and you explain things clearly. What you may not have is call reps. You have not yet made a hundred cold calls, heard fifty brush-offs or stumbled through a price conversation.
Two moments reward preparation: the interview, where you may be asked to do a mock call, and the first month in the job, when you make real ones. This page gives a two-week routine for building those reps before you have a job and a manager to watch you.
What interviewers ask you to do on the phone
Companies differ, and formats change, so treat this as a general picture and check each employer's own instructions.
- A mock cold call. You are given a product and a persona. You open the call and the interviewer plays a busy buyer.
- An objection round. The buyer says "not interested", "send me an email" or "we already have a supplier". They watch how you respond.
- A short discovery exercise. You ask questions to learn about a fictional company.
- A debrief. You are asked what you would do differently.
What they usually look for is not a perfect pitch. It is whether you can open clearly, listen, stay calm when the buyer pushes back and ask for a next step. For the interview format itself, see sales role-play interview.
The two-week routine
Twenty minutes a day. If you can only do ten, do ten. Say everything aloud; silent reading does not count.
Week 1: build the basics
Day 1. The opener. Write a 20-second opening: your name, the company, a reason for the call and an easy question. Say it ten times. See B2B cold call opening lines and the 30-second phone pitch.
Day 2. "Not interested." Prepare one reply that acknowledges and asks a low-pressure question. See not interested: cold call response. Run the call five times.
Day 3. "Send me an email." Same method. See send me an email.
Day 4. Calls with a gatekeeper. You need to get past a switchboard or assistant politely. See how to get past the gatekeeper.
Day 5. A full call. Opener, one question, one objection, ask for a next step. Do it three times and note the moment you were weakest.
Week 2: add pressure
Day 6. Price. Practise saying a price and reacting to "too expensive". See price objection phone drills.
Day 7. Rest, or one light call.
Day 8. Discovery. Practise five open questions and following up on the answer. See how to prepare for a discovery call.
Day 9. Filler words. Record one call and count "um", "like" and "you know". See stop filler words on sales calls.
Day 10. Silence. Practise pausing after a question instead of filling the gap. See handling silence on phone calls.
Day 11 to 13. Full calls with changing scenarios. A different buyer each day: polite, rushed, suspicious.
Day 14. Review. Compare your first and last reports. What is better? What still trips you?
Why practise with an AI customer
You cannot ask an interviewer to be your buyer fifty times. Friends may help twice and then stop. With no manager and no team, you need a partner that is available whenever you are.
DIRI AI lets you talk by voice to an AI customer, which is labelled as AI and is fictional, and then read a report on what to say better and where the call lost control. You can run the same scenario several times and see whether the second attempt is better than the first.
The AI is a practice partner. It does not replace real calls, and no practice tool can promise an offer. Its value is repetition and feedback before you try the real thing.
Using your reports in interviews
Keep the reports from your practice. In an interview you can say how you prepared: that you practised an opener and three objections daily for two weeks, what the reports showed you struggled with, and what you changed. That is a concrete answer to "how would you ramp up?".
Do not present the reports as a qualification, and do not claim that employers accept or recognise them. They are a record of your own work and a way to speak specifically about your progress.
Your first month in the job
When the job starts, keep the habit:
- Practise the day's hardest call before you make it. Ten minutes before a block of calls.
- After a bad call, replay the moment. Write it down, practise a better version and use it on the next call.
- Learn the product vocabulary by saying it aloud. New terms feel clumsy until you say them.
If your employer runs an onboarding programme, add practice to it. SDR onboarding: 30-60-90 day call practice and prepare a new salesperson for first calls in two weeks give a structure, and SDR pre-dial warm-up drills is a short routine for before each block.
Cost
There is a Free plan, so you can try the routine before paying. If you want more practice time, paid plans start from €19.90 a month. See pricing for what each plan includes and the current limits. When you are ready, start free.
What not to do
- Do not memorise a script word for word. Interviewers notice, and the first interruption breaks it.
- Do not practise only the opener. The objections are where calls are won or lost.
- Do not skip the review. A call you do not review teaches you less.
- Do not wait until you have a job. The point is to arrive with reps already done.
FAQ
How do I practise cold calls for an SDR job?
Write a short opener and replies to the three most common objections, then say them aloud with something that answers back. Review the weakest moment each day.
Can I put practice on my CV?
You can mention what you did, such as a two-week call practice routine, if it is accurate. Do not claim a qualification.
Do employers accept AI practice reports?
Do not assume so. Use them to talk specifically about how you prepared, not as proof of anything.
How long should I practise before an interview?
Two weeks of short daily sessions is a workable plan. Adjust to your interview date.